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ZorbaTHut  3yr ago (text post)   36729 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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Wouldn't phonics eventually wipe out regional dialects?

AAVE seems like it wouldn't survive long under phonics.

And if more liberal areas tend to go with whole word learning, and presumably conservative areas with phonics, could this be why (it seems) that southern dialects are disappearing?

deleted

You don't need all the racism and plantation aspects to explain the disappearance of dialects. The same is happening in many European countries with no such history. Dialect is associated with peasants, low skill workers, poor and uneducated people, etc. Probably due to infrastructure, media, urbanization, telecommunications, but also standardized schooling etc.

My wife and I usually speak in dialect. A few weeks ago I spent a lot of time cloistered away at work and she spent a lot of time trading voice messages with a northern friend of hers. The friend does and my wife used to belong to the cultural left that try to distance themselves as far as they can from dialects, using that distance to signal tribal allegiance. After a while, my wife began speaking to me and our child in high german. I was honestly horrified. Our dialect is dear to me, a large part of my home memeplex, and I felt like an utter stranger when suddenly adressed in that artificial, impersonal and politically loaded high language.

It's back to normal now but aua did that sting. Felt like the clammy fingers of the cathedral sullying a sacred space.

In Hungary, the culture war angle seems a bit different than that. Here academic (usually leftist) linguists emphasize descriptivism and that no dialect should be stigmatized, there is no single correct way to speak, the standard language is more like customs of clothing while real language is organic and biological. I generally agree by the way. There's even a term, linguicism to describe prejudice against non-standard speakers, which may prevent people from getting hired etc. While there's a connection to the topic of Gypsies, these linguists also speak out in favor of not shaming non-Gypsy Hungarians for their dialect, inclusivity etc.

Why doesn't it work out like that in Germany?

There's even a term, linguicism to describe prejudice against non-standard speakers, which may prevent people from getting hired etc.

Language is for communication. If you speak in a dialect that is not mutually intelligible with the standard, or is only with difficulty, communication becomes more difficult. This is not "prejudice", this is a legitimate consideration.

That depends on whether the dialect actually hinders communication no?

This may or may not be the case, I might understand your accent perfectly well but still not like it for prejudicial reasons, e.g because it outs you as a backwards farmer or a privileged type worthy of resentment.

Motte: We're protecting against prejudice against those with clear but low-class dialects

Bailey: We're protecting people who speak unintelligibly and placing all the burden of communication on those who speak the standard dialect, and if they complain we call them bigots.

Are you saying that concern for dialect based discrimination is always a motte-and-bailey or just that it's exploitable as one?

The latter I don't doubt, the former I have to disagree. Sometimes it really is just about class, other commenters have already mentioned cases where intelligibility isn't an issue.

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