29 Jan 97 
 
I have been balked all day by a terminal that disconnected every time I  
typed '1'.  Now that is fixed. 
 
I have decided, barring anything actually interesting happening, not to  
talk about my current life.  It seems that noone really cares to hear if I  
bought pasta sauce at the grocery store, or wrote out solution sets, or  
walked three miles to find a yarn store only to discover the next day I  
had missed it by a block. 
 
No, it seems that people prefer my diatribes, and I can't blame them.  If  
I have an actual brush with celebrity or true strangeness (as opposed to  
your run-of-the-mill just-being-human kind), I will be sure to mention it.   
Other than that, we will just live in my mind. 
 
That being said, let me pick up the latest bull session topics: ebonics  
(another one: Is there a monster named Harry on Sesame Street?  If there  
is, please send me proof/documentation/whatever.  I don't ever remember a  
monster called Harry).  I choose not to address the usual discussion of  
ebonics or even the trivializing parodies of dialects.  I just want to  
recall my own experience with "bad English". 
 
When I was in 9th grade or so, we were all sitting down to a family  
dinner; as usual, Amy had a story she wanted to tell us about various kids  
in her school.  Amy used the phrases "like", "well", and "you know" very  
liberally as punctuation (eeto, soo desu ne?  de wa...).  My dad thought  
this was a bad habit.  Luckily, he was sitting right next to her, so he  
could do something about it.  He held his hand next to her cheek, and  
every time Amy uttered one of the forbidden words he'd tap her on the  
face.   
 
Some call this classical conditioning. 
 
The results were interesting, but somewhat mixed.  Amy tried not to use  
the offending phrases; her speech slowed down _quite_ noticably.  But  
there was only so much she could do.  Once she thought she got the hang of  
it, she sped up her normal clip and out popped another "ya know".  At  
which point she became flustered.  I don't think Dad ever let her get to  
the end of the story. 
 
There are many varieties of English dialects, some closer to "standard"  
English than others.  People forget that all the rules in the grammar  
books and all the definitions in the dictionaries are based on common use  
of structure and words sometime in the history of the English language.   
Americans don't speak as the British do, and I think they have a right to  
claim they have the proper pronunciation (after all, modern English was  
developed there).  Of course, the current British "Received Pronunciation"  
was deliberately created during our colonial period so that their language  
wouldn't sound so ugly compared to other European languages.  It reminds  
me when I deliberately started circling my i's and crossing my z's because  
the supposed characteristics implied (in my younger days I was into  
graphology and other silly methods of self-discovery). 
 
So what is my point?  It is only cultural consensus that determines which 
dialect of a language is considered the priveleged one.  In the South, at 
least before this second invasion of Northern money and people, having a 
Northern accent immediately set you in a pariah class.  It doesn't matter 
that your accent sounds society in Massachusetts or Long Island; if your 
voice marked you as "damnyankee" you were to be treated as some strange 
animal.  In other parts of the country, the slower Southern speech was 
marked as innate stupidity; in Charleston one might consider such an 
accent as having thoughtful deliberation.  One would savor each word 
individually as if it were a bon-bon, as opposed to spitting them out like 
watermelon seeds.  But hey, I am prejudiced.  Of course, because of my 
yankee ma, my sisters and I can thoughtfully deliberate at break-neck 
speeds.