The Guardian is running
this piece by Chris McGreal, called:
US drug agency recruits speakers of 'street slang'
DEA seeks people who understand black vernacular English to translate wiretaps and stand up evidence in court
It's getting a lot of attention, and much of it along
this kind of lines from what I've seen. (Yes, there had to be the Airplane video clip.) But there's a big, even massive, point about language in America in this story. The core of it is laid out in this quote from the article:
"It seems ironic that schools that are serving and educating black children have not recognised the legitimacy of this language," said H Samy Alim, a Stanford linguistics professor. "Yet the authorities and the police are recognising that this is a language that they don't understand. It tells us a lot about where we are socially in terms of recognising African-American speech."
Yes, and the government's de facto recognition that (most of) their employees can't understand some kinds of African-American speech makes a powerful point that should be used in future discussions about language and education.
2 comments:
Goes to show how prescriptivist focus on correct language and legitimate languages massively impedes understanding of incorrect and illegitimate forms of speech.
Case in point: that comment about sounding like an Onion article.
And see this:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/08/dea_the_e_is_for_ebonics.html
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