Posted: December 20th, 2021

reading Resonse 3

Order Description
paper instruction and myth 13 later.
Reading Responses Instructions
Please follow the rubric below for the reading response.
Note: you can quotes from the text if needed to provide evidence to support arguments and observations, but make sure to write the authors name and the page number next to the quotes in MLA format. The references also should be in MLA format.
Reading response
Read myths 13 in Bauer and Trudgill (1998) (eds.) and submit a reading response paper (750 -1000 words). Your reading response should include a brief summary and your reactions for the myth. Again, please make sure to cite everything properly and follow rubric. Please, I would also like to focus on the reactions. I dont want any other references.

lAnguage Myths

and James Milroy and Lesley Milroy, Authority in Language (London:
Routledge, 1985). For a humorous critique ofsome common prescrip
tions see Patricia O’Conner, Woe is I: the grammarphobe’sguide to
better English in plain English (New York: Grosset/Putnam, 1996).
Mental grammars are discussed by Steven Pinker,’ The Language
Instinct (London: Penguin, 1994) and for a standard descriptive gram
mar of English see Sidney Greenbaum, The Oxford English Grammar
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

MYTH 13′

Black Children are Verbally Deprived
Walt Wolfram

Eloquent orators seem to abound in African-American culture. At
religious meetings, political rallies and other social gatherings, speakers
demonstrate dynamic, effectual discourse. From the powerful speeches
of historic figures such as Frederick Douglass, through William Du
Bois, Martin Luther King, Barbara Jordan and Jessie Jackson in the
United States – and beyond North America to renowned African
orators such as Kwame Nkrumah, Odumegwu Ojukwu and Des~
mond Tutu, this oratorical tradition is regularly practiced and highly
valued. Even political and social opponents of these well-known black
orators begrudgingly concede the power and utility of their speaking
skills.
Quite clearly, verbal art is an integral, pervasive and highly valued
component of black culture – on both a public and a personal level.
Its influence on popular culture, through rappers, hip-hop culture
and slang expressions is transparent, but it is more than that. Its roots
are planted deep within the oral tradition of the African diaspora,
and its branches extend to practically every sphere of communicative
activity within black culture.
Given such an extensive and widely recognized oral tradition, it is
indeed ironic to find young African-American children described in
the educational literature as ‘verbally deprived’, ‘language impover
ished’ or ‘linguistically retarded’. Can these be children from the same
. culture we described above If so, how can such contrasting pictures
oflanguage competence arise And how do we reconcile the conflicting
portraits of verbal richness and linguistic poverty If nothing else,
the lesson that emerges from the myth of African-American verbal
deprivation shows how far from reality perceptions oflanguage ability
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103

Language Myths

Black Children are Verbally Deprived

may wander. Or how much distortion can appear in a language
portrait based on the angle of the observer.
As a backdrop for our discussion, we must admit that there are
differences in varieties ofEnglish which may sometimes correlate with
ethnicity. Some African-Americans simply do not sound the same
as Anglo-Americans when they speak. When tape-recorded speech
samples ofworking-class African-American and working-class Anglo
American are played, listeners identify with reasonable accuracy
whether the speakers are black or white (about 80 per cent of the time
in most listener tests based on relatively brief passages of natural
speech).
The basis for these language differences is historically, socially and
linguistically very natural and understandable. When people from
different cultures come together, the languages reflecting these cultures
mix and adapt. And when groups are segregated, isolated and excluded,
they maintain and develop in different ways, thus enhancing language
differences. So far so good – as over 6,000 world languages and
multitudinous dialects of each of these distinct languages attest. But
when different cultural groups are drastically unequal in their social
and interactional relationships – and especially when one group has
been dehumanized in comparison with the other – the environment
for cultivating myths about these differences is fertile. The end result
of these myths is to provide a justification for the differential power
relations between the groups.
Myths about the language of African-Americans have, of course”
changed as the perspective on the status ofblack Americans has shifted
historically, but there is a common, unifying theme in the mythology,
namely, the linguistic inferiority principle. According to this principle,
the speech of a socially subordinate group will always be interpreted
as inadequate by comparison with the socially dominant group. Expla
nations may vary, but the principle will be constant. Thus, when
African-American speech is compared with the middle-class, Anglo
American norm, it will be considered linguistically deficient, although
the explanations for the deficiency may vary.
In the days of slavery, when blacks were institutionally ascribed a
status that was less than human, their speech was simply viewed as

the communicative gibberish of a people inherently incapable of
imitating the language of the ruling European-American classes. If a
group of people is considered genetically deficient, what else is to be
expected from their language In various shapes and forms, the myth
of genetic inferiority has persisted to some extent even in present-day
society. Thus, there are still occasional references to the possible
correlation of anatomical differences with racial differences, a throw
back to the genetic basis for language differences among blacks and
whites.
Myths correlating racial with linguistic differences are fairly easy
to debunk logically and empirically. Ifrace were truly a factor account
ing for a dialect difference, then how would we explain the fact that
African-Americans raised in an exclusively Anglo-American environ
ment will sound indistinguishable from those of the surrounding
speech community and vice versa There is indisputable evidence
from listener identification judgments that speakers will be identified
with the language of their socialized community, not their racial
classification.
Anatomically based explanations, for example, those based on lip
size, are also easy to reject. For example, there is great diversity in lip
size within both the white and black communities, yet no independent
correlation with lip size and speech differences exists. White folks
who have larger lips don’t necessarily sound black, and blacks with
smaller lips don’t necessarily sound white. Besides, there is no indi
cation from the world’s races that lip size correlates in any way with
the choice of particular sounds in a language.
But entrenched myths about la.nguage inadequacy are like a jack-in
the-box that keeps springing back up. So the exposure of one line of
reasoning as objectively unjustified and illogical doesn’t mean that
linguistic equality will be attained. If the bottom-line belief is that
one cultural group – and by extension, its language – is inferior to
. another, then another line of reasoning will simply replace the old
one. Therefore, when nature is ruled out as a possible explanation for
the distinctiveness of African-American speech, nurture may rise to
the interpretive occasion. Genetically based myths have not died out

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Language Myths

completely in popular culture, but they have largely been supplanted
by myths related to the social environment.
In some respects, the current set of myths tied to nurture is a more
serious threat to the linguistic integrity of African-American speech
than those based on nature, because they can be camouflaged in
fashionable social and educational concern. In the process, the expla
nations for linguistic inferiority don’t seem so blatantly racist as
their precursors founded in genetic inferiority. But the semblance of
respectability can actually present a more imposing obstacle to a valid
understanding of black speech than conspicuously racist statements
about anatomical differences accounting for linguistic differences.
In order for a myth to be nurtured in an increasingly educated
society, it should be rooted in ‘objective fact’ and have a common-sense
appeal. The verbal deprivation myth has done this by relying on the
results of standardized tests and other formal assessment measures as
‘the facts’, then turning to conditions in the social environment to
explain them. For example, the results ofstandardized language testing
support the conclusion that ‘disadvantaged children of almost every
kind are typically one or two years retarded in language development’
(Carl Bereiter, p. 196). The problem with the facts, however, is that
they provide a distorted picture. The norms used as the basis for
testing the speakers were derived from standard-English-speaking,
middle-class Anglo children who speak a dialect different from their
working-class cohorts. Therefore, the tests simply demonstrate a dia
lect difference between middle-class, standard dialects of English and
other dialects.
No language expert would deny that African-American children
who speak a variety of English different from the standard English
norms used in the measuring instruments will s~ore differently from
– and lower than – those children who speak the language variety
used as the basis for norming the test. A Canadian French child taking
a test normed on Parisian French or a Spanish-speaking’ South
American child taking a Spanish test normed on Castilian Spanish
spoken in Spain would suffer a similar fate in their ‘objective’ test
scores. If standard dialect speakers were given a test using normative,
uniquely African-American language structures, they would suffer a
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Black Children are Verbally Deprived

comparable fate. Of course, when one group is economically and
socially dominant over another, differences will always be interpreted
in a way that supports the asymmetricalsocio-economic, socio
political and socio-educational status quo. In such a comparative
scenario, it is easy to see how cultural and language differences will
be interpreted as deficits. So it is just a matter ofexplaining why these
deficits exist. The seeds of language deprivation are firmly planted
through ‘facts’; now all that is needed is an explanation that will allow
the principle of linguistic inferiority to be nurtured properly.
Interpretative explanations that sustain the myth ofthe linguistically
deprived black child appeal to the process of language learning, the
nature oflanguage patterning and the situations used to demonstrate
language capability. With respect to language learning, models of
parenting in general and verbal interaction between caretakers and
children in particular are cited as support for the alleged verbal
deprivation ofAfrican-American children. Some middle-class parents
take a fairly proactive, although highly selective role in teaching young
children new words and directly modeling speech; By the same token,
some working-class parents may not be as proactive in directly
modeling language in this way. Looking at this situation, educational
psychologists have maintained that working-class black children do
not get adequate verbal stimulation from their caretakers by compari
son with their middle-class cohorts and, therefore, they end up
language-handicapped.
At ‘first glance, this line ofreasoning seems sensible – if one assumes
that parents and caretakers must playa proactive’ role for language
acquisition to take place. But as it turns out, this i~ a totally erroneous
assumption. There is absolutely no basis for maintaining that language
acquisition comes through direct parental initiative; in fact, there is
a lot of evidence against it. The capacity for language is a unique
attribute of the human mind, and there is overwhelming evidence
. that all that is needed for normal language development to take place
is exposure to a social environment where people use language to
interact meaningfully. Anyone who has ever been. in a working-class
black home knows that verbal interaction is profuse and productive.
Children interact with each other and adults interact with each other
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LAnguage Myths

and with the children. Certainly, there is extensive verbal interaction
to provide models for language acquisition, and any claim to the
contrary would be totally absurd.
There are a number of different modeis for interaction in the
acquisition of normal language. Surveys of language socialization
across the world’s cultures indicate that parent-child, adult care
taker”‘:’child, and older sibling- and peer-child interactions all work
effectively in modeling the language necessary for acquisition. Regard
less ofthe model, all children acquiring language have a basic language
system by the age of five or six, with minor refinements taking place
for another five or six years. In fact, surveys of language socialization
models in languages around the world indicate that the parent-child
interaction model is a minority one. But that’s not the essential point;
the important fact is that there are different social interactional models
for providing the necessary ,input for the stimulation of normal
language learning. A parent’s proactive role in teaching language may
make the parent feel involved and responsible, but it has little to do
with the ultimate acquisition of normal language. This is fortunate;
if it were not so, the vast majority of the world’s languages would
never be acquired adequately.
The myth of language deprivation is also supported by a mistaken
understanding about language patterning. There is a popular percep
tion that standard dialects have regular patterns – the ‘rules’ of
language – and that structures that differ from these rules violate
the basic patterns of language. From this perspective, non-standard
varieties involve violations of the standard dialect but no rules of their
own. This is the grammaticality myth, which holds that any structure
not in conformity with standard English norms is designated ‘ungram
matical’. This myth lumps together cases of true ungrammaticality,
where the basic patterns for forming sentences in a language are
indeed violated, and social judgments about differently patterned
language forms.
For example, an English speaker uttering a sentence such as dog
the barks would violate a basic sequencing rule of English grammar
in which articles regularly come before nouns rather than after them
– a case oftrue ungrammaticality for English. However, the grammati
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Black Children ‘are Verbidly Deprived

cality myth holds that sentences such’ as They be talking all the time,
They didn’t do nothing to nobody about nothing, and She nice would
be considered as cases of ungrammatical language as well. While these
sentences may certainly be socially disfavored, they are rigorously
patterned. For example, the use of be in sentences such as They be
talking all the time or Sometimes my ears be itching uniquely marks a
‘habitual activity’ as opposed to a single-point activity in African
Ainerican Vernacular English. It is rigorously constrained in its pat
terning – different from standard English but every bit as patterned
as any comparable structure in the standard variety. Observations of
speakers’ use and tests ofpreferences for sentences with be indicate that
speakers of African-American Vernacular English will systematically
select be for habitual contexts such as Sometimes they be doing it but
not for single-time contexts such as They be doing it right now~
UnfortUnately, following the grammaticality myth, this regular pat
terning is not even considered to be a possibility. Irlstead, social
acceptability has become equated with linguistic patterning; thus, a
social judgment is translated into a misguided notion of language
organization. No one is saying that this structure should be considered
standard English – just that its linguistic integrity stands apart from
its ,social assessment.
Some language differences may even be interpreted in terms of
logic. Thus, the use of multiple negatives such as They didn’t do
nothing, which is used in African-American Vernacular English as in
many other vernacular varieties of English, may be interpreted as an
indication of a flawed logic system – the logicalitY myth. In a fanciful
appeal to formal logical operations in which negatives can cancel
each other under certain conditions, it is sometimes maintained that
speakers who use multiple negatives lapse into illogical language use.
But formal, syllogistic reasoning is quite different from the gram
matical manifestations of basic language propositions, including
‘negation, where there are varied linguistic manifestations of basic
propositions. In fact, many languages regularly:and exclusiVely use
multiple negation in certain types of constructions. Compare, ‘for
example, the French sentence Ie ne sais rien ‘I don’t know nothing,’
the Spanish sentence No hace nada ‘S/he isn’t doing nothing,’ or even
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Language Myths

older English constructions such as There was no man nowhere so
virtuous, where multiple negatives were the standard norm. Unless
one is prepared to say that French, Spanish, the English of respected
authors like Chaucer and many other languages of the world are
innately illogical in their organization, we must concede that appealing
to logic in support of the deficiency of African-American Vernacular
English is, somewhat ironically, a quite illogical line ofreasoning itself.
Similarly, it has been argued that verbless sentences such as She
nice or The dog brown may be indicative of a cognitive breakdown in
denoting relationships ofidentity. But as it turns out, the juxtaposition
of items in these constructions is a simple variant for linking predicate
constructions, including predicate adjectives such as She nice or loca
tion constructions such as She in the house. Languages like Russian,
Thai and many others use such constructions, since the verb in these
kinds of construction turns out to be redundant. Appeals to logic
may have a very strong common-sense appeal, but the logic of these
appeals for language organization is fatally flawed.
Finally, we should say something about the perceptions of the
‘nonverbal’ African-American child. This classification has been made
bysome educators who observed that some African-American children
may say little or nothing when spoken to by adults under certain
kinds of conditions. The typical situation on which these conclusions
are based involves an adult attempting to elicit conversation in what
seems – at least for the adult – to be a relatively innocuous and
non-threatening situation. But consider the typical scenario in which
a friendly adult sits across from a child in an institutional setting and
asks the child simply to ‘tell me everything you can about the fire
engine on the table.’ The situation is laden with values about language
use, including the value of verbosity (the more you speak the better),
obvious information (there is value in describing objects that the
questioner already knows about) and consequences for providing
information (what a child tells will not be held against the child), to
say nothing of the asymmetrical power relations between the adult
stranger and child in a relatively alien, institutional setting. The same
child who says virtually nothing about the fire engine in this social
situation may, in fact, be highly animated and verbal when playing
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Black Children are Verbally Deprived

with the fire engine in her home on the floor with her playmates. The
appearance of nonverbalness is just that – an appearance created by
the artificial testing conditions under which language is sometimes
collected for the purposes of assessment. Given the actual value of
– verbal presentation and repartee as discussed earlier, the myth of the
nonverbal black child is perhaps the most ironic twist of all in the
assessment of African-Americans’ language ability.
In challenging the myth of black language deprivation, I am not
trying to say that the language ofthe home and community is appropri
ate for the particularized and socialized uses of language in education
and other kinds of public institutions. There is an academic register
necessary for carrying out certain kinds of educational routines, just
as there is a language register for carrying out certain kinds of legal
routines. In fact, there are lots of different situations and domains for
language that call for specialized language uses, and our participation
in particular institutions in society necessitates that we be familiar
with the registers associated with them. But these specialized uses of
language have nothing to do with basic language capability.
In some respects, no myth about African-Americans seems more
absurd than the myth ofverbal deprivation. All the evidence indicates
that black culture is a highly verbal culture which values the develop
ment ofverbal skills. Unfortunately, relationships ofsocial and political
inequality can lead to the dismissal of even the most obvious reality in
order to mold language perceptions in conformity with the inferiority
principle.. Rather than being labeled as verbally deprived, African
Americans ought to be thanked for contributing to daily conversation
with words, phrases and other manners of speaking that enrich our
language and our lives.

Sources and further reading
The quote on language disadvantage is taken from Carl Bereiter,
‘Academic instruction and preschool children’, in Richard Corbin and
Muriel Crosby, Language Programs for the Disadvantaged (Champaign,
IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1965). Some of the
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Language Myths
contributions ofAfrican-Americans to American speech through vari
ous phrases are cited in Geneva Smitherman, Black Talk: Words and
Phrases from the Hood to the Amen Corner (Middleborough, MA: The
Country Press, 1995). William Labov’s ‘The logic of non-standard
English’, in Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English
Vernacular (Philadelphia, PA: The University of Pennsylvania Press,
1972) remains a classic article attacking the language deprivation myth.

MYTH 14

Double Negatives are Illogical
Jenny Cheshire

Nothing shows why
At this unique distance from isolation,
It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.
-Philip Larkin, ‘Talking in Bed’
An’ when they be saying ifyou good, you goin’ t’heaven, tha’s bullshit,
’cause you ain’t goin’ to no heaven, ’cause there ain’t no heaven for you
to go to. -fifteen-year-old black youth from Harlem
You won’t get nothing for dinner ifyou don’t come in and clear up your
mess. -adult woman from Hackney, East London ‘
It never occurred to me to doubt that your work would not advance our
common object in the highest degree. -Charles Darwin
There are three types of double negative here, each of which is from
time to time condemned as illogical. Fowler’s Guide to Good Usage
claims that the type illustrated by Darwin’s sentence is a ‘fuzzy error’
that occurs when people don’t know exactly how to handle negatives.
George Orwell said that the first kind (not plus a negative adjective)
should be ‘laughed out of existence’. But it is the second kind, where
there is a negative verb (ain’t and won’t in the examples here) and a
negative word such as no, nothing or no one, that arouses the strongest
feelings. It was one of the top ten complaints sent in 1986 to the BBC
Radio 4 series English Now after listeners had been inyited to nominate
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