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How You Sound?
By Avery | February 6, 2008
Generally speaking, I’m about as much of a linguistic aprescriptivist as there can be. I generally try to focus more on the idea than the specific words, because in most cases, the idea is where the real action is. Me, I’d rather understand what the person who’s cussin is tryin to say than get caught up on the fact that he cussed. Having said that, I can’t front like I don’t play semantics games. I do it all the time; dependin on who you ask, I do it too much. All that’s just to say that it was with mild interest that I read Walter Williams’ piece, Silly Talk.
I ain’t gon’ lie, I, too, get mildly peeved when I people use reflexive pronouns incorrectly “He went to the store with myself,” or when I hear somebody say “…and I” when it should be “…and me.” But not for the reasons Professor Williams outlines. With me, it ain’t about the verbiage itself, per se, it’s that most people don’t recognize the fact that they’re using a nonstandard grammatical construction. Again, there would be no problem for me if those weren’t some of the same people (and same types of people) who raised such a stink about other types of nonstandard construction, like AAVE.
Even though he seems to take more umbrage to it than I do, I was pretty much on board with Professor Williams until he dropped this:
I wonder whether it’s just me, or is anyone else bothered by silly talk? It might be that I’m getting old and out of touch, or it might be that I’m suffering from having received my education before it became fashionable for white people to like black people and nonsense was unacceptable.
“Fashionable for white people to talk like black people?” Really? There’s a part of me that wants to let that line ride, but I can’t. With the construction he’s using, it seems to be equating the way Black people talk to silliness or nonsense. Given the examples he cites earlier, I don’t necessarily think he intends to disparage Black people, but it sure seems like he’s meaning to do that. But that kind of talk is, well, just silly.
Topics: Everwhatever, Language |