You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on
Reading Passage 3 below.
Ebonics
A. Ebonics – also known by a host of other names such as African American
Vemocular English, Black English, Black Vernacular, and so on — is an
African-American language that has its roots in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, as
African captives devised the means to communicate with each other and with their
captors. In the South of the United States, these Pan-African languages co-mingled
with Standard English and the Southern dialect. Many uniquely African American
components have arisen over the last two centuries, and all of these influences have
forged what is now known as Ebonics.
B. In 1996, debates around the nature of “Ebonics’’ in the United States came to
ahead. That year, the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) in California enacted
Resolution 597-003, which officially recognized that African-American students “as
part of their culture and history as African people possess and utilize a language”.
Alternatively referred to as Ebonics (literally “black sounds”), African Communication
Behaviours, and African Language Systems, this language was declared to be
“genetically-based” rather than a dialect of Standard English.
C. Within the profession of language research and pedagogy, a strong consensus
formed behind the OUSD’s decision to recognise Ebonics. Linguistics professor John
Rickford noted that Ebonics was not simply characterised by erroneous grammar
and large slang vocabulary, but that underlying this language was a structured form
and process of grammar and phonology that made English learning for Ebonics
speakers far more complex a task than simply dropping bad habits. English
teachers, Rickford counselled, must, therefore, accept and embrace these
complexities.
D. The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) concurred with Rickford, adding that
whether or not Ebonics should be defined as a dialect or a language does not matter
in terms of its “validity”. While linguists studying Ebonics typically restrain from
prescribing edicts in favour of tracking changes in form and style, the LSA did point
to the fact that speakers of Swedish and Norwegian can typically understand each
other while conversing in different “languages”, whereas Mandarin and Cantonese
speakers cannot understand each other’s “dialects” to conclude that spatial and
social tensions, rather than strict linguistic criteria, were the crucial factors in defining
these terms.
E. For many others, however, the OUSD’s decision was tantamount to endorsing
lazy, vulgar, and “broken” English — the equivalent, perhaps, of acknowledging
“text-speak” or Internet slang as a valid form of expression. Recognizing and
fostering the use of informal, culturally-specific spoken language, say those
detractors, traps users in a kind of linguistic ghetto in which they can interact with
other disenfranchised and excluded citizens, but cannot engage within the public
sphere in a meaningful way. Because of the dominance of Standard English in the
United States, Ebonics-only speakers are essentially unable to go to university and
work in high-valued professions, and they are unlikely to be electable to any kind of
public office (even in areas with a high density of black residents, those who lose
their Ebonics-tinged speech patterns fend to be more trusted).
F. Psychology professor Ladonna Lewis Rush has noted, however, that the OUSD’s
resolution did not promote Ebonics instruction as an alternative to Standard English
in an either-or approach but was intended to provide a better springboard for black
achievement in English education. The systematic devaluation of Ebonics in
American society parallels. Rush has argued, the devaluation of African-Americans
in general. While a demeaning attitude can lead to social exclusion, teachers are
suggested to think inductively and encourage Ebonics speakers to use and
collaborate their way of speaking while understanding that the language of the
workplace, and of academics, is Standard English. Nobel Prize-winning journalist
Toni Morrison has also found a reciprocal, mutually enriching use for both Ebonics
and Standard English. “There are certain ideas and ways of thinking I cannot say
without recourse to my [Ebonics, language … I know Standard English. I want to use
it to restore the other language, the lingua Franca.”
G. In the media, the Ebonics controversy has mostly been portrayed as a revival of
black-versus-white confrontation — this time over linguistic differences — but
journalist Joan Walsh thinks there are bask elements inherent in the dispute that
people do not want to openly discuss. She considers that there is increasing
resentment by black parents and teachers who see enormous amounts of federal
and state support going into Asian and Latino bilingual programmes. As immigration
continues to increase, a greater proportion of the school budget is going into these
programmes. The question has to be raised: why should immigrant children get
English-language assistance as well as reinforcement of their own language and
culture while native-born African-Americans get no such resources? Walsh maintains
inner-city black children are more isolated than in the past and have less social
interaction with those fluent in Standard English. For this reason, they need help by
trained teachers to translate the native tongue they hear at home into the English of
the classroom.
H. Ebonics should be treated as a black contribution to culture in the way that jazz
and rock-and-roll have been welcomed — the new vocabulary and imagery has
added to the American language rather than devalued it. In Walsh’s eyes, there has
always been “white mistrust of how black people handle their business” but “in the
public realm, white disdain yields block intransigence more reliably than ‘P comes
before e’”.
