Hello all! A quick post, with some good news, taken from this article:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - [Nashville] Mayor Bill Purcell vetoed a measure Monday that would have made English the official language of Nashville, saying it was unconstitutional, unnecessary and mean-spirited.

“This ordinance does not reflect who we are in Nashville,” Purcell said.

The measure passed 23-14 last week by the Metro Council required all government documents to be in English, except when multilingual communications are required by federal rules or are needed “to protect or promote public health, safety or welfare.’

Opponents and supporters of the ordinance agreed it was largely a symbolic slap at illegal immigration that had no significant effect.

Purcell said his legal staff had advised him the bill violated the U.S. and state constitutions and would be costly to defend.

I can understand requesting people to know English for a service job, or if safety demands it. However, requiring a certain language background simply to vote, drive, or interact with the state is a rather roundabout way of saying that you don’t want non-English speakers in your state/town/country. It’s about damned time people recognized it for what it is, and it’s good to see the mayor judiciously smack down this particular batch of thinly veiled racism.

Link Spotlight

I’ve just posted another link to the sidebar, which will now display all links, rather than just the newest ones, and I wanted to give it some extra recognition. If you haven’t seen it, check out this video on the nature of form, content, and meaning on the internet. It’s really powerful, and quite interesting. More information can be found on the Kansas State University Center for Digital Ethonography Blog.

Greetings are really fascinating to Linguists, as they’re often culturally specific, quite colorful, and sometimes very elaborate.

For one of my classes, I (along with five other people and professor) am working with a speaker of Zarma, a language of Niger. The goal of the class is to study the language and create a working grammar, then focus in on one particular aspect of the language we find fascinating. Right now, we’re in the process of translating a narrative about the marriage rituals of the Zarma people, and we stumbled across an interesting little tidbit.

To start off this narrative, our professor offered the speaker a greeting in Zarma, fufu, which is roughly equivalent to our simple “Hi!”. The speaker responded with ba:n sami wo:la (the colons indicate long vowels, “baan samee woluh”). This is a much more complex phrase, translating down to something roughly like “God be praised, my health is without problems”, or, more succinctly, “I’m doing fine”. The speaker explained to us that the fufu, ba:n sami wo:la interaction is a normal way of carrying out a greeting in Zarma. After the Ba:n sami wo:la, he went straight into the narrative.

My first thought at that point (which I’m not proud to admit) was that it seemed a bit pretentious. “What would they care how you were doing, all they said was “Hi”", I thought to myself.

Then, I realized. English is no less pretentious, I’m just more used to our system. Generally, at least in my bit of the English speaking world, a greeting includes some variety of “How are you?/What’s up?” interaction. First, the first person puts out a “how are you?”, the second person gives a generic answer, then asks the first person the same question back, and the first person answers generically. Only once that’s out of the way can a conversation begin.

Perhaps what’s missing from the Zarma greeting, in my culturally biased eyes, is the return question. It’s not “Hi”, “I’m healthy, are you?”, “I am too”. It doesn’t seem, based on the simple interaction, that the second participant actually cares about the first person.

The trouble with that point of view is that English speakers don’t actually care how you’re doing or what’s up, either. Take, for example, this made-up interaction:

(Fred walks into a gas station and goes to pay the attendant)
FRED: Hey
SHOPKEEPER: Hi, How are you today?
FRED: Well, actually, my prostate’s been acting up, so it’s an hour and a half of pain any time I have to go to the bathroom. Oh, and my dog died last week. So yeah, I’m having a tough time of it. How about you?
SHOPKEEPER: (extended pause) …I’m good
…

If you’re like me, reading that interaction likely caused at least a little bit of a cringe. It’s an unspoken rule that in general, when somebody asks you how you’re doing (or what’s up), they really, genuinely, don’t care. They want to finish the greeting and get on with life. You’re allowed a “Fine”, an “OK”, sometimes “Great!”, and maybe the occasional “I’ve done better, how are you?”. You are not, however, allowed to tell somebody how you actually are.

There are, as always, exceptions. If a family member (or very close friend) asks, there’s a higher probability that they do care, and you’re welcome to actually answer truthfully. Similarly, you’re allowed to answer fully if somebody makes a special effort to encourage it, either through intonation (”So how ARE you?”) or through context (when a doctor asks, you don’t say “Fine”, you actually explain what’s wrong). Similarly, a “What’s up?” can be answered truthfully if the person looks like they’re trying to arrange or accomplish something (”So, what’s up? Going anywhere?”), or if the person has a legitimate interest in your activities.

Sometimes when we’re only greeting each other in passing, we have absolutely NO interest at all in the other person’s activities, and don’t even bother to use the correct response. In the dorms, just walking by people you know, it’s not at all uncommon to hear a hybrid greeting, like “What’s up?” “Fine, you?” or “How are you?” “Not much”. Sometimes, you’ll stop to correct yourself, and use the right greeting, perhaps with a minor blush, but generally, it’s not even noticed.

We can contrast English’s lack of caring with one example from the (quite complex) Samoan greeting system. In English, if you meet somebody on the street and they ask “Where are you off to?”, you’re not required to be specific. You can just say “Oh, I’m headed to the store”, and that’s just fine. However, in Samoan, if somebody of higher status (a chief/orator to a commoner, or an adult to a child) asks you where you’re going, you’re compelled to answer quite honestly, or else you’re being deceptive. Rather than just “I’m going to the beach”, you’d explain to the chief that you’re going to the beach to talk with your friend, then going over to the bar for a drink, then headed home to see your wife after that. Imagine telling that to the gas station clerk.

When you sit back and realize that in English, we don’t really care how people are or what they’re up to even when we ask, expressing one’s state of being without solicitation in a greeting doesn’t seem that unusual or pretentious.

So, if there’s one thing to learn from this, it’s this: Any time you think some other language is strange, remember that yours is just as strange, you’re just used to it.

Disclaimer: I adore the Language Log. I truly, truly do. The authors deserve commendation for their work at pushing language and linguistic theory out into the world. Their site and work is one of the prime inspirations for my humble little blog, and damnit, I hope that I have as much capacity for outreach when and if I ever hit academia. Why the sudden bout of blatant Language Log worship? Well, the subject of this post is lifted straight from a recent post by Sally Thomason, and I’d feel bad leeching off their linguistic discoveries without at least a bit of sycophancy (translation: sucking up). I try to create new content as often as possible here, but when I do repost something or quote large parts o the works of others, I want to make sure that credit is given. Thus, Language Log, Language Log, Language Log. I feel much better now, thanks. On to the post…

This morning, as usual, I rolled out of bed to my computer and checked my RSS feeds. In doing so, this quote from a professor, taken from Sally Thomason’s latest post on the Language Log jumped out at me. Actually, that’s not true, it sprung into my heart, soothing my harrowed soul and putting as much of a smile as it could on my still-slumbering face. Here’s a bit of it:

…

I always emphasize that it’s not so much right and wrong, that people speak differently everywhere, but that there’s a certain amount of snobbery in knowing “standard usage” and adhering to it, like it’s a password that says, “I know the code, I have learned the secrets of this society of academics/lawyers/receptionists and can be trusted to behave appropriately.” I tell them they HAVE to learn it and know when to use it unless they want to shoot themselves in the foot on resumes and applications, but they don’t have to believe it’s God’s Preferred Way of Speaking English.

I’ve had more than one student come up to me after an ACT class and say, “You’re the first English teacher I’ve had who didn’t tell me my mother spoke like an uneducated hick,” or “This is the first time anyone’s explained why standard usage is important.”

It’s sad that pointless prescriptivism may keep these kids from top schools. But that’s why we absolutely HAVE to teach it to them, so they’re not fighting an uphill battle on the language front. They’re already at a disadvantage without the money, resources, and connections wealthy suburban Chicago students have in spades. It would be brutal not to teach them the “code” they need to pass the gatekeepers.

Laura Petelle (the author of this excerpt), you are, officially, my hero-of-the-day for February 9th, 2007. This all DESPERATELY needed to be said, and it sounds like you’re saying it, not just to Language Log, but the people for whom it counts.

Standard usage is just that, a standard of usage, but that term can be deceiving. Just because a language (or a dialect) is not the same as the accepted standard doesn’t mean it’s “sub-standard” or “uneducated”. Every dialect is grammatical, meaning that it conforms to its own specific grammar (and usually more frequently than the speech of those trying to use a “standard dialect”, and there are no “better” or “worse” dialects than any others. “Non-Standard” does not mean “sub-standard”, and I applaud Laura for teaching that.

Sadly, she’s right. Knowing the “whom”’s of the standard dialect (of any language) can be seen as a showing of one’s social status, and a person who’s never been taught those sorts of things will be at a disadvantage due to a charming little set of social stigmas based on language use. So, as she says, we have to teach people the rules, but also let them know that it’s okay to ignore them at home. Just because I need to wear a tie to go to a wedding, doesn’t mean I should wear it at home while watching a movie. “Standard Usage” is a sociolinguistic tool, and although we need to know it, we don’t need to worship it.

So, Laura, if you’re out there reading this, you have my highest respects, and if you’re ever in the area, I’ll buy you a smoothie if you post your above comments outside the English department.

Don’t worry, though, they’re just across the courtyard from Linguistics. We’d have your back.