Greetings from the land of wild winters! We've been enjoying (enduring?)
the effects of the jetstream's current spasm, which has meant a day or two
of temperatures in the upper 70s -- in January! -- then storms, then a day
or two of temperatures at zero or below, then upper 70s, then storms, then
zero or below, and so on ad infinitum. I am not complaining; we could be in
North Dakota, or Iowa, or California, with *real* problems. But it does
make for challenges, especially when gardens and greenhouses are part of
one's life. I am warily waiting to see what sort of spring and summer are
ahead. Moving right along...

1. My thanks to all of you who registered for our first L&SF Online
Conference. I was delighted at the turnout, and looking forward to the
experience. However, I have to tell you that we won't be having the
conference after all, because although lots of people registered to
participate *nobody* submitted a paper! I was amazed; I had been a little
worried about how I'd be able to deal with the huge stack of submissions I
had assumed would be coming in. The idea that no one would send a paper
never crossed my mind. This is why you do trial runs -- to find out this
sort of thing. Now what I have to find out is: Did this happen because
nobody wants online conferences for the L&SF Network, or did it happen
because I had so vague a conference topic, or did it happen because each
and every one of you is excessively modest, or did it happen for some other
reason entirely? Any input you can offer will be welcome, needless to say
-- and I really am sorry to have to cancel. However, one advantage of
online conferences is that our organization had not booked a hotel, our
members had not made airline and kennel reservations, and so on.

2. I had a kind and concerned letter telling me to get some rest, from a
member who was alarmed over the number and degree of typographical errors
in Issue 16:3. I'm sorry, again!  In this case, however, there were hot and
cold running intersynergistic crises all around the time when we got the
issue out, including having our copier in the repair shop and being forced
to farm out work we ordinarily do in-house; what's amazing is that 16:3 got
done at all. Thank goodness it did go out to you, however late and however
slapdash. (I did proofread; I really did; my word on it.) I will make every
effort to be more cautious and meticulous next time.

3. My upcoming travel schedule, in brief: Tulsa sf convention, March 21-23;
keynote address at Eastern Illinois University (about 50 miles south of
Urbana), March 25; book tour for John Wiley & Sons, May 11-21, for St.
Louis, Chicago, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Columbus OH;
psychoneuroimmunology seminar in St. Louis, June 6; Springdale AR sf
convention, August 2-3. If you want details on any of these dates, let me
know. I'm cutting travel to the bone this year (it may not look that way,
but I assure you that I am) because the rest of my schedule is so
crowded....

4. Now, to Ebonics. I've been doing this newsletter since 1980, and I have
never before had so many letters from so many people asking for my input;
apparently Ebonics really has "legs." In the March/April print issue I'll
do my best to respond in detail; for this bulletin I am just going to hit
the high (or low, as you like) spots.

a.        The first thing I have to say is that the inner-city kids have
excellent excuses for *their* ignorance about language and grammar and
linguistics; the bevy of adults pontificating in the media about the
Ebonics flap have none. I'm more than willing to admit that the whole thing
is the fault, in great measure, of the linguists; by and large, they have
thrown up their hands in despair and fled the field, leaving the messes to
fester. That's true. And I don't expect academics and pundits in other
fields and disciplines to be able to explain binding theory or regressive
implosive bifurcated velar fricatives or anything of that kind. But the
degree of ignorance that has been demonstrated about the simplest and most
basic facts -- and the arrogance with which it has been set forth -- is
simply unacceptable. I am disgusted.

b.      Black English, under any of its names, is in fact a
well-established and much-studied dialect of English. We used textbooks on
Black English when I was professoring in the early 70s; it's not news.
There are systematic differences between BE and the mythical Standard
English, and some of the differences do occur in African languages (and
other non-African ones). It has been well known for decades that the
variety of BE that is used in our inner cities, especially in economically
blighted areas, is steadily moving farther and farther away from the
mythical Standard. In 1972 or thereabouts I routinely provided my
BE-speaking students with a set of rewrite rules that allowed them to
convert BE to SE for their written work; their grades went up immediately.
None of this is new, in any way.

c.      What is called "Standard English" (meaning Standard American
Mainstream English) does not exist in speech at all -- nobody speaks
Standard English. Standard English is a written variety of English, about
which there is *rough* -- and only rough -- agreement. It is also used for
reading aloud and for performance, but becomes less "standard" in those
circumstances because the readers'/performers' own dialects interfere with
its standardness while in use. Sometime in the 70s I submitted to College
English (English prof academic journal) an actual attempt at a systematic
description of the characteristics of SE, in the same format a linguist
would use to describe the grammar of any other language or dialect; the
editors themselves could not come to any consensus on my description, and
it was therefore rejected.

d.      Everybody speaks some dialect, and all of those dialects are
nonstandard. Which nonstandard dialects are looked down upon and which are
admired is a matter not of logic but of fashion. Presidents Truman,
Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter all spoke nonstandard English (four different
varieties); President Clinton's dialect is nonstandard, even when he is
"performing" with roughly standard syntax. Ozark English, Navajo English,
Black English -- all are nonstandard. The problem is that people who ought
to know better equate "nonstandard" with "substandard," for starters.
(There are no "substandard" dialects, by definition; if something were
substandard it could not be called a dialect.) Then they go on and compound
their error by using the words "wrong, error, mistake" to refer to the
dialect differences; since those words in English are also used to refer to
morality, a huge semantic mess is created. When you tell kids that the way
they talk is "wrong," you put them in a bind; they have to go home and obey
and respect all the adults around them, who also talk "wrong." There is a
huge lexical gap in English, where the word that means "grammatical or
factual error" ought to go; linguists try to substitute "inappropriate" or
"unacceptable," but those words immediately become semantically
contaminated and are understood once again as having something to do with
immorality.

e.      Finally.... There is an enormous testing and publishing and
"remedial" industry, the existence of which depends on maintaining all the
myths about Standard English,  the myths about differences from the
mythical Standard being "wrong," and so on. Getting rid of it would be a
task roughly equivalent to getting rid of the defense industry.

        There you are. I have tried to be fair and accurate, and am willing
to discuss this further if you like. It would be fair and accurate to say
that Standard American Mainstream English is, itself, science fiction.

        Best wishes,

        Suzette