Date: Sun, 19 Jan 1997 05:58:05 -0100 (GMT) From: Celso Alvarez Caccamo Subject: Logic, competence, language, and social domination Sender: owner-linganth@cc.rochester.edu X-Sender: lxalvarz@unico To: linganth@cc.rochester.edu MIME-version: 1.0 Precedence: bulk To me, what this debate on competence, logic, language, cognitive abilities and race shows is, simply, the logic of social domination and the prevalence of scientific discourse over human ethics and rationality. To make the self-evident point that African-Americans (or any other social group per se) don't lack any cognitive or logical ability, technical arguments are thrown around as if the power of science, then, were a strong enough excuse for people to be able to dismantle their unwanted prejudices without too much self-questioning.

For example, in support of Labov's reasoning of the logicity of AAE double negative constructions, it has been argued, "Well, a well-cultivated language like Spanish has double negatives! And Spanish-speakers don't seem illogical". And so on. But, what if (counterfactually :-) AAE were the only linguistic variety on the face of the earth with double negatives? What if the connections between AAE and creoles hadn't been established? What if AAE were the totally chaotic form of speech of an underprivileged group of intruders in white society, the remnants of a painful history which whites would like to erase? What if the intricate order of AAE were such, and subject to such a large number of one-case rules, exceptions, and singularities that AAE were not amenable to easy cross-linguistic comparison, legitimation, strategies for empowerment?

If I were an African-American who had AAE as my native dialect, or if I did the hypocritical exercise of trying to understand how it feels to be such a person, perhaps I would be thinking, "What The Hell are all these people talking about???". But I'm white, and many of you are, too, so please do this very simply exercise: Substitute your language name for every instance of "AAE" or "BEV" found in this debate, and substitute your ethnic/whatever name for every instance of "Blacks", "African-Americans", or what-have-you which appeared in this debate. For example:

"It has been found that French is not an illogical language, that French-speakers are not cognitively deficient, and that, if given the right opportunities, French-speakers may develop the necessary communicative skills to be socially successful".

I would be surprised if most of you wouldn't react at these statements by thinking, "WHAT THE HELL is this person talking about??"

I assume everyone who has access to a computer, knows how to use it, and subscribes and contributes to a list like this one to be aware, at least at some point in their life, of this basic fact: he or she is mostly a self-conscious arrangement of particles of matter. It is by virtue of chance and History that their atoms have a given identity and appearance. The question is not whether the logic and order of AAE is reductible to technical scrutiny and technical legitimation. The real question is, why isn't Labov the black speaker of a language whose logic and order he described?

"Science" (in our case, technical discourse on language) may be right or wrong, as it is subject to historical contingencies. But, no matter how hard we try, we can't escape human rationality.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Celso Alvarez-Caccamo Tel. 34-81-130457, ext. 1888
Depto. de Linguistica Geral FAX 34-81-132459
e Teoria da Literatura e-mail: lxalvarz@udc.es
Universidade da Corunha http://www.udc.es/dep/lx/cac
15007 A Corunha, Galiza (Espanha)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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