By Liz McMillen
The school board's decision in Oakland, Cal., last month to use black English, or ebonics, in helping children learn standard English triggered an uproar. But the tenets underlying the decision are uncontroversial to linguists, who have studied what they call African-American Vernacular English for 30 years.
Many educators, writers, and public figures have lambasted the decision, saying the use of ebonics in the classroom will isolate black children and will "dumb down" instruction.
Meanwhile, a number of linguists have come to the defense of the school board, pointing to a body of research that views ebonics as a language "variety" with a complex grammar and probable origins in west Africa. It is not inferior to standard English, they say, just different, like Irish English or Australian English. The term "ebonics" -- a combination of "ebony" and "phonics" -- was coined in the early 1970s.
In fact, such a degree of consensus exists among linguists about the nature of ebonics that the membership of the Linguistics Society of America unanimously passed a resolution this month supporting the school board and calling the plan "linguistically and pedagogically sound."
"There has been so much public discussion that is just uninformed about the nature of African-American Vernacular English, or ebonics," says John Rickford, a professor of linguistics at Stanford University, who helped draft the society's resolution. "We wanted to set the record straight on some facts."
Many linguists believe that there are serious language barriers in the classroom, that existing instructional programs are not working, and that the Oakland school board should be commended for trying to do something about these problems.
At the same time, scholars, alarmed by what they view as sloppy terminology and misinformation, point out that linguists need to make their case more effectively to the public. (The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who had quickly condemned Oakland's decision, changed his mind after meeting with several linguists, including Dr. Rickford.) The Oakland school board itself had added to the confusion by declaring ebonics a language separate from English. Many linguists do not support that view.
"There have been a lot of misunderstandings, partly about terminology," says John Baugh, a professor of education and linguistics at Stanford, who is on leave this year at Swarthmore College. "Some say that black slang is the same as black English. We linguists wouldn't do that."
Although the linguistics society's resolution avoided the issue of whether ebonics is a language or a dialect, it did declare that ebonics is "systematic and rule-governed like all natural speech varieties," and that characterizations of it as "slang," "mutant," "ungrammatical" or "broken English" are incorrect and demeaning. "The distinction between 'languages' and 'dialects' is usually made more on political and social grounds than on purely linguistic ones," the society added.
"Linguists can't agree on how to diagram a sentence, but they did agree on this," says Walt Wolfram, a professor of linguistics at North Carolina State University. "The fundamental misunderstanding is about the nature of dialect diversity. American society treats dialects that aren't standard as aberrations."
In fact, the question of whether African-American Vernacular English is a language or a dialect is largely irrelevant to many linguists. Some point to the axiom that the difference between a language and a dialect depends on who has the army. In any case, the distinctions between the two are not clear; the linguistics society points out that speakers of Swedish and Norwegian, regarded as two separate languages, generally understand each other, while speakers of what are regarded as different Chinese dialects cannot.
The important point about African-American Vernacular English is that it is systematic, say many scholars. "All languages are systematic," says Dr. Rickford. "It's a theoretical assumption and an empirical finding. It's what makes language acquisition possible."
Not everyone is convinced by those arguments. In the January 20 issue of The New Republic, Jacob Heilbrunn, an associate editor, called ebonics "professional crackpotism." "By providing Ebonics with a patina of legitimacy, these scholars have bolstered the efforts of a number of black educators to utilize what are viewed as the skills of 'rap' and 'doin the dozens' (black males' verbal confrontation) in the classroom," he writes.
The study of African-American Vernacular English was begun in the 1960s and '70s by such scholars as Dr. Wolfram, William Labov of the University of Pennsylvania, Ralph Fasold of Georgetown University, and others who charted its rules and syntax. As to its history, scholars are divided. Some say its origins are "Anglicist," growing out of British dialects, although that view appears to be less in favor today. Others, in the "Creole" school, maintain that it developed out of the Niger-Congo languages of west Africa, was influenced by Caribbean dialects, and was modified when slaves reached the United States.
One distinctive feature of African-American Vernacular English is verb patterns that show aspect, or habitual activity. For example, "She be here" is used to mean that she occasionally is here, not, as is often understood by white listeners, that she is here right this moment. "Using the 'be' verb is reflective of an aspectual verb system, which is a characteristic of Niger-Congo languages, not of English," says Geneva Smitherman, a professor of English at Michigan State University.
Another element is the different meaning of the stressed and unstressed "been." When "been" is unstressed in "He been married," it means that he is no longer married. If it is stressed, says Dr. Smitherman, then "that person is presently married and has been married for a long time. The difference reflects use of tone in Niger-Congo languages."
There is some evidence, though not extensive, that using African-American Vernacular English in the classroom as an aid to learning standard English improves reading performance. In one such study, students' reading levels increased by 6.2 months, compared to 1.6 months for a control group.
Studies like these, however, have been halted because of protests from parents and school officials. If anything, scholars say, the controversy over the Oakland decision points to the need for more research on the teaching effectiveness of these methods.