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Chapter 12 Language Variation: Emotion Overtakes Structure (nn1)
Some would say we have looked only at the body of grammar, not the
soul. The soul of grammar is how it contributes to our sense of identity. If
we speak a dialect, it seems to holler out who we are. So far we have looked
at only the common skeleton of grammar: the universal and invariant
concepts like word, sentence, and recursion. It is the easy part. When we
consider grammatical variation, dialects and other grammars, all dimensions
of humanity seem to come flooding into view. Our social attitudes
completely dominate our concept of grammar when dialect is the topic of
discussion, as if everything about grammar was emotionally motivated, as the
stories below reveal. Language leads to both gross and finely calibrated
judgments about each other, often misguided.
Pronunciation, vocabulary, and intonation can deliver a speaker’s
attitude about what he says even before we get the meaning itself. It is quite
astonishing that we can process attitude and meaning in parallel, like braided
hair. Indeed, our sense of a person’s attitude often crystallizes before the
content of a sentence does. We let ourselves generate an impression of who
a person is before we hear what he says. A Southern drawl, or just a “yawl”
or a Brooklyn “dese” or “dose,” or Boston “pahk the cah” lead to instant
geographic, intellectual, and political assumptions.
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Even just a slight shift toward an ironic tone can make a sentence
imply its opposite. Or the opposite of irony: an over-earnest denial can lead
the hearer to quite a different view. Each of us may have come to a different
conclusion when Nixon said "I am not a crook" or George Bush said “stay
the course in Iraq.”
Yet we must not lose our grip on the machine metaphor that motivates
science. As we argued in the first chapter, some formula, which crosses all the
domains of mind and sensation, allows us to form instant opinions about people,
their motives, their danger or appeal, within a few milliseconds of hearing them
speak. It does not take half an hour to decide that someone made a menacing
remark. It happens within the same time-frame that we decode the grammar. Do
we unpack the personality woven into sentences the same way we unpack a
compound noun? That is a question for the future, but the fact that comparable
speed is present tells us that there may be something shared, that our emotiongenerator and analyzor may have a similar machine behind them. (This is not our
last word on emotion. We discuss a different order of thinking--slow thought—
when we return to the human image.)
Is Prejudice Biological?
Since our judgments "come from the gut,” they are very hard to
dislodge. Linguistic attitudes are maintained at both a conscious and an
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unconscious level, which makes them devilishly insidious. Those who claim,
even linguists, that they are untainted by language prejudice have not grasped
how deep its unconscious roots are. It may be that linguistic judgments are
part of a biologically driven mode of personal interaction--much like aspects
of sexuality that are not within elementary mental control. If we could just
“decide” not to be affected, then pornography would not be offensive, but our
reactions are partly automatic. Like race prejudice, people have a strong
intuition of inevitable truth in linguistic judgments, both positive and
negative. People make remarks like "so and so does not seem so bright.”
Where exactly does such an opinion come from? Often it is a judgment about
grammar, not content. On the other hand, a British accent feels more
intelligent to many people, and Britons in America often retain their accent.
Acceptable Prejudices
Unfortunately, language prejudice remains intellectually acceptable in
modern society.
People do not feel embarrassed about making fun of other
people's language, much as a generation ago no one felt inhibited about
racially oriented humor. A caricature almost always involves an exaggerated
imitation of language style.
It has sometimes been suggested that language prejudice increases
when race prejudice declines.
If we must have a way to accept or dismiss
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someone in a few seconds, race is convenient, but if not race, then “improper
English” serves as a device for instant social analysis. Is language prejudice
increasing as some progress in fighting race prejudice succeeds? It is hard to
say.
Linguists are fond of saying "a language is just a dialect with an
army.” (nn2) It is in fact true that where dialects are linked to armies, they
are often called distinct languages, which provides a kind of political
barricade against prejudice. Scandinavian languages are often mutually
understood--and yet we have separate labels for Norwegian, Swedish, and
Danish and separate textbooks dictating correctness in each language. Still
they are mutually comprehensible, and Scandinavians speak their own
language when talking to each other.
Child Attitudes
Children are busy acquiring attitudes as well as words. They are
sensitive to minute variations in the weight of words, though they may be off
target now and then. They quickly sense that we talk differently to strangers
than to our families.
Where bilinguals are involved, children know to use
one language at home and, once out the door, another language comes out.
And children learn that there are different styles appropriate to
different ages. I once overheard a conversation among some five-year-old
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girls about to play house. One said, do you want to be the one-year-old or
the two-year-old? The other said, "what's the difference?" The first
answered, if you are one you just say "ga, ga, ga" but if you are two, you say
"me want.”
Children are rapidly aware of dialect differences too. We have found
that African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is instantly more
prevalent when non-AAVE speakers leave. Even a three-year-old can switch
dialects.
Stories
Stories about dialect are usually amusing, but they also reveal how
often an unconscious appraisal of grammar contributes to whatever we are
conscious of. We are capable of numerous subtle shifts in dialect but we
may not be entirely conscious nor in control of them. A friend from Scotland
traveled back there on his honeymoon, and his wife suddenly said that she
could not understand him because his brogue reappeared dramatically,
though he was not really aware of it.
A relative of mine said his life was saved by his North German
dialect. He was in a concentration camp called Teresienstadt in
Czechoslovakia which was visited by Adolf Eichmann. Adolf Eichmann
spoke to him and a colleague from Southern Germany --both chemists with
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advanced degrees--about sanitary conditions (they were assigned to make
disinfectants). His southern partner was quickly sent to his death, but
Eichmann addressed him as "Herr Doktor" and kept him alive simply, he
believes, because of his more acceptable dialect.
Even political attitudes can operate in milliseconds when we use
language. In World War II the army used linguistic devices to determine the
political involvement of chemists. They asked them to read the word:
unionized. If they said "un-ionized,” then they were acceptable. If they said
"unionized" (belonging to a union), they gave them a second look.
One linguist friend from the South told me this story. He came home
and said "CEment.” His father responded, "we're moving North, I can't have
my children talking that way: it's 'ceMENT'.” Likewise a mere emphasis on
UM in UMbrella, instead of umBRELla, can locate a person in an instant
along a social continuum. In the senate during a debate over a bill on sexual
harassment, it was noticeable that those for it said ha-RASS-ment and those
against said HAR-assment.
A friend asked his fiancée from the West if she would stop saying
“ant” and say “aunt” before their wedding because the /a/ for /aw/ contrast
bothered him (and the aunt was coming). Grammar instantly enforces or
denies social stratification. Revolutionary times throw customs into disarray:
The nineteen-sixties saw the introduction of universal informality on
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campuses in Europe, (you = informal "tu" instead of "vous" or "Du" instead
of "Sie") but they have since changed, in part, leaving professors and
students quite uncertain about how to address one another.
Educational Fallout
Our culture is full of concern over body language, black English
(ebonics), bi-lingualism, and code-switching (moving between dialects).
Related mini-issues seem like petty fallout from language prejudice: outrage
at misspelled words, parents appalled by slight differences in pronunciation,
the changing status of profanity.
While our educational apparatus mounts a large campaign against
race prejudice, little is done to combat language prejudice, partly because
such an education requires some knowledge of linguistic structure.
Instruction in grammar never explains why dialect variation is just another
version of universal grammar. And no one explains that we can no more
violate Universal Grammar occasionally than grow a third foot when we feel
like it. Without this perspective, grammar instruction inevitably teaches to a
norm which amounts to suppression of dialects.
When does all this enter the life of a child? That is a hard question,
but they are immediately pertinent to how language grows in the child. A
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large part of the reason we have dialects, different speech registers, rafts of
new words brought into the language by teenagers eager to forge their own
language space, is because language conveys much about our attitudes in
indirect ways. In fact "attitude" has become a slang word in its own right.
Again we can ask a basic question: when do children recognize ironic
intonation? An undergraduate student once did an informal experiment in
which she asked children to choose which of two characters really doesn't
like oatmeal. (nn3) One says "I like oatmeal" and the other says with heavy
irony "Oh I just LOVE oatmeal.” She found that five-year-olds easily
identified the ironic intonation as implying the opposite of the meaning of the
sentence. One could try the experiment informally again with younger
children and see. It would be useful information for a parent because we
often speak to each other and to children with a tone that reverses the
meaning of what we say. Children may, or may not, understand.
Signals of Informality
There is a whole literature which studies when people use formal or
informal modes of address. (nn4) The variation can be very subtle.
Mountain climbers above a certain altitude will use only informal address,
but when they descend again below the high altitudes will return to formal
modes of address. Prostitutes use informal language just before and during
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their activities, but return to formal modes of address afterwards. The use of
informality itself has changed. In the 19th century informal language was
used primarily between superior and inferior social levels. A landowner
addressed his peasants with informal language, but might refer to his wife
with formal language as a reflection of respect. In modern times, informality
represents equality and intimacy.
How do children enter this ever-changing pool of attitudes? They
may not grasp irony at the age of three, but they will be sensitive to
differences in informal and formal speech. Expressions like "aw c'mon,”
"gimme,” "just ‘cuz" all convey strong feelings via their informal phonology.
The ways in which emotion is linked to phonology and simplification of
sounds represents another dimension of language which has large innate
components as well. It is very real for children, though difficult for us to
describe because we have little skill in formulating the curves of feeling
carried by sounds.
One generalization seems plausible: informality is linked to
phonological contraction. That is, dropping vowels or consonants implies a
commonality of feeling and experience. Phonological ellipsis is much like
the syntactic ellipsis we painstakingly discussed. Sounds can be dropped
because we know how to resurrect them. In a sense, the shared, silent
resurrection creates moments of community.
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Nevertheless languages vary along these dimensions as well.
Dropping subjects is a sign of informality in English: "wanna go to the
movies" lacks a "do you,” and "seems ok to me" lacks an "it.” These are
informal expressions in English. In Spanish, however, one can drop subjects
without the same sense of informality. Dropped subjects are a part of the
grammar in a more formal way (to which we return below). A child must
then discriminate what is a normal part of the grammar and what is not. The
informal grammar may, in a sense, derive from an entirely different language
family.
In general, informal speech often becomes "acceptable" over time.
Were we all to speak to our families in the manner in which Jane Austen's
characters speak, we would feel pretty phony.
Surprisingly strong
distinctions can arise from one generation to the next. All three of the
following expressions are acceptable in written English today:
a. who did you talk to
b. whom did you talk to
c. to whom did you talk
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A generation ago, whom was preferred and who was informal. Today who is
normal and whom feels slightly pompous. And "to whom" borders on the
archaic, but attitudes will differ with age.
Other social class distinctions are amazingly sharp and subtle. In
Boston, there are two forms of r-lessness: "Hahvid" and "Haavid," both used
for "Harvard.” The first is upperclass and the second is decidedly lower
class. A person from elsewhere in the country may not hear or note the
difference, but those who live in Boston will immediately dectect it.
If informality is marked by deletions, and informal speech gradually
becomes normal, how does language ever become richly structured? Every
generation for centuries has claimed that language is declining. It cannot
decline forever. The reason we cannot see how language is enriched is
because the sources of enrichment are often subject to prejudice. Teenagers
not only introduce new words but often lead the way in allowing grammatical
changes to enter the language, though it is a slow process. Currently words
like "like" are becoming conjunctions in addition to prepositions ("like I
really want to go to the movies"). Although it may clang in the ears of
elders, it is really a form of innovation that future generations will be quite
unbothered by (nn5).
Do children make real social distinctions on the basis of language? A
parent from the South, living in the North, is alarmed because her four-year-
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old won't say "yawl" though it is dear to her Southern culture. How come?
It actually fills a gap in standard English which fails to distinguish, as other
languages do, between generic (you = one) and specific (yawl= you
specifically). The question “Can you go to the moon?” might get a “yes”
answer as a generic, but “Can yawl go to the moon?” is asking a quite
different question about you personally. The child must be resisting it for
social reasons, since it has a unique role in grammatical terms. In sum, as
soon as children begin to make social distinctions, those distinctions will find
reflections in their use of language and their response to the language of
others.
Uncontrollable Attitudes
While people can often code-switch and use different dialects, control is
quite imperfect. In the Democratic convention in 2000, Jesse Jackson sought
to start a chant—as he often does—but this one failed. He said”
“stay out the Bushes”
and the audience started to repeat but faltered. Why? Because he was using
an AAVE locution: out-nounphrase, while in Standard English (for
mysterious reasons) we say “out of the bushes” (out-of-nounphrase). His
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tremendous eloquence and focus upon language has never eliminated traces
of AAVE which are perhaps a real part of his attraction to several
constituencies.
Still, is it careless to drop a preposition? We drop them in
compounds (“broom-swept,” not *“with-broom-swept”) and in dialogue
("where did you go?" "New York"--while *"I went New York" is not all
right). The dialect uses the same principle, but in a different place. That
will be our theme as we progress.
African-American English (Ebonics)
It is safe to say that every grammar or dialect contains elegant
subtlety of its own which anthropologists and linguists delight to discover.
All languages spawn dialects—-it is often the most alive part of language-and dialects sometimes resemble a child's language. The resemblance is
deceptive. A classic and, at times tragic case, is African-American English
(AAVE) which is frequently labeled "broken" or “immature” English, or
elevated with a term like “ebonics.” Children are made to feel ashamed of it,
teachers refuse to tolerate it in class, school administrators use it as a basis
for sending (sometimes) bright children into Special Education classrooms
from which they never emerge.
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In the Fall of 1996 AAVE captured national attention more
dramatically than any other linguistic issue in recent memory, when a local
school board in Oakland sought money to treat AAVE as a form of
bilingualism (and receive funds earmarked for that purpose). The response
was to challenge the legitimacy of the African-American dialect altogether.
The Linguistics Society of America issued a special statement defending the
legitimacy of all grammars in the strongest terms. (nn6) As Wolf Wolfram
put it, doubts about AAVE as a normal grammar should have no more
legitimacy than the doubts of the Flat Earth Society about the circularity of
the earth. (nn7) In the next chapter we will advance the idea that all
speakers are bilingual, that is, have Multiple Grammars when looked at
closely. This should provide direct intellectual underpinning for the position
taken by the Oakland School board.
Still gut-level responses to language, born of social prejudice, remain
turbulent. Arguments over ebonics seem analogous to the demonstrations outside
art museums early in the 20th century when Picasso-like modern art was exhibited
in Chicago. Civilization itself is threatened if grammatical paradigms are not
upheld. Work in sociolinguistics does not really explain the sheer magnitude of
emotion language elicits. Forcing the legitimacy of AAVE grammar down the
nation’s throat feels to some people like someone is strangling them. They feel
that something culturally vital is lost and indeed, as we have argued, historical
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evolution in language does involve loss as well as gain. Like for modern art, the
change will probably come slowly.
This chapter has sought to cast our net wide before we yank it tight again.
We have looked briefly through the lens of social distinctions. We showed, once
again, that these broad concerns are mapped onto linguistically precise differences
(like vowel reduction, dropping subjects, word choice). These general mental
factors loom large in our motivation and understanding of language, but a
grammatical engine underlies them. We will promote the idea that all speakers
have Multiple Grammars which may comes from different language families.
Our strong response to dialect comes from our unconscious awareness that quite
different, even alien, principles underly the special properties of dialect. We shall
see that a subpart of the African-American English verbal system builds upon a
concept of Event where Standard English builds upon the concept of Time. These
differences can explain why dialects can feel both strange and exotically
interesting at once. First, though, we have some more grammatical background