On 6/30/20 12:18 PM, Jim F.Hilliard wrote:
On Tue, 30 Jun 2020, 17:36 Piper Thunstrom, <pathunstrom@gmail.com <mailto:pathunstrom@gmail.com>> wrote:
It specifically was chosen to avoid "lower class" usages and things like AAVE (though that term would not exist for decades after the movement reached a furor).
I mean, surely not only did it exclude "lower class" terms and AAVE (African American vernacular English, for the rest who don't do well with acronyms) it also excluded a number of dialects used by groups of all colours and backgrounds. I don't think I'd find any Australian words in there nor any Scottish ones, would I?
I don't see how standard English is a white supremacist construct. I see it as an intersection of most of the dialects around, as a means to optimize communication by following a common set of guidelines.
Can you elaborate on why you view this as being white supremacy?
I agree with this, and for one very good reason, old, staid, sooty and stuffy language has a very big advantage for communicating, and that is being what it is, it tends to change slowly and people are likely to be able to understand it. Local vernaculars, almost by definition change much more rapidly and aren't as wide spread, so it is much more likely that there are many terms and constructions in them will be not well understood (if understood at all) without having to do a lot of research, and even then you may need to figure out which meaning was meant. If your goal is to communicate, going to the old core is usually the best. -- Richard Damon