HELP!

[conuly]

I have this project due tomorrow. I had been planning to do a tape of people speaking and come up with results (it's for sociolinguistics) but the tape is impossible to hear for most of it. So I'm doing the OTHER project, which I had originally decided not to do because I didn't have enough people. Basically, I'm going to get a few results and extrapolate from them, instead of doing what I was supposed to do which is give the survey to two groups of 10 people each, which are alike in all respects except one. PLEASE help!

[Poll #360503]

Edit: Unless this affected your answers, don't worry about it. Just a clarification: AAVE is *not* supposed to be taken to mean slang. I lost the explanation we were supposed to give, which is just as well as I really thought that explanation was biased towards AAVE anyway. I mean, so am I, but that didn't seem fair. Anyway, AAVE is supposed to be considered as a dialect such as RP english or Brooklyn english, not as slang.

Non-americans, unless you know a lot about the subject (or think you can guess based on your knowledge of nonprestigious dialects where you are), don't answer. I'm locking this so that I can't be called out for rushing the assignment.

Comments

[ladyshrew.livejournal.com]

Precisely, and if it were possible to go back to a more inflected language, I'd love that (well, it would be fun, anyway). However, you can't really ask people to go that far back.

There is, however, a point where language becomes so watered down that it becomes inadequate. I think we're reaching that. A picture doesn't *have* to be worth a thousand words. Most of the time, people just aren't paying attention to the nuances of language.

Anyway, I don't have an objection to dialects so much as the need to keep up education in the "standard" as well. At the very least, it makes specific use of that dialect more meaningful.

[conuly]

There is, however, a point where language becomes so watered down that it becomes inadequate. I think we're reaching that.

Explain?