Remember Ebonics?
Remember the big debate over teaching " ebonics " in the late 90s? Well, I'm currently watching John McWhorter's lecture course on linguistics, and it has reminded me of something I have known for a while, but thought I'd post since reminded of it: The opponents of the teaching of ebonics had no science on their side. Linguists have consistently found that there are no "inferior" human languages: all of them have a regular grammar, and all of them can express everything every other one of them can express (although some may take more or fewer words to express a particular thought). "Vernacular black American English" is not a "debased" language or a "corrupt" form of standard English: it is its own dialect, with its own rules just as regular as those of standard English. It probably would have been highly beneficial to teach black students (and white students!) that the average American black does not speak "incorrect...