Increase for All

Lupyan made an important point in the conclusion of his paper: “Language is really important in eliciting the representation of goal states, and just generally important in human cognition.” We use language to navigate our world. It is the lens with which we approach and process the things that happen in our lives, and it is the tool by which we communicate with those who live with us. And although we sometimes claim to be creatures of abstraction, in many ways we as humans focus on idealized forms of specific ideas (for example, whatever we consider to be a “good” triangle) and not on the general case/an image dissociated from form.

When bringing AAVE into an understanding of our disposition as humans to “abstract” really by fixating on symbols we consider good, Rickford’s argument feels more weighty. Americans in general when considering language have often considered more “standard” vernaculars to be “better”, in some of the same ways people consider certain triangles to be better than others, even without empirical reasoning. 

Rickford points out that it had been shown that AAVE had structure (and was not just a nonsensical collection of free-variants) before AAVE itself was respected and taken in as a full and good language. African Americans, he further claims, have not been welcomed well into the linguistics domain. The results have been: “the problems of under-representation and misrepresentation ... , as well as linguists' failure to acknowledge these problems, can be traced to the struc- turalist separation of the study of form from content or context"

This generally results in a misunderstanding of African American communities, and a belief of their language inferiority (it isn’t the standard American norm, and thus is not good). I am reminded of a friend with whom I discussed Jamaican Pigeon. A movement erupted where people began to hold more pride in the tongue, acknowledging that it is a beautiful language with form and structure and important function and cultural significance. 

Increased involvement and diversity in fields can help ameliorate these problems of prejudice. When people with different norms/base abstractions are brought into discussions, they might be more quick to point out the base assumptions groups or fields are making, and refute them/mend them in ways that are helpful and beneficial to entire communities. 

Increasing diversity in the field of technology serves a similar sort of function- increasing involvement from different communities can empower those communities to fix the problems they face, and serves to improve the livelihood of all.