Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 10:04:32 -0500 From: "Salikoko S. Mufwene" Subject: Re: The Lords Prayer/Ebonics Dear Mr. Futrell: Just to reply in same style as your intervention, I see that you are in a Department of Communication. I could not say everthing in one sentence. If you read the whole of my posting, you should notice that I am not opposed to dialectologists being interested in misrepresented "Ebonics". I also make clear in my conditional apology to Carol (no sexism intended here--I have addressed everybody else by first name so far!) what kind of reports on "Ebonics" I object to. Linguists have typically been interested in ill-formed structures too, but not for the satisfaction of some socially biased entertainment, at the expense of some speakers. I think that I say this explicitly in my posting. If you want to challenge me, you should do so on the facts I say. S. Mufwene. ------------------------------------- >On Thu, 9 Oct 1997, Salikoko Mufwene wrote: > >> Perhaps we cannot prevent people from creating websites where incorrect >> information is disseminated. Perhaps we should even tolerate their > >I find this an odd statement coming from someone who studies language >usage. Although there is no doubt that the fabricated Ebonics example >Carol sent bears little resemblance to how an "Ebonics speaker" might use >the dialect, there also is little doubt that this language variety is >regular misconstrued by non speakers. Seems that as language scholars, >this misappropriation of a dialect -- i.e., "incorrect" examples of >Ebonics flying around the net -- should be part of our knowledge >inventory. Thus, ADS-L is precisely the type of venue where these >examples should be shared. To label any language usage as "incorrect" >when people actually use it seems oxymoronic, which is to say contrary to >the history of the American Dialect Society's century long mission. > > >Al Futrell >-- awfutr01[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]homer.louisville..edu >-- http://www.louisville.edu/~awfutr01 >Dept of Communication -- University of Louisville ******************************************************* Salikoko S. Mufwene s-mufwene[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uchicago.edu University of Chicago 773-702-8531; FAX 773-834-0924 Department of Linguistics 1010 East 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637 http://humanities.uchicago.edu/humanities/linguistics/faculty/mufwene.html *******************************************************