substandard

SpaceFlight   Wed Dec 28, 2005 11:04 pm GMT
What do you think about this word when it's used by people like Mxsmanic to describe the speech of Native speakers? It's seems to be one of Mxsmanic's most frequent words on this forum.
SpaceFlight   Wed Dec 28, 2005 11:06 pm GMT
<<It's seems to be one of Mxsmanic's most frequent words on this forum.>>

Typo.

It seems to be one of Mxsmanic's most frequent words on this forum.
Guest   Thu Dec 29, 2005 12:53 am GMT
I guess if you're an ESL teacher, you'd try to steer your students towards one of the more common or "standard" forms of English, and away from the more unsusual varieties ("substandard" forms).
Brennus   Thu Dec 29, 2005 6:49 am GMT
Some writers and linguists use the term "substandard English" to apply to any variety of English that is out of the mainstream. This would include a whole bunch: Scots, Scouse (Liverpool), Cockney, Chicano English , Val-Talk, Dude, Beatnik lingo, Surfer lingo, some varieties of Black English, Hong Kong English and probably more.

To me, it's a neutral term and doesn't have the same negative or cynical connotations as 'subhuman' or even 'subculture', a term sociologists use to describe groups like rappers, bikers, hippies and California surfers etc.
Kirk   Thu Dec 29, 2005 6:56 am GMT
<<Some writers and linguists use the term "substandard English" to apply to any variety of English that is out of the mainstream.>>

I can assure you no linguist uses the term "substandard" in reference to a language. If someone uses that term they are not someone who's been educated in objective descriptive linguistics.

"Substandard" carries connotations of usage not being good enough or somehow "below" what is the "norm." The term "substandard" used to be common in prescriptivist publications and writing guides but even most prescriptivist sources have moved towards the less-loaded term "non-standard" now. "Substandard" carries a connotation that something like "subculture" doesn't.

In short, "substandard" is inappropriate in a serious discussion about language, as even most official prescriptivist guides have eschewed the term.
Larissa   Thu Dec 29, 2005 7:45 am GMT
"standard"substandard" what the exact meanings of these two words, and what's the difference? thanks
Brennus   Thu Dec 29, 2005 8:04 am GMT
Kirk,

I'll admit that a good many linguists in this age of revisionism and political correctness in academics don't like the term "substandard" and refuse to use it. However, the word hasn't been officially outlawed yet and does appear in some linguistic literature. Just two examples I found on the internet are:

http://spanishlinguistics.blogspot.com/

"... however, the exceptional form hay [áj] becomes haen [áen] or hayn [ájan], that is, it allows the plural -n to be suffixed to the verb, unblocking the effect of -y, as reported by Kany (1951: 257) for rural Argentinean, Lapesa (1980: § 133) for SUBSTANDARD VENEZUELAN, and Montes (1982: 384) for Colombian Antioqueño.

I have written a paper on this issue. You can read it here. Comments welcome."

posted by Miguel Rodríguez Mondoñedo
From (Source):
http://spanishlinguistics.blogspot.com/



"Semantic Extensions in SUBSTANDARD SERBO-CROATIAN: An Exercise in Cross-Cultural Cognitive Linguistics"

Danko Sipka (MRM Inc., Hyattsville, MD)
From (Source):
http://www.ku.edu/~slavic/bss99-sipka.html

There are scads of linguistic dictionaries and glossaries in the libraries and bookstores. They are not homogenous by any means; some of them almost certainly mention the word "substandard" in them even though they may be mostly older publications (30 to 50 years ago).
Brennus   Thu Dec 29, 2005 8:06 am GMT
Larissa,

For any English word definitions, Dictionary.com is always a good place to look first.
Larissa   Thu Dec 29, 2005 8:09 am GMT
"standard"substandard" what the exact meanings of these two words, and what's the difference? thanks in advance
Kirk   Thu Dec 29, 2005 8:30 am GMT
Ok, yes, Brennus you did find some examples of the actual word "substandard" in linguistic literature. However, if you notice the context around them they're not denouncing the usages (the first one mentions that prescriptivists denounce the usage he was talking about but he remained neutral in describing it). As used in the examples you presented they are probably better seen as an older usage of "substandard" which was only meant to imply "non-standard." Also, at least with the first example the article was from over 20 years ago, while the other one is more recent (the 90s). Still, reading the context around it is important (neither was denouncing usage). So, I'll amend my statement: *almost* never will you find the word "substandard" in linguistic research and you certainly won't find it in the derisive senses that it carries with prescriptivist usage.
Brennus   Thu Dec 29, 2005 8:51 am GMT
"...*almost* never will you find the word "substandard" in linguistic research..."

Kirk,

I'll agree that for the time being, that is true.

Of course, who knows what the next one hundred years will bring? Conservatives still dominate the Science, Economics and Engineering fields on college campuses; they may one day regain control of the Humanities and Social Sciences too.

(Personally, I'm not a strong conservative or a strong liberal on most issues but somewhere in the middle).
Mxsmanic   Thu Dec 29, 2005 10:09 am GMT
Substandard simply means below the standard; that is, not conforming to the standard in every respect. The standard is prestigious, stable, widespread, and well documented. Substandard language is none of these.

What PC linguists do or think isn't that important in the world of ESL. ESL students want to learn to communicate effectively in English; anything not directly conducive to that goal is a waste of time. In order to reach that goal efficiently, ESL teachers must be unambiguous and direct in their teaching. ESL students constantly ask for guidance, and failing to provide that out of some misguided adherence to political correctness is doing them a great disservice (and remember that many of them are paying a lot of money to be taught English). Many of them have also had their fill of academic linguistics, and have learned nothing useful from traditional English instruction in school.

There's a huge gap between the academic world and the practical, real world. While some people continually criticize any attempt to point out that there actually is a real standard of English, ESL students are exactly the opposite: they complain about any attempt to muddy the waters by claiming that no standard exists. A standard does exist, and that's what ESL teachers teach, and that's what ESL students want.

When ESL students look for jobs, they need to speak a version of English that the people doing the hiring will look upon as standard and positive. This excludes Ebonics, English with a strong foreign accent, English with substandard structure, English with bad spelling, and so on. It doesn't matter what the linguists think—they aren't doing the hiring, and they aren't negotiating the contracts.

ESL teachers are like teachers in any practical trade school. People pay them to impart skills that will have immediate practical value. People do not pay them to hear ex cathedra speeches echoing across the land from the summit of polished ivory towers. ESL students need to function in the real world, not the idyllic imaginary Middle Earth of the linguists.

Linguists can claim all they want that spelling isn't important or doesn't correlate with intelligence, or that it's okay to talk like a gang member or a drunken sailor. But students who are taught this and subsequently cannot find jobs or enter universities or gain general acceptance in the broader population because of it are perfectly justified in demanding their money back.

I personally am paid to teach English, and not to be the passive sycophant of scholars from another dimension. Show me the money, and I'll be happy to listen to your opinion; otherwise, I'm afraid I have better things to do. Like my students, I have to be pragmatic.
Kirk   Thu Dec 29, 2005 10:33 am GMT
Mxsmanic, you seem to hide behind the claim that you say all these things for the benefit of ESL students when you clearly are just spouting your (often quite uninformed/arrogant) opinions and masking them as "being real for the ESL students." I think you sometimes forget I'm also involved in ESL and have been for awhile now. I'm aware of the needs of ESL students and believe me, in my job I'm not standing up lecturing them on linguistics terms. However, what we're talking about here is much more general than just ESL students--the usage of the word "substandard" is still inappropriate in any serious language-related context, especially when applied to native speakers. I have no problem labeling a usage "ungrammatical" if it's not used by native speakers and ESL students need to be informed how to avoid ungrammatical nonnative errors.

<<linguists can claim all they want that spelling isn't important>>

No one here has claimed that and I doubt many linguists would. As often, you're confusing the written and spoken languages, which are two very separate entities. Spelling is indeed important and there is a standard for it. But that's not what we're talking about--spelling isn't language. It's an abstract written representation of it. While there are formal prescriptivistic norms for the written language (which educated people learn), that doesn't mean that when those same people have a usage that doesn't fall under the umbrella of the formal written language that it's "wrong" or "substandard."

<<..or doesn't correlate with intelligence,>>

Well, the reason people claim that is because it's true as has been proven by research...

<<ESL students need to function in the real world, not the idyllic imaginary Middle Earth of the linguists. >>

That'll be enough unfounded condescension for now. I'm fully aware of sociolinguistic reality and can describe which terms, pronunciations and phrases are stigmatized and which ones aren't. That doesn't mean I can't pursue a descriptive approach to analyzing language.
Guest   Thu Dec 29, 2005 12:35 pm GMT
You do seem to enjoy a little fight as long as you're not involved, eh SpaceFlight? You start a thread, ask a random let's-go-for-a-prescriptivist-vs-descriptivist-fight question and leave.
SpaceFlight   Thu Dec 29, 2005 2:14 pm GMT
<<You do seem to enjoy a little fight as long as you're not involved, eh SpaceFlight? You start a thread, ask a random let's-go-for-a-prescriptivist-vs-descriptivist-fight question and leave.>>

I haven't left. I'm still here.