Justice Department Seeks Ebonics Experts

In addition to helping decipher their Lil Wayne albums, the Justice Department is seeking Ebonics experts to help monitor, translate and transcribe wire tapped conversations. The DEA wants to fill nine full time positions. From the article: "A maximum of nine Ebonics experts will work with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta field division, where the linguists, after obtaining a 'DEA Sensitive' security clearance, will help investigators decipher the results of 'telephonic monitoring of court ordered nonconsensual intercepts, consensual listening devices, and other media.'”

Comments

Not enough mod points...

[strokerace]

There aren't enough mod points in the universe to mod down all the trolls that are going to be posting on this topic.

Couldn't help it...

[John Pfeiffer]

ENGLISH, motherfucker. DO YOU SPEAK IT?

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

It says said group does not want to be assimilated and would instead prefer retaining certain unique cultural and linguistic elements.

Re:That's not the professional term

[dkleinsc]

So-called "Standard English" and AAVE are mutually comprehensible languages, and always have been. Even in Airplane!, where they're deliberately exaggerating the differences for comic effect, you can understand the meaning of "My momma no raise no dummies, I dug her rap!" perfectly well.

Another way of thinking about it: which is easier for your average Standard English speaker to understand: AAVE or a cell phone contract?

Re:That's not the professional term

[hsthompson69]

AFAIK, this kind of thing happens all over the place. Pidgin in Hawaii, Creole in Louisiana...most localities have slang, dialects and accents that can be terribly confusing for outsiders. I'd bet even with the "African-American Vernacular English" you've got slang variations between regions.

Part of the problem here is that speaking proper english is often seen as "selling out", and any attempts to crawl out of poverty or to get educated are harshly treated by peers. With groups that consider their suffering a badge of pride, and dissuade others from escaping the cycles of poverty and violence often associated with those groups, it's really difficult to make any headway. It may not be politically correct to mention, but a lot of the damage done in impoverished communities is self inflicted.

Translation:

[twoallbeefpatties]

In other words, we have a dialect of English that is generally spoken in the inner-city areas that have a predominance of crime, and we need someone who understands this dialect to help us make sure that we understand what's being talked about when we intercept criminals speaking that way. You dig?

Re:That's not the professional term

[hsthompson69]

I understand the semantic argument you're making, using the term "dialect of power" instead of "proper" in order to symmetrically oppose any positive connotations of "proper", but this kind of argument is the kind of intellectualism that actually keeps people from escaping the poverty and violence of "non-power" subcultures.

Both have their own (ofttimes overlapping) rules of grammar and vocabulary.

I would submit that Standard American English has clearly codified rules, and AAVE has merely observations of the language in action, at best. Since AAVE is something that is taught without little in the way of literacy (that is to say, it is a predominantly oral tradition), it is difficult to equate it to something like Standard American English.

There is nothing more "proper" or "correct" about Standard American English

But there is something much more useful about Standard American English - it is the key to education, employment, and as you so cleverly put it, "power". Now perhaps the escape of poverty is not "proper" or "correct", and I accept your critique of my use of the term "proper" - but surely you must agree that learning Standard American English is beneficial on a myriad number of levels, and those subcultures that denigrate learning it are inflicting harm upon themselves.

Re:That's not the professional term

[shoehornjob]

It's incredibly hypocritical to claim that YOU have any more heritage or culture than African Americans

This has nothing to do with heritage or culture. Everyone should feel free to keep their cultural identity. In my opinion that's one of the things that makes America great. But when you move to another country to live you should make some attempt to learn to speak the language.