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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.
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 emotion-generator 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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
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-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 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.
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.