Linguistics is Changing Me Already

This semester, I am taking a linguistics course. We had our class session today, and it is largely what I expected. What I did not expect was the effect that the class would so soon have on me.

We spent a reasonable amount of time in class talking about "teenage English," "Black English," and a couple of other dialects of the English language. Our professor was putting forth the idea (as did our readings) that these variants are in no way deficient or lesser than "good English," but simply operate under a different set of rules than the dialects we more commonly speak. I, being the troublesome student that I am, immediately set about trying to think of why this was wrong. Thankfully, I did not express this view in class, both because I would likely be accused of some degree of bigotry and small-mindedness, and because of where my thoughts led me.

I tried to explain (in my head) why it was that "Good English" (GE) was better than Ebonics. I could not claim that Ebonics does not have rules, because our professor clearly established that, written or not, every dialect has some form of rules. So I sought to find in what way Ebonics was derivative of GE, and then show how the derivation caused a sort of decay (a claim expressly denied in our reading for next class). I decided I would show this by pointing out that Ebonics has fewer rules. That is, one could insert GE language rules into any small phrase in Ebonics and it would be acceptable. Thus, Ebonics does not have different rules, but only allows for more deviation from the default. I became excited about being able to demonstrate this to a close friend, if not even in class, so great was my proof! I could show this clearly by expressing how, with the possible exception of vocabulary not used, an Ebonics speaker could understand a GE speaker clearly, even if he were unable to conform to the rules himself, while the GE speaker would not be able to understand Ebonics, nor to speak it. That's when it hit me:

Ebonics speakers are therefore more bilingual (or should I say bi-dialectical) than GE speakers, because they understand more speech. Even if I do not understand the speech, or resent its variation from GE, Ebonics speakers have a superior grasp of language because of this variation, even if only because they are forced to learn basic GE.

As one friend of mine might put it, my world just got a little bit bigger.