If All Dialects Are Rule Bound, Are They All Equal?
Agree or disagree?
The Value of Admitting What We Don’t Know – Commentary – The Chronicle of Higher Educationhttp://chronicle.com/article/The-Value-of-Admitting-What-We/147983/All dialects are equal linguistically, in that they are regular, rule-governed, and just as effective at communicating as is standard English. They are not, however, all equal socially. Coming from a position of privilege, it was indeed easy for me to toss off such a scenario of equal acceptance. Carla reminded me of the other side of the argument, that the field of linguistics was not going to change the “privileging” of the standard, and that those who choose to fight that fight without standard English as the medium, or at least as backup, are at risk, educationally and economically.
