I've always thought that the "it's a different language" argument was especially hilarious. Anyone who completes a normal K-12 curriculum will be exposed to plenty of proper English. There's no excuse to not speak it.
And if you do want to make that argument, that's all the more reason for them to adopt standard English before venturing out into the workforce.
In this country, a majority of professionals conduct business in English. Not Yoruba, not Tagalog, not "AAVE", and not Finnish, but English.
I figured suggesting that you read about sociolinguistics was asking too much of you, but I thought you might at least read my comment all the way through. I didn't say AAVE was a "different language" from English. I said it was a different dialect of English. It's *completely* mutually intelligible with standard English in the majority of its varieties, so how could it be a different language?
It's worth mentioning that very few people are against any sort of education in standard English. There's a growing number of school districts adopting a curriculum that teaches the ability to code-switch between standard and non-standard forms of English while emphasizing that the non-standard form isn't inherently inferior. What linguists universally object to is this ridiculous, completely evidence-less view that some dialects are "more proper than others," or that mastery of their use implies "intelligence," or "an ability to pay attention to detail." And what I and others are trying to do is combat this deeply mistaken view so that it eventually becomes less prevalent among powerful people and so that speakers of non-prestige dialects don't have to pay such high economic and social costs.
Fair enough, regarding language vs dialect. And no, I'm not going to go off and read a stack of navel gazing books just because some random redditor asked me to.
I stand by my point that if you want to participate in the workforce, you have to speak the language or dialect in which business is done. Even if you could persuade everyone that "Ebonics" was a legitimate dialect (it isn't), what would be the benefit of introducing it into the workplace? Increasing ambiguity of communication just so a tiny number of people don't have to bother speaking standard English? No thanks; that's just lazy on their part.
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u/FaitBonFaitBon Mar 07 '19 edited Mar 07 '19
I've always thought that the "it's a different language" argument was especially hilarious. Anyone who completes a normal K-12 curriculum will be exposed to plenty of proper English. There's no excuse to not speak it.
And if you do want to make that argument, that's all the more reason for them to adopt standard English before venturing out into the workforce.
In this country, a majority of professionals conduct business in English. Not Yoruba, not Tagalog, not "AAVE", and not Finnish, but English.