Working on this post, I saw that Language Log had written about "Teabonics," and I assumed I would get some good analysis about the misuse of "Ebonics" in coining the new word. But here's what I found:
Teabonics?Muphry's Law? Muphry's Law? Ha! Hang on a second, I need to recover from deep pangs of irony. Mock spelling, and you'd better make sure you never ever ever ever ever make a typo.
March 31, 2010 @ 6:38 pm · Filed by Mark Liberman under Humor
Pictures here.
Including some nice examples of Muphry's Law in action....
It takes more than 2 hours before anyone shows up on the popular linguistics blog to take Liberman to task for failing to see the swipe at black people:
Elizabeth Herrington said,So, why the blindness to racism? I suspect that it is a combination of the conventional liberal self-love — the mind-dulling confidence that they are the good people — and the embarrassing secret that the study of Ebonics was never truly grounded in respect for black people.
March 31, 2010 @ 8:47 pm
This is funny, sure. But we need to remember Ebonics (inglorious word it be) is based on a grammar. Teabonics is just plain ignorance.
***
Lance said,
March 31, 2010 @ 9:07 pm
... I'm sort of sorry that LanguageLog is propagating this. The common tagline is that "linguists are calling [this] Teabonics"; except that, as Elizabeth Herrington says above, recognizing Ebonics is deeply rooted in linguistic concepts, whereas this is just making fun of misspelling. And while I'm in favor politically of making fun of tea-partiers, I'm professionally against calling it "Teabonics", which elevates this to actual academic study and debases Ebonics as being equivalently illiterate.
CORRECTION: "Muphry's Law," spelled like that, is something that has been talked about in the past on Language Log. Liberman's writing "Muphry's Law" would be an example of Muphry's Law if the term "Muphry's Law" hadn't been coined to refer to things like that. Thanks to the commenter Dewb for pointing this out.
Posts
60 comments:
"Debases Ebonics"? That could be the most ridiculous PC phrase evah!
It just seems like it's everywhere because you detest it being pointed out.
Yes, because conservatives never think that they are the good people and that liberals are communist nazis bent on destroying glorious america.
Trolling...
"the study of Ebonics was never truly grounded in respect for black people."
That's my take.
Plus it's another emphasis of the differentness of black people. Differentness (uniqueness?) is a fine thing, except when it reinforces a deficiency in a essential mainstream skill like verbal and written communication.
Ebonics is interesting, but black kids were--deliberately or unwittingly--getting the message that command of standard English was optional. This is not true, and the notion works strongly against those who don't understand this error.
When do we stop weeping over blacks?
Any time soon?
Black president. Black political machine in charge of Detroit, and a number of other cities. Blacks better off in America than in Africa. Blacks dominating NBA and NFL. Blacks dominating music biz. Black comedians can spit out all the racist jokes they want.
When do we stop treating blacks like Little Sisters of the Poor?
In fact, when do we stop genuflecting when the great sainted oppressed, anointed by the Democrat Party... gays, women and blacks... are invoked?
The Democratic Party buys the votes of these groups by throwing the swag their way. Why are we supposed to speak in hushed tones when the sainted pass by?
Anybody else bored with the sainted spoiled brats of the Democratic Party?
How much longer are white men have required kiss ass?
I decided to be just like those sainted victims some time ago. I'm getting for me. You owe me, chumps!
Time for all you folks to kiss my white ass!
Now we are all Neros fiddling away.
Remember in November.
Shut up, Thomas. Get a brain.
No, it's officially time to turn the tables.
It's been 50 years of this weeping crap over the plight of the sainted anointed.
It's time for the rest of you to get a brain.
I'm tired of kissing ass. Tired of kissing ass at work and listening to the stupid diversity lectures. Tired of morons donning their halos and preaching the same old tired crap.
This crap has been stale and boring for 20 years.
It's time for a big old smooch on my big old white boy derriere.
Sweet Home Alabama!
Does shoutingthomas have a mute button?
the word teabagger is kinda close to the n word. it sure seems to excite certain people to use it.
I"m fed up with having this crap stuffed down my throat.
Now, all you good boys and girls repeating the hideous crap your teachers have been stuffing down your obedient throat for five decades, repeat after me:
No more pencils
No more books
No more teacher's dirty looks
Well we got no class
And we got no principles
And we got no innocence
We can't even think of a word that rhymes
School's out for summer
School's out forever
School's been blown to pieces
What a miserable pile of toadies white people have become. We're all afraid of our shadows.
Hurry up, now children... run and tattle to the teacher!
Hideous stupidity.
In other news, it turns out that James O'Keefe's "Expose" of ACORN was complete and utter bullshit. Seeing as how it served as the basis for a bunch of you fools to harp and hate on the housing advocacy organization, I'd be curious to hear thoughts about this development.
I'm sure none of the vitriol about ACORN has to do with the fact that it mostly works in poor, inner city communities, though. I would never, ever infer that.
Had to fix a typo, I don't want to defame any others who agree with me.
~~~~~
"Yes, because conservatives never think that they are the good people..."
Well, actually no we don't.
Liberals are the ones who believe people are naturally good and if they just had enough money they would act virtuously.
Conservatives expect people can be bad or good regardless of genetics, economics, or education. They believe values control the actions of people. Therefore, they can't be "THE" good people. They can only act good, or not.
Whereas liberal believe their superiority lies in their compassion; if they feel it, they ARE superior, they ARE good, and their actions or words don't matter. This permits virtually anything the angels feel like saying or doing.
..and the embarrassing secret that the study of Ebonics was never truly grounded in respect for black people.
Reminds me of Matthew 7:4,5
4 How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?
5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
I'm sure none of the vitriol about ACORN has to do with the fact that it mostly works in poor, inner city communities, though. I would never, ever infer that.
There aren't any poor in America. You're lying.
Poor in America means being obese, watching a color TV and living in an apartment paid for by the Fed.
Quit trying to sell me martyrs. You're lying.
Try visiting a place in the world where people really are poor. Learn how to tell the difference.
I ain't buying any more of your martyrdom BS.
Just as "teabagging" was a poorly constructed attempt at humor which was rooted in using homosexuality to make fun of the tea partiers, now its resorting to an African American drive by. Nice.
POLL: SHOUTINGTHOMAS IS
- a racist
- a moby
- both of the above
Answer to poll:
I have a working mind, and unlike the rest of you, I'm tired of eating shit and pretending it tastes good.
I hereby solemnly declare that I will laugh out loud at every sob story some idiot wants to tell me about the sainted women, blacks and gays.
I hereby declare that today I am completely free of every moronic shakedown artist who wants to stick his hand in my pocket.
Do any or you have a functioning brain?
Now, I will leave you toadies.
You can fidget and preen your halos.
Don't worry... I won't tattle on you to the teacher.
What good widdle boys and girls!
Thomas, do you realize you're shouting?
One of my pet theories is that the sins to which people are the most vulnerable are those to which they consider themselves immune. Here's a bit of proof.
Ann, I agree with the substance of your post. But I must point out that you unfairly chide Language Log for "Muphry's Law."
Muphry's Law is that any correction of someone's spelling or grammar will inevitably contain an error of its own.
I find it delightful to watch Muphry's Law cascading like this. In your case the error was mere unfamiliarity with the meaning of the term, rather than a mistake in spelling or grammar. But your post was not correcting grammar, but pointing out LL's lack of attention to the meaning of Ebonics, so I would still score that as Muphry's Law holding true.
I eagerly await word of what rhetorical error I've committed in this comment.
The Liberal Religious Cult imposes a world view that sees all white skinned people having Original Sin from slavery days with no savior strong enough to wash away the guilt. They ought to release their Cult's captives now. Just ignoring their recruitment memes is usually the best defense.
Thomas, do you realize you're shouting?
Hee!
Our new Shouting friend is a captive to his anger at the men running the world. Anger creates a connection back to the people you are angry at, and it only weakens your options in intelligently dealing with them. Wisdom is seldom angry. Shouting Thomas seems to have many good observations and experiences to share here, but his anger hampers their presentation and only damages those who associate with him. I expect that he is very angry at me.
But we need to remember Ebonics (inglorious word it be) is based on a grammar.
Well, since eubonics is based the English spoken by slaves who were not allowed to be educated or to be taught to read and write, I can't see how it can't be said that eubonics is likewise based on ignorance. Some ignorance is more noble than others.
Chris Mathews' statement at SOTU was the perfect example and exposed the liberal mind bare.
When he said he forgot Obama was black, he thought he was giving him a compliment, which of course only makes sense if you think blacks can't do what Obama had just done. Mathews was honestly expressing his opinion, and it got past his PC filter. Not surprisingly, it got little coverage relative to the level of racism it so clearly demonstrated so publicly.
Ebonics is essentially 17th Century English, which some blacks, as well as some whites, in the South never outgrew.
Consider this dialog from an old Western
Bad guy, "Be you the varmint what's a-lookin' fer a heap o' trouble?"
Good guy, "I be!"
Montagne Montaigne said...
Yes, because conservatives never think that they are the good people and that liberals are communist nazis bent on destroying glorious america.
Glad to see you admit it.
In other news, it turns out that James O'Keefe's "Expose" of ACORN was complete and utter bullshit.
Looking a little deeper, the CA AG who made this statement was the one and only Governor Moonbeam, Jerry Brown. As a lifelong Democrat, he couldn't have an ulterior motive, could he?
A.W.'s analysis at 4/2/10 1:16 PM is magnificent. I hope he cross-posts it to his blog. His comment deserves a wider audience.
Dear Ann Sharpton,
You are really making it impossible to feel comfortable here with this shit.
Signed,
Someone who's growing to think you ARE a racist.
"Muphry's Law" is an intentional misspelling, and if you follow the "Muphry's Law" link, you will see the explanation.
"It takes more than 2 hours before anyone..." is deceptive. The comments quoted are the sixth and ninth comments, respectively. Language Log generally doesn't see a great deal of commenting traffic.
"Ebonics" itself is not a standard term in linguistics, but rather more of an advocacy term.
For linguists, I suspect that the motivation behind their work is less "respect for black people" and more "interest in language." For most linguists, it's a science rather than an opportunity to score cheap culture war points.
You just will not learn.
That's the strangest thing about you being a professor,...
"It just seems like it's everywhere because you detest it being pointed out."
Can anyone make any sense of this comment ? There's no logic to it.
I used to think liberals were just people who couldn't see the full picture and were, for that reason, a bit ignorant.
But now, I see their malice - deep malice and intolerance.
Edutcher: I wish you were right about the origins of Ebonics, but I don't believe you are. As I recall Ebonics was a lame west coast effort in the 80s to legitimize ghetto language. The lack of subject verb agreement you use is very common in the African American community but is not much heard in the rural south or Appalachia. Plenty of mangled language, of course, but not of the Ebonics variety which is basically made up as it goes. Not sure it is even discussed any more in any academic setting, but it was definitely an example of the racist lower expectations of young Blacks.
Follow-up to Eve's comment:
The loveable and useful Wikipedia says that the Oakland California school board got caught up in controversy when, in 1996, they tried to mainstream Ebonics as a "language" in instruction.
In isolation, references to "teabonics" might be considered an in-joke among linguists. But in the context of the unavoidably well-known 1996 controversy, it is without doubt a racist cultural reference, and as such ought to be repugnant to all Americans. The fact that liberals often give themselves a pass on this kind of rhetoric is creepy.
Scott
Thanks for the compliment and the subtle way of saying, “please post more on your blog!” I have been lazy recently on that.
Edutcher
> Ebonics is essentially 17th Century English, which some blacks, as well as some whites, in the South never outgrew.
I remember living in Texas and reading a Dallas morning news article on this Ebonics thing, when the issue first exploded on the national stage. This article said more or less that black people use double negatives a lot and say “ain’t.” Yeah, that is right, “ain’t” was supposed to be the exclusive property of black people, and they had the nerve to say that in a paper in TEXAS.
I remember getting a lot of laughs by reading that part out loud to my work friends and then going, in my southern drawl, “sure, I ain’t never heard of no white people doing that!”
For all those who called me on this, I was referring to the speech patterns that were at the basis of what's was developed formally, so to speak, as ebonics.
I appreciate what you say and you're probably right about it as a specific sub-language(?).
Scott,
Its now cross posted, with slightly more words.
http://allergic2bull.blogspot.com/2010/04/jackie-robinson-theory-of-obama.html
"You are really making it impossible to feel comfortable here with this shit."
Are you claiming some special privilege to be made to feel comfortable?
I've been making people uncomfortable since 2004.
Is there anything whiter than an obsession with spelling?
Ebonics is a way of excusing black people for failing to meet a social standard, and this relieves the liberal of the social duty to disdain such failure in a black person... that is too onerous a duty for libs, because in the simplistic liberal mind the disdain of failure to meet a standard, if it is felt toward a black person, IS RACISM. As if being black means you never need to meet any standards.
Once Ebonics is in play, the liberal is free to call conservatives racist for having that expectation of a social standard of English or grammar. Liberals now can say that black people DO MEET a standard, but it is one manufactured for them not for their benefit but so liberals can call conservatives racist.
shorter MM: "Who you gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes"?
Boy, he sure puts a lot of effort into defending the indefensible, doesn't he? Do you suppose he got some of he ACORN money?
Genetic researchers tracking
the history of humanity have
discovered that there _are_
races; Many mutations after
man came out of Africa, the
latest `50K years back, add
up to modern human nature,
and they have not had time
to average out.
The researchers have not tried
to publicise their results;
Cannot imagine why. :)
This is more than just the kneejerk response which most lefties have that righties are all racist.
This meme - "TEA PARTIERS = RACISTS" - was developed as a result of delberate strategizing by Democrat Party leaders in order to motivate the Democrat Party's black base to go out and vote this November.
This meme is as sensible as claiming Bushcheneymchitlerhalliburton carrried out 9/11.
But irrationality never once stopped a leftist meme from developing; I mean look at AGW!
REMEMBER: Without a bigger than ever black turnout (and a smaller than usual white turnout), Obama would have lost the 2008 election.
The Democrats and the Left know this and are using every Alinsky trick in the Rules for Radials book to make the charge stick.
This is also why prominent lib MSM'ers have spread the lie that the GOP was opposed to the Civil Rights laws passed in the 1960's.
If the truth was on their side, the they wouldn't have to resort to lies.
VITE ACCORDINGLY.
"complete and utter bullshit."
"While describing "highly inappropriate behavior" by some of the workers caught on secret video tapes made by Rightwing activists...."
Wrong again. It's like your super power.
shoutingthomas=moby I'm thinking.
I've been making people uncomfortable since 2004.
Somehow I suspect you'd had a good bit of practice already in 2004.
Oh jeez. Look, there really is some linguistic interest in "Ebonics", ie, black American dialect, or "African-American Verbal English". For example, it has more grammatical tenses than Standard English. It's not Standard English, it does have some social disadvantages, it is interesting.
"Teab0nics", though, is just an exercise in proving that We (the liberals) are Ever So Much Smarter than Them(we conservative types) by cherry-picking some misspelled and mis-punctuated signs.
The obvious answer is to point out that unlike the Lib'ruls, we actually know how to write, and so make our own signs instead of needing them to be printed for us.
Dear Professor:I have seen you ( only since late 2008)express interesting insights into many areas of the game of culture. This makes some people uncomfortable in their own level of knowledge and communication abilities. You are always a challenge, which is one reason why many enjoy your Blog creation so much. Thank you again.
Ebonics was the BS term the Oakland School Board came up with for not teaching their mostly Black students how to speak and write proper English, instead of Ghetto patois. A Ghetto Patois, by the way, that screams ignorant, stupid, and thuggish.
White people *DO* laugh at Black people, for embracing stupidity. Dave Chapelle found that to his horror, most of his fans where White guys laughing at stupid Black characters he parodied.
Second, Ty Cobb played long before Jackie Robinson.
Third, OF COURSE Obama is a test case for Black Presidents. And like David Dinkins, such a disaster and "race man" that White New Yorkers voted for Guiliani and Bloomberg over Democrats.
Dinkins, being a Race Man(tm) like all Black political leaders, allowed Blacks to run riot in Crown Heights for about four days, killing several, looting, burning, keeping the police out. Obama with Sgt. Crowley and Skip Gates, ObamaCare as income redistribution, Amnesty, "nation of cowards" Eric Holder, reparations, and Affirmative Action on steroids, promises much worse.
Being called racist is like being called an Albigensian heretic. No one cares. After Rev. Wright and Obama pal and neighbor Louis Farrakhan, old news. But the central question is, who gets most of the ever-shrinking pie as private employment implodes and government is the employer not of last but ONLY resort?
If you are White, and working or middle class, you cannot support Obama or ANY politician who is not White and anti-Affirmative Action. Because you will never get hired, you will end up a despised and discriminated minority when you are elderly, and can expect basically a miserable life, being pushed to the back of the line, back of the bus.
Take the White New Haven Firefighters. Obama wanted them not promoted so that Blacks could take their place, even though they had the highest scores (based on blindly scored written tests and oral exams). Because those jobs "belonged" to Blacks not Whites. Multiply that out for health care, for Government Motors, financial services, student loans, and everything else, where Government picks winners and LOSERS BASED ON RACE.
No White person who has a net worth south of $10 million can afford a Black President. Particularly since Obama is not that far off from Hank Johnson. Sure he's slicker, but just as dumb. Obama doesn't even know how many states in the Union (he answered 57), or the difference between Veterans Day and Memorial Day.
Montagne Montaigne
Your link says this about the behavior of Acorn folks in the tapes:
"highly inappropriate behavior"
Of course it wasn't illegal. Jer is going to need those Acorn votes come election time.
So who are you going to believe? Jerry Brown or your lying eyes?
The on-going, rabid attempts to smear the tea partiers -- the desperate, near-hysterical effort to generate something, anything negative about the movement -- is simply a confession of the left's intellectual bankruptcy.
The left's two cherished animating ideas are socialism and pacifism. But the events of the 20th century thoroughly refuted both notions.
Socialism did not bring prosperity to the masses as its advocates claimed it would -- rather, in places where it was practiced fully and consistently, it brought mass death by starvation to the masses. See, for instance, the histories of the U.S.S.R., communist China, North Korea, Cuba, etc.
Likewise, pacifism did not bring about world peace as was promised by its advocates -- instead, it invited the horrific aggressions of two world wars and one "cold war" which saw the deaths of millions of innocents and the enslavement of still millions more under communism.
With their two beloved ideas so thoroughly discredited and debunked, the left has no rational, logical, evidence-based arguments to offer in support of their ideas. Hence, they resort to the lamest of fallacious arguments: the ad hominem. Instead of logical argument, they resort to smears, name-calling and character attacks. That is all the pathetic left has to offer.
These people can just keep yakking. Thus far the only thing they have accomplished is to alienate, piss off and annoy other people. So keep it up libs, keep calling those Tea Partiers illiterate. See where it gets you.
BTW, did I spell "yakking" correctly?
"In other news, it turns out that James O'Keefe's "Expose" of ACORN was complete and utter bullshit."
Okay fair enough -- advising someone on how to set up a brothel using underage girls isn't technically illegal.
It's appalling and disgusting, but not illegal.
What an enormous moral victory for you -- I'm sure you and all your ACORN buddies are immensely proud.
It is becoming less and less important what the Left says about the rest of the country. Take the case of Toyota and the (Liberal) press:
Toyota announced that sales were up 41% for March. Better than Ford, GM, and several other Asian brands. What’s going on? Toyota has been the object of mass media vilification for months. Not only have their cars been accused of causing thousands of accidents and dozens of deaths, the hysterical articles accused the company of not caring if its customers died. Toyota management has been accused of cover-ups and using undue political influence to get special breaks from the NHTSA. Black columnist Bob Herbert accused Toyota of “corporate treachery” for closing its Fremont California plant in the face of declining sales apparently in the belief that the role of a company is to provide jobs and failure to do so is treason.
So we have an image drawn by the MSM (or as Rush Limbaugh likes to refer to them “The state run media”) of Toyota cars being killers, made by treacherous, crooked, fabulously wealthy owners who conspire in secret to maim its customers while laughing at the carnage.
Yet Toyota’s sales are up 41%! Sure, there were incentives, but are you going to get into a death trap just because they will promise to change the oil for a couple of years? After some thought, the American people have concluded that they have been lied to by the MSM about Toyota and they went out and bought them … by the thousands.
What we see here is confirmation of a simple development: not only have the MSM’s editorial positions destroyed their grip on the national discourse (see the success of the Tea Party movement that’s violently opposed by the MSM), but the trust the American people have in their news reporting is also in the crapper.
The sales spike by Toyota is a big “F*** You” to the media that once had the power to destroy the reputation of anyone they chose, either out of spite or simply as collateral damage in their desire to sell newspapers or air time via sensationalism.
You want a measure of media credibility? Look at the Toyota sales numbers and rejoice.
I would like to remind "progressives" of this portion of MLKs "I have a dream" speech.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
Tea Partiers are in fact being called racists for judging the content of Obama's character and the content of his policies. What most in the tea party are concerned with is opressive government control and spending. Why the continual charges of racism?
I believe that it is a projection, and that at the heart liberal policies are in fact racist. The single biggest factor in overcoming poverty is education and capitalism. It relies on invidual freedom and personal responsibility, but in the end that is by far the biggest factor in lifting one out of poverty. I believe that progressive policy today imposes chains of dependency, through a culture of entitlement, that are another subtle form of slavery. When you claim that the black and poor, need the never ending racial quotas and redistributive policies democrats are so fond of, are you not in effect saying that they lack the capabilities to do for themselves? The liberal elites "know whats better for the poor uneducated, and inferior people of color who are helpless to change their circumstances". Do liberals honestly believe that they are helping poor people by closing off routes to upper mobility? The democratic party NEEDs a dependent black constituancy. How is this different in effect from the reconstruction democrats who needed a dependent and compliant black populace?
The payoffs for charges of racism are many, white liberals get to redress their guilt, for evils past, while at the same time feeling superior to their countrymen. What they miss is that the irony in their charges of racism. If they were to recognize the truth of their actions, it would be much harder to keep blacks on the democratic plantation.
Could Shouting Thomas be on to something? If not, explain the "silence from any city and state agency on the on-going violence" described in that blog post about the anti-Asian violence at South Philly High.
Shoutingthomas seems to have unique ability to pick nom de plumes for hisself that are incredibly apropos. That being snarked, what me finds most vile and, frankly, boring since me been hearing the exact same bullshit since Carter was president. Based on his inane ramblings, I suspect he'd prefer to be born black since all the
breaks in our society lean so heavily toward non-lily white citizens. So TittysuckThomas, given a choice and all other things being equal (yes, even in your shorts), would you rather be born as a white or a black in our country of endless self-enlightenment? What name would you have been called if you had been accosted by a group of intimidating whites had you voted for a controversial bill?
While we wait for PetulantThomas' fuming response, I'd like to take issue with so many of you--on both sides--who try to imagine how someone views the world or themselves. There are myriad complications and policy issues one can debate without impugning the Other. I realize this leaves me open to charges of a doublestandard but I was going after Shouting because of specific, offensive remarks he made and am requesting clarification. People are SOOOOO damn touchy these days...
VeritasAmore
"and the embarrassing secret that the study of Ebonics was never truly grounded in respect for black people."
I thought I read that the person who dreamed up Ebonics didn't even buy it as a serious concept. They said they made it up to help get extra funding for a school (ie, by making the argument that English was a second language ergo their students needed more funding)... so to hear these "people" (by which I mean; “stupid tools”) at this language blog still talk about it as a serious subject... ahem...
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