¶ … DEA wants to hire Ebonics translators" by Carol Cratty and Phil Gast, 2010
Ebonics, or African-American English, is the term coined in the mid-1990s to describe a manner of speech used by some African-Americans that some linguists maintain is a legitimate dialect that deserves further study. More pragmatically, the point is made in the title article that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) wants translators who are fluent in Ebonics to facilitate criminal investigations involving Ebonics speakers who may or may not be African-American suspects, but which may also include Hispanics and white Americans. To determine the facts, this paper provides a summary of the title article to include a summary its goal, background information relevant to the article, the authors' findings and conclusions, and the evidence used by the authors to support their claims. In addition, this review also evaluates the respective strengths and weaknesses of the news article and the extent to which the study is based on facts and linguistic research in the study of African-American English (AAE). Finally, a summary of the research and important findings concerning these issues are presented in the conclusion.
Summary
During World War II, the United States used so-called Native American "code-talkers" from the Navajo and Comanche tribes, among others, in the Pacific theater to communicate radio messages that were virtually indecipherable to Japanese code breakers (Broderick, 2011). These code-talkers would coin terms in their native languages to replace Standard American English (SAE) terms in ways that made this American intelligence-gathering strategy enormously effective (Broderick, 2011). It is reasonable to suggest that the Japanese would have gladly recruited several translators of these languages had they been available, and the DEA is in a similar predicament when it comes...
& #8230;Through language, children acquire a sense of who they are as well as a sense of their speech community" (Sulentic 2001, What Is Language? Section: ¶ 2). In addition, language serves as a venue for a particular people to transmit their cultural values and mores. Language portrays power. Standard English, particularly in the U.S., portrays the language of power. "Language is power and that power grows when one knows
Linguistics Ebonics Ebonics is a term coined by Robert L. Williams in 1975. It was developed by merging the words ebony and phonics. Ebonics is defined as a system of oral communication utilized by Americans of African ancestry that consists of phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics, lexicon, rate, rhythm, stress, and nonverbal communication. Ebonics started during the trans-Atlantic African slave trade during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Africans who were brought over
" Another is "Sister," or "Brother" (or Sistah or Brotha) which is used to mean another black person on the street. Most of the Ebonics I have heard is on television or in reading articles about it. Personally, Ebonics does not seem professional enough for use in business and other professional situations. It evolved on the street, and may serve a good place there, but it is not good business communication.
The fact is that the Oakland Ebonics controversy revealed that there remains a subculture in America whose ideas are unheard. There remains a segment of American society that refuses to adopt the mainstream method of communication and, instead, chooses to adopt an alternative form. These individuals do not necessarily equate success with the adoption of middle class values and the middle class style of life. For these individuals the ability
Racial or ethnically-based teasing and peer pressure has long been associated with academic achievement, as Tyson et al. point out in his 2005 report studying the behaviors of blacks and whites during high school. While Tyson et al. also suggests that "school structures" are somewhat to blame for "stigmas" of "acting white" or "acting high and mighty" (582), he maintains that that teasing and peer pressure and also important
In his opinion striving for success, not using Ebonics, and other methods employed by successful African-Americans are no different than what are being used by successful people of many races in America today. In the same way that people educate their children not to say "aint" or "don't gotta" in their speech so that they will appear to be educated and intelligence, it is time for African-Americans to stop demanding
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