Preview of Article:
If Ebonics Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?
First question:
1. How can the victims of specious arguments about genetic difference (with respect to IQ, for example) support the notion “that African Language Systems are genetically based”?
Among linguists, Ebonics is commonly known as Black English or African-American English (AAE–the term used below), names not used in the resolution for ideological reasons: to establish that AAE is a language distinct from English.
As is clear from the resolution, but not from the severely cropped passages of it that the media and the politicians chose to highlight, the claim is that AAE has characteristics that derive from the languages that enslaved peoples brought with them from West Africa, a widely held though not uncontroversial claim among linguists. Consider the language of the resolution:
Whereas, these [scholarly] studies have also demonstrated that African Language Systems are genetically based and not a dialect of English; and
Whereas, these studies demonstrate that such West and Niger-Congo African languages have been officially recognized and addressed in the mainstream public educational community as worth of study, understanding or application of its principles, laws and structures for the benefit of African-American students both in terms of positive appreciation of the language and these students’ acquisition and mastery of English language skills.</p
