Dialects and “Proper” Usage

All but the very smallest language communities show dialect variation. Dialect differences involve all aspects of language – syntax, lexicon, morphology, phonology, etc.

1. Syntax

I don’t have any socks. vs. I don’t have no socks. vs. I don’t got no socks.

I am walking. vs. I be walking.

waiting for Mike vs. waiting on Mike

waiting in line vs. waiting on line (NYC)

I knew he was guilty. vs. I knowed he was guilty.

2. Phonology/phonetics

Listen especially for “north” of “north wind,” “warmly,” “other” in “stronger than the other.” Any guesses about what region this speaker might be from?

Note “north,” “longer,” “stronger,” “first,” “warmly”, “at last.” Variety of English?

What region of the U.S. do you suppose this person is from?

Where’s this guy from? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYabrQrXt4A

3. Miscellaneous pronunciation differences

• inSURance vs. INsurance• greasy vs. “greazy”• Washington vs. Warshington• poLICE vs. POlice

4. Prosodic differences (melody and rhythm)•Drawn-out syllables of “southern drawl”•Distinctive rising pitch of one (rapidly disappearing) variety of New England speech.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj4EIGje4dA

New prosodic feature associated with dialect variation: Up-talking

Standard or Preferred Dialects

Standard, preferred, or “prestige” dialects emerge from dialect variation.

British English: London dialect, not cockney, Scottish, Irish, Manchester, etc.

American English: West/Western Midwest, not Southern, South Boston, Brooklyn, BEV, inner city Chicago, etc.

Standard or Preferred Dialects (cont’d)

Spanish: Barcelona/Madrid, not Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, etc.

What is it about the standard dialects that causes them to be preferred over the non-standard forms?

Are they preferred for linguistic reasons; i.e., are they more grammatical?

Opinions vary. This is from John Simon (theater critic, language guru)“Why should we consider some, usually poorly educated, subculture’s notion of the relationship between sound and meaning? … As for ‘I be,’ ‘you be,’ ‘he be,’ etc., … these may indeed be comprehensible, but they go against all accepted classical and modern grammars and are the product not of a language with roots in history but of ignorance of how language works.”

And this:

“The English language is being treated nowadays exactly as slave traders once handled the merchandise in their slave ships, or as the inmates of concentration camps were dealt with by their Nazi jailers.”

Another view – linguist Dwight Bollinger:

“In language there are no licensed practitioners, but the woods are full of midwives, herbalists, colonic irrigationists, bonesetters, and general-purpose witch doctors, some abysmally ignorant … whom we shall call shamans [read: John Simon and his fellow language mavens] ... We are living in an African village and Albert Schweitzer has not arrived yet.”

Yikes! Position is pretty clear: SE is preferred on purely linguistic grounds: “I am” has its roots in accepted classical grammar; “I be” has its roots in ignorance.

One more view: Linguist Stephen Pinker

“Most of the prescriptive rules of the language mavens [i.e., shamans] make no sense on any level. They are bits of folklore that originated for screwball reasons several hundred years ago and have perpetuated themselves ever since … The rules conform neither to logic nor to tradition … Indeed, most of the ‘ignorant errors’ these rules are supposed to correct display an elegant logic and an acute sensitivity to the grammatical texture of the language, to which the language mavens are oblivious.”

These views could hardly be more different. Who’s right? The language mavens or the linguists?

Short answer: the linguists. No doubt about it.

Arguments in a minute, but if we accept (for the moment) that there are no linguistic grounds for preferring the standard, how do standard dialects become preferred? Answer is very simple: standard dialects are those that we associated with geographic centers of wealth and political power.

British English: Why London and not Manchester or Liverpool?

Spanish: Why Barcelona and not Guatemala or Puerto Rico?

American English: Why this broad swath from the upper Midwest to the west coast and not Brooklyn, rural Mississippi, south Boston, south-side Chicago (Sipowitz), East St. Louis, urban Detroit, rural Appalachia, rural Arkansas?

One more wrinkle: It’s too simplistic to say that there is a single preferred dialect – “cultivated” or “aristocratic” southern speech patterns are quite well accepted (Trent Lott [Mississippi], Robert Byrd [WVa], Sam Nunn [Georgia], etc.). So are some “educated” NYC dialects: Mario Cuomo, Rudy Guliani. Compare these 2 southern dialects:

Neither speech pattern conforms to “General American,” and both are distinctively “southern,” but which of these would you suppose is more accepted? Why?

So, what are the common threads among the dialect “haves” vs. the “have nots”? Simple: Money, political power.

Are there any counter-examples; e.g., a language in which the standard dialect was associated not with Madrid but with Honduras or El Salvador?

Is it really true that there are no linguistic grounds for preferring the standard dialect?

I don’t have no twinkies.

This one has to be messed up, doesn’t it? Two negatives make a positive! It’s just not logical. It does violence to the language – just like the Nazis. Guess what? Many languages do this. French:

Je ne sais pas.(“I do not know.”; literally, “I not know not.”)

Yikes – ne negates, pas negates. It’s a dreaded double negative.

Spanish has a very similar construction. Many languages do. Why shouldn’t English? Answer: It does, but not in standard English.

Proper construction is supposed to be:

I don’t have any Twinkies.

The any here turns out to function strictly as a grammatical place holder. How do we know? Can’t be used alone:

*I have any twinkies. ???

The any here serves a place holder function in the same way as the it of “It is raining.” The “no” of “I don’t have no twinkies” fulfills this grammatical function just as well as “any.”

Last point: In the world of grammar, two negatives do not make a positive. Do these sentences mean the same thing?

He is attractive. [This is good news right?]

He is not unattractive. [A polite way to say, “He’s a gargoyle.”]

Here’s another one: Don’t split infinitives (e.g., to go).

… to boldly go where no man has gone before …

boldy has intruded in the middle of to go. Here’s the educated way:

… to go boldly where no man has gone before …

Yech. Any idea where this “rule” came from? Latin!!!!

dare (to give), docere (to teach), contare (to sing)

Reasoning (?): (1) Latin doesn’t split infinitives, (2) Latin is way cool, (3) English speakers (if they want to be way cool) shouldn’t split infinitives.

This entirely idiotic “usage rule” is well over 100 years old. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. None.

The pinhead who came up with it managed to convince people to apply a feature of Latin to English.

How was he able to pull this off? Easy – he declared himself to be a language expert, and readers of his usage manual thought, ok, he’s the expert. I’m going to follow this rule, then people will know that I’m way educated.

Because speakers/writers bought this line of bull, we can no longer say the entirely reasonable:

Cecil wants to slowly cut back on his cigar habit.

It has to be the awkward-sounding:

Cecil wants to cut back slowly on his cigar habit.

And how would you fix a sentence like this?

The drop-out rate is expected to more than double in the next ten years. [Two ‘intruders’ in middle of the infinitive here]

Q: Where do you stick the more than without splitting the infinitive?

A: It doesn’t need fixing in the 1st place.

Morals:

(1)The self-appointed “language gurus” who have blessed us with most usage rules almost always have a primitive and simplistic understanding of English grammar that is quite frequently dead wrong. In what other areas can this kind of thing happen? Can you walk into an operating room, declare yourself to be an expert in surgery, then proceed to demonstrate how a spleen should be removed? I don’t think so, but in the world of language use this happens all the time.

(2)When you set out to solve a problem that doesn’t exist (in this case, the dreaded split infinitive) you are not going to get a good result.

Don’t end a sentence with a preposition. Why not? Because I said so.

uncooth: That is something I’ve been thinking about.

cooth: That is something about which I’ve been thinking.

There is simply no natural rule of English that forbids ending a sentence with a preposition. How preposterous is this artificial rule?

This is the kind of English up with which I will not put.-unknown, often attributed to Churchill

How would you fix this one?

Tennis is the game I’ve been playing around with.

There are two prepositions at the end. How to fix it?

How about:

*Tennis is the game around with which I’ve been playing.

Sound OK? I don’t think so. It could be completely reworded from scratch – but why? There’s nothing wrong with it.

NOTE: This next example, which has to do a bogus usage rule involving the word hopefully, is the single best example that I have.

If you understand this example you’ll understand what the whole usage-rule mess is all about.

There isn’t anything difficult about it.

(Alleged) misuse of the word hopefully

“’Hopefully’ may be one of the most abused words in the English language. Take for example the sentence:

Hopefully, the package will arrive.

In this case, ‘hopefully’ is a dangling modifier, because the package is not hopeful. ‘Hopefully’ describes nothing at all in this sentence.” [All of the above is a direct quote from a website on English usage.]

(From http://www.ehow.com/how_2387485_use-hopefully-correctly.html)

This analysis is ENTIRELY wrong. (details soon)

Another (alleged) “misuse” of hopefully:

Hopefully, our team will win.

What’s wrong? The usage expert’s argument:

hopefully is an adverb, like carefully, as in “Bob read the book carefully.” The “Bob” sentence is ok because there is an agent (Bob) who is doing something (reading) in a careful manner.

In Hopefully, our team will win,” the argument goes, there is no agent doing something in a hopeful manner. Therefore, hopefully is being abused. It is a dangling modifier. This does violence to the language, much in the manner of Nazis and slave traders.

What’s the problem with this usage rule? The problem is that it’s completely wrong.

The stupies who came up with this rule were blissfully unaware that there are two different kinds of adverbs in English:

verb-phrase adverbs: ‘Ordinary’ adverbs that behave exactly like carefully in “Bob read the book carefully”. (This is the only kind you learn about in grade school, which is as far as the ‘experts’ got.)

sentence adverbs: These apply globally to a sentence as a whole, not locally to an individual verb (or verb phrase or adjective).

Hopefully in “Hopefully, our team will win.” is a sentence adverb, not a verb-phrase adverb. These are exceedingly common in English:

Curiously, he never showed up.

(‘curiously’ modifies the following sentence)

What is it that’s curious? The fact that “he never showed up” – a sentence. This explains why they are called sentence adverbs.

Typically, we treat first offenses lightly.

(‘typically’ modifies the following sentence)

What is it that’s typical? The fact that “we treat first offenses lighly” – a sentence. The adverb applies to the sentence as a unit.

(There is a 2nd adverb – lightly. What kind is this, and why?) [The word lightly modifies treat. It is telling the listener the manner in which treatment occurs. Therefore it is one of the “ordinary” adverbs – i.e., the verb-phrase type.]

Amazingly, there is nothing wrong with this sentence.

(‘amazingly’ modifies the following sentence)

Confidentially, John Simon is a hairball.

Q: What is being modified by the adverb confidentially?

A: Not an individual word or phrase, but the sentence “John Simon is a hairball”; the speaker is telling you that sentence is being uttered in a confidential manner.

Ideally, language experts should actually understand how adverbs work. Sadly, this is often the case that they do not.

Q: What is being modified by the adverb ideally?

A: Not an individual word or phrase, but the sentence “language experts should actually understand how adverbs work”.

Q: What is being modified by the adverb sadly?

A: Not an individual …, but the sentence “it is often the case that they do not”.

Is there anything wrong with any of these sentences? [No]

Are they different in any way from hopefully? [No]

Does the jughead who came up with this “rule” know what he/she is talking about? [No]

Why was hopefully picked on and not candidly, basically, incidentally, predictably, oddly, supposedly …? [No one knows]

Final Note on Verb-Phrase Adverbs vs. Sentence adverbs

The distinction is based entirely on what the adverb is modifying – either a verb/verb phrase (that’s a verb-phrase adverb) or a sentence (that’s a sentence adverb).

You don’t necessarily create a sentence adverb by moving the word to the beginning of the sentence.

Hurriedly, Sidney put his pants on. He wasn’t sure when Vera’s husband would be home.

What does hurriedly modify? It tells the listener the manner in which Sidney put his pants on. The adverb is at the front, but that doesn’t make it a sentence adverb.

Q: How did we end up with an idiot rule telling us that we should not say things like, “Hopefully it won’t rain,” – along with a very large collection of other nonsensical usage rules like it?

A: They were given to us by all kinds of people over the years who believed themselves to be language experts. They based their judgments mainly on bits and pieces of stuff they learned mostly in grade school and middle school and only partly understood. They wrote usage books and newspaper columns on language. Once an idea like the ‘hopefully’ thing catches on – no matter how stupid it is – we are stuck with it indefinitely.

The dreaded “Sally and me went fishing.”

There isn’t a single grammar issue that teenagers get pestered about more than this one.

Are any of the sentences below wrong (based on what usage experts say)?If so, which one(s)?

Frances drove Mikey and me to the bank.He gave the pizza to Willard and me.This is just between you and me.Will you loan Amy and I your hockey stick?

Frances drove Mikey and me to the bank. -- okHe gave the pizza to Willard and me. -- okThis is just between you and me. -- ok*Will you loan Amy and I your hockey stick? – not ok

Why do the ‘wrong’ ones sound right and the ‘right’ ones sound wrong?

1.Amazingly enough, the usage rule about Frank and me went to the game – even this one – is bogus (for an explanation, see Pinker’s Grammar Puss

on my 2040 web page).2.Bogus or not, almost nobody actually learns the rule. What most speakers learn is, say ‘X and I’; don’t say ‘X and me’.

Let’s back up here and see if we can figure out what’s going on. What is the rule about ‘I’ and ‘me’?

The rule:

•‘I’ is the nominative case; nominative = subject, so it is “I went fishing.” not “Me went fishing.”

•‘Me’ is the objective case; object = object, so it is “Give the bobber to me.” not “Give the bobber to I.”

Pretty simple rule, eh? Kids figure this one out while they’re still in short pants.

If a five-year old can easily avoid saying, “Me is going to South Haven”, how is it that much older kids – and many adults – get sucked into “Me and Cosmo are going to South Haven”?

It’s because, once again, the rule itself is bogus. The explanation is not a short one. If you’re interested, read Pinker’s Grammar Puss, available on my web page. Even if you’re not interested in the explanation, I recommend Grammar Puss. It’s a short paper, a good read, and fun.

What about constructions that seem obviously wrong?

He workin’.(non-standard)He be workin’. (non-standard)He is working. (standard)

Imagine that we handed these sentences to the world’s brainiest linguist – knows everything about every language, but knows nothing about preferred dialects and non-standard dialects.

We ask the linguistic one question: Which of the forms above is standard and which non-standard?

Answer: She will not be able to tell. Judgments about standard & non-standard dialects are entirely social, not linguistic.

One last point: Is it the case that non-standard forms are stripped-down, or simplified versions of the standard dialect?

No. There are grammatical features in the standard dialect that can go unmarked in the non-standard dialect.

Just as often the reverse is true. BEV:

He workin’. Not the same as “He is working.” Specifically means he’s working right now.

He be workin’. Not the same as “He is working.” Refers specifically to a habitual or frequent activity, as in: “"He be workin'

Tuesdays all month."

A form of aspect is being marked here that is ignored in SAE. Does that make SAE impoverished? No, there are other ways to do it, using words like right now or usually.

One more simple example: SAE “you” for both plural and singular vs. the non-standard “y’all’ (south) or ‘youse’ (NY, Philly, etc.)

Where does this leave us?

The criteria for preferring standard dialects over non-standard dialects are political, social, and economic.

They are not cognitive or linguistic.

Should people in the education business start advising students to speak and write any way they please, ignoring the standard dialect since it is no better than any other dialect based on linguistic criteria?

The reality is that the ability to speak something close to standard English (or a “cultured” form of

Southern or NYC speech) is a valuable skill. Imagine you’re interviewing for a job.

Q: How did you find out about this position?

A: Well, I ain’t got no job, so I was looking at the want ads and that’s where I seen it.

Even if you’re applying for a job running a cash register or waiting on tables, you’re probably cooked right there. Humans make judgments about people based on their speech patterns. That’s here to stay.

So, what should educators do? It should not be a difficult problem. Unlike the U.S., multilingualism is extremely common throughout the world. (Swiss kids: no difficulty learning German, French & English; children in Chad: no trouble learning Arabic and French; The Netherlands: in the larger cities almost everyone speaks (at least) Dutch and English.)

What’s the point? There’s no reason that kids should have any trouble learning standard English in addition to their native dialect.

But: There is also no reason for teachers to get it in their heads (or convey to their students) that the non-standard dialects spoken by many kids represent bad English. It isn’t bad English.

[Read this on your own.]Attitude changes about “proper” and “improper dialects” do not come easily, but they do sometimes happen. Check out this commentary on Cockney.

Changing attitudes towards Cockney English. The Cockney accent has long been looked down upon and thought of as inferior by many. In 1909 these attitudes even received an official recognition thanks to the report of The Conference on the Teaching of English in London Elementary Schools issued by the London County Council, where it is stated that "[…] the Cockney mode of speech, with its unpleasant twang, is a modern corruption without legitimate credentials, and is unworthy of being the speech of any person in the capital city of the Empire". On the other hand, however, there started rising at the same time cries in defence of Cockney as, for example the following one: "The London dialect is really, especially on the South side of the Thames, a perfectly legitimate and responsible child of the old kentish tongue […] the dialect of London North of the Thames has been shown to be one of the many varieties of the Midland or Mercian dialect, flavoured by the East Anglian variety of the same speech […]". Since then, the Cockney accent has been more accepted as an alternative form of the English Language rather than an "inferior" one; in the 1950s the only accent to be heard on the BBC (except in entertainment programmes such as Sooty) was RP, whereas nowadays many different accents, including Cockney or ones heavily influenced by it, can be heard on the BBC. In a survey of 2000 people conducted by Coolbrands in autumn 2008, Cockney was voted equal fourth coolest accent in Britain with 7% of the votes, while The Queen's English was considered the coolest, with 20% of the votes. Brummie was voted least popular, receiving just 2%. [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockney]