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.

Rules of Dancing

I have discovered that I have certain rules for dances. I discovered that I had them some time ago, actually, but I have been refining them ever since. The rules are different depending on whether or not you have a date. If you have no date, the typical rule I have is just "Unless you have a valid reason not to dance (poor equilibrium, in pain, religious beliefs), you ought to dance with anyone who asks at least once." When you have a date, however, dancing is limited differently. My personal rules look something like this:

RULE 1: I will only dance...
1) with my date.
2) in a group.
3) by myself.

Therefore, I do not dance with anyone else, friend or otherwise, while on a date. I toyed with the idea of allowing "anyone my date tells me to dance with" on the list as well, but that has some unpleasant potential implications.

RULE 2: On any slow dance, I will make eye contact with my date, and I will never look over her shoulder at other dancers.

This is just plain rude. You're there with your date. Not the other dancers. She should have your complete focus. All the time.

RULE 3: I will not hold my date to the first two rules.

This took a lot of personal growth on my part to allow this, but I realize that other people do like to dance with friends, and it would be rather inflexible of me to insist on all of her attention for the entire night.

RULE 4: My date sets the level of intimacy for the dancing.

I never pull a date close if I don't know how comfortable she is with me. If she wants to dance close, we dance close. If she wants space, we dance with a reasonable distance between us.

These are what come to mind. It just seems like common courtesy to me. What about you, oh faithful readers?