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Talk:African-American Vernacular English and social context

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 86.137.156.17 (talk) at 14:13, 1 January 2008 (→‎"Genetic"). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

"Genetic"

I'd like to see the reference for Ebonics being "genetic." Languages are not genetically derived, they are learned. African Americans can learn to produce perfect English just like any other racial group. The person who wrote that statement needs to back it up or we need to remove it as unsupported (and racist). ... added at 21:03, 13 September 2007 by 207.62.190.18

The original resolution itself used this term. (There's a link in the article itself to the original resolution; I'll save you a few seconds by pointing to it here.)
The original resolution is written in legalese. Even beyond the grotesque style that's typical of legalese, most people agree that this resolution is poorly written. (The people who wrote it seem to agree, as they soon rewrote it.) Further, most linguists agree that some of the linguistic component of what it says is farfetched at best and nonsense at worst.
However, the writers' use of genetic was deliberate and not racist at all. They're not talking about the genetic relationships among ethnic groups but instead the genetic relationships among languages (according to which English is closely related to German but more distantly related to Russian). It's true that the former use of genetic is much commoner, but, the OED tells us, the latter (linguistic) use is very well established and indeed dates back to 1860, just one year after Darwin had first used it in what's now its commonest sense and 29 years after Carlyle had first used it in the race-irrelevant remark that Our theories and genetic Histories of Poetry should henceforth cease.
And yes of course African Americans routinely produce perfect English, Standard English, and perfect Standard English. -- Hoary 23:39, 13 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]


see Genetic (linguistics). --86.137.156.17 (talk) 14:13, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]