Ax me what I think bout your perscriptivism

[muckefuck]

monshu often likes a little bit of news with his dinner, so he had CNN tuned it (because a little bit of news--wrapped in wads of fluff--is their specialty) and I perked up when I heard mention of my home town. It should come as no surprise to anyone that this was in a featurette on racially-based housing discrimination. What made it newsworthy (in the eyes of CNN at least) was the method of determining the race of applicants: Speech.

They had footage of two applicants telephoning the same landlord and receiving noticeably different treatment. The man whose idiolect was closer to the middle-class norm of the area was told about amenities and invited over for a showing; the man with AAVE[*] features in his was asked additional questions, chiefly concerning his financial history, and invited to "look around the neighbourhood" before making an appointment to see the place.

Now what gave this particular resonance for me is that I've been involved in a number of debates recently concerning linguistic prescriptivism.[#] Some proponents of correcting non-standard features in their friends' speech have offered as justification the apparently laudable goal of wanting to spare them exactly this sort of discrimination. (Most have little comment when asked if they would be as quick to offer corrections of their friends' dress, hairstyle, use of cosmetics, eating habits, choice of sexual partners, and other characteristics that are as likely to bring social discrimination. But I digress.) In a perfect world, of course, everyone could speak how they pleased without it leading to being denied housing, employment, or access to amenities. But we don't live in that world. Surely helping them change the circumstances they can--i.e., their own accents--is the path of least resistence?

One objection to this is practical, since changing one's accent is not as simple as it appear to be. What seems like a superficial affectation is actually closely tied to issues of identity and group membership. Forcibly altering one's mode of speech may not actually be less traumatic than, say, straightening one's hair or lightening one's skin. Although bidialectalism is possible, it's difficult for many people to master; they're likely to end up instead losing their familiar mode of speaking without acquiring the prestige variety well enough to prevent any bias. (Just ask a Southerner living up North about that.)

The deeper problem is that this capitulation to racial prejudice has the longer-term effect of strengthening it and I'm simply too much of an idealist to want to see that happen. The message our society should be sending is that it doesn't matter what someone's basis for discrimination is, whether it be skin colour or some proxy such as dialect, clothing (ever walked into a bar with a sign saying "No Hats"? Then you've walked into a bar run by bigots), given name, or address. Racial and ethnic discrimination is immoral, illegal, and will be prosecuted to the fullest extant of the law.

I'm not saying that all prescriptivists are bigoted against racial minorities. (In fact, I recently witnessed an interesting form of reverse racism where a prescriptivist specifically exempted from her condemnations members of a local non-Caucasian minority group. They got a pass on the presumption that these features were part of their native dialect, whereas "real" native speakers were sharply criticised for them.[&]) What's really telling to me is the choice of "errors" singled out for condemnation. Many are characteristic of large swathes of the population (and, therefore, often indications of a change in progress or a particularly unnatural and unjustified prescription). But others are primarily associated with particular marginalised groups.

For instance, ax for ask. Although it does occur in a variety of dialects (not surprising, given that it was basically the standard form until replaced by the northern dialect form ask in the 17th century), where I live it's overwhelmingly characteristic of AAVE. So when someone here calls it "egregious" but doesn't mention other frequent but more broad-based cases of metatheses (like perscription for prescription), I get suspicious. Of course, not every country has as striking a conjunction between race and class as the USA. But the fact that a lot of prescriptivism is rooted more in class prejudice[$] than racial prejudice stricto sensu doesn't make it any more acceptable in my eyes.

[*] African-American Vernacular English, a.k.a. BEV (Black English Vernacular) or Ebonics.
[#] If you're unfamiliar with the term, I suggest doing a little reading on the subject. I would offer my own definition except that I'm worried it might read as too much of a caricature of the prescriptivist position, which I confess I have little sympathy for. I'm a linguist, after all, and my descriptivist bias runs deep. I'm more interested in what people say than whether it happens it match a particular abstract standard or not.
[&] A truly uncharitable reading would be that it's one thing for darkies to speak wrong, since they don't know any better, but a good white person who imitates them is showing they don't respect themselves or their culture. I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, though, and put aside consideration of this interpretation in lieu of much stronger evidence for it.
[$] All of it, technically, since the prestige dialect is inevitably that of the societal elite--whether those who speak it realise it or not. When there's a mismatch, it is soon resolved: Either the new elite adopt the features of the prescriptivist standard (which their greater access to education allows them to do with relative ease) or the standard itself changes as features associated with the new elite become incorporated.

Comments

[his-regard.livejournal.com]

What seems like a superficial affectation is actually closely tied to issues of identity and group membership.

Isn't this actually an argument for changing dialects? After all, if we take as read that dialect is a close-order function of group identity, then dialect becomes a compelling signifier for the group as a whole, with whatever predominant cultural traditions and social artifacts it carries.

[teapot-farm.livejournal.com]

It's only an argument for changing dialects (assuming you mean, changing one's own dialect) if you value membership of a high-status group more than you value membership of your original group. Which may in reality mean valuing a high-status or high-pay job/lifestyle more than your family of origin, childhood/teenage friends and sense of personal identity as rooted in your background.

[sacundim.livejournal.com]

There's a deeper issue here, which is that prescriptivism all too often relies on a systematic confusion of ethical and fact judgements. For example, if I'm writing some language, I could definitely benefit from a guide to the range of dialectal, sociolectal and stylistic variation that also described common attitudes towards the variants. If using, say, the word fuck in a public speech is going to offend soccer moms, then I definitely benefit from being aware of this.

The usual prescriptivist way of handling this, however, is to say that one should not use the word fuck, because it will offend people and indispose them toward you. But by putting it this way, the prescriptivist has prejudged the ethical issue: he has assumed an ethical rule, whose rough form is "you should not offend others or otherwise deliberately indispose them toward you."

This is an example involving vulgar vocabulary, but the general principle just doesn't rely on that detail at all; proscriptions are frequently couched in terms like that: "you should not talk that way, because 'people' (and I will not bother to state who these people are) will think bad things about you." I say that the prescriptivist, qua grammarian, has no damn business sneaking in dubious moral principles into his prescriptions.

Then there's the problem that the unspecified "people" in the formula above refers, usually, to one of two groups: (a) mainstream middle-class society (sorry for being so redundant), and (b) people who proscribe the usage that is being proscribed. In the first case, it's just reinforcing prejudice. The second one is the silly game where the "grammarian" proscribes usages that are in fact standard, and tells you that you should follow the proscription because people who have the habit of proscribing standard usages are going to think Bad Things about you (best illustrated by arguments along the lines of "yeah, there's nothing wrong grammatically with split infinitives, but you should still avoid them, because people think that there's something wrong with them").

And then, suppose I spend a couple of days writing an article for a general audience, and I give it to somebody to proofread. Here's a sample of possible things they could say:

• "I did not understand such-and-such paragraph; when I read it, I thought this and this, and that got me confused." That's a very helpful sort of answer.
  
• "You used split infinitives throughout." "Sure, but did you understand it?" "What? I don't really remember what it said, I just mechanically scanned it for grammatical errors." "I hereby request that you go introduce yourself to the Prince of Hell at his residence."

I'm not saying that all prescriptivists are bigoted against racial minorities.

The sociological theory of racism has nothing to do with "bigotry," doesn't hold any one individual attitude to be either sufficient or necessary condition for racism, and only touches on such attitudes indirectly. The basic fact of racism is that, for all kinds of measures, when one compares apples to apples (i.e. controls for variation in gender, income, education, etc.), racial minorities do worse than mainstream society. The big question then is what are the factors that cause and maintain this disparity; language variation provides one whole family of such factors.

One should not allow people to assume that "racism" means "bigotry against black people."

[that-dang-otter.livejournal.com]

The whole discussion strikes me as almost irrelevant given that what should be is overwhelmed by what is - the example you give of housing prejudice is a matter of human nature. The idea that a landlord would not discriminate on the basis of the accent of the caller strikes me as impossible idealism, unachievable in American society and unenforceable in law.

It's complicated by the very good possibility that the landlord may be making a choice that is not prejudicial in the sense of being rooted in ignorance or false beliefs, but one that is rational and economically beneficial to him. His idea that people that "sound black" are less likely to pay their rent on time could well be rooted in experience. Not acknowledging this makes any argument about what he "should" be doing sound kind of hollow.

Overcoming racial discrimination isn't just a matter of everyone being nice. It's also a matter of white people making concrete sacrifices to make it happen.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I don't remember including a Rodney King-esque "Can't we all just get along?" plea in my rant, so I'm not sure what you could possibly be responding to. I'm not saying we all have to "be nice", I'm saying we have to take the difficult step of overcoming of our own linguistic prejudices so we can proceed to call others on theirs.

As I said, I realise this is an idealistic goal. That doesn't mean it's unachievable. According to the findings of evolutionary biologists, humans are to some degree wired for racism. That is to say, we are programmed not to trust those who aren't members of our tribe; one of the chief ways we recognise outsiders is by their lack of resemblance to our kin. Nevertheless, human societies have made huge strides in overcoming these evolutionary legacies in recent decades through the power of ideology.

I see absolutely no reason at all to accept the injustice of racial profiling when there are objective means available for determining a person's acceptability as an applicant. Are there no credit reports? Is it an impossible burden to ask for references and phone them? Perhaps in some parts of the world, but not in St. Louis. There's no reasonable justification for using a proxy like group affiliation to determine an individual's ability to meet financial obligations.

Lastly, contrary to what you might think, what I'm talking about is to some degree enforceable. The landlord I mentioned in my example is under investigation by the fair housing enforcement authorities in St. Louis and may well be fined for their practices. Of course, we can't catch everyone who violates the law in this way, but we can try to create a chilling effect and to socially isolate those who would discriminate in this fashion.

[foodpoisoningsf.livejournal.com]

As you might imagine, Italians are all about linguistic prejudice and profiling. It may all sound like Italian, but a Piedmontese is just as identifiable as a Texan.

accent vs. grammar

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

As a Southerner living in the North, I wanted to add that there's a difference between accent (or pronunciation) and using standard (or non-standard) grammar. I may pronounce "ten" and "tin" the same, but I don't run around saying "I had went to the store" like my working-class cow-orkers do. In fact, I'm a prescriptivist jerk about lay/lie.

Also, yeah, my accent changes depending on where I am and who I'm talking to. When I'm back in the Ozarks, it thickens back up. Here, I don't have a Chicago accent yet, but my vowels are slowly shifting ...

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

As are mine, but I'm fighting it every step of the way!