The two topics chosen for this week's papers initially confused me, but as I read further, I understood what linked them. Ironically, the point that I initially missed was that language is ultimately linked to everything. As Lupyan argues with triangles, conceptual meaning is very closely linked to context, which is brought about mainly through the language used.
The argument that a triangle and a three-sided polygon are in fact, represented in our minds as two different things, even though they are logically the same thing, is a strong argument to show that meaning is in fact based strongly on the exact syntax used to convey that meaning.
With this in mind, we can build on the hypothesis lupyan creates when discussing African American Vernacular English, like Rickford suggests.
If the exact language context can color our unconscious meaning so greatly, then it is possible that AAVE can and will have negative biases and prejudices in our society, which it should not rightfully have. It is strange that we have an inherent definition of some dialects and accents being "right" and others wrong, that we weigh the language used to convey the same meaning more than the meaning itself, just like triangle and three-sided-polygon are two incredibly different things for us.
I enjoyed the way that Rickford intends for his paper to be almost like a wake up call for the linguists in American academia, as all their research into AAVE has done precious little, and we must do much better to remove the inherent prejudice that exists when it comes to peoples accents and dialects. Just like in the case of the triangle, the symbolic meaning should be more important than our linguistic biases.
I like that you bring up the controversy behind dialect and question whether there exist negative biases toward dialects that deviate from "proper" English. It's interesting how differently we see various accents; for example, British accents are often deemed sexy, while most Asian accents are bothersome. I'd definitely be curious in investigating the social consequences of accents. Perhaps a person's accent plays just as much of a role in job hiring as one's last name on a resume.
ReplyDelete