And i want to thank you for coming tonight. Im a librarian at mid Manhattan Library. Im happy to present john mcwhorter. Were lucky here at mid Manhattan Library because john has come more than once. He has been very kind aboutthat this is his third visit. Tonight he will speak about his most recent book, talking back, talking black. Truth of about americas lingua franca. He is a associate professor of Columbia University where he teaches linguistics, American History and africanamerican studies. He is columnist for Time Magazine and regular contributor to the atlantic and the wall street journal and the Washington Post and he is the author of 16 books and tonight he is going to be speaking about his most recent book talking back, talking black. Without further adieu, john mcwhorter, please. [applause] thanks, phyllis. Folks. Thanks for coming here tonight. What i want to talk to you about is not too long the last book i published which was talking back, talking black. It had a very compact thesis. I wanted to see if i could make the general public have a more positive view of the dialect that most black americans use in casual situations because the general idea is that black english is some sort of lapse or stain or scourge. It always bothered me. I never heard it that way but the misperception continues and we linguists, this crowd known as linguists, shake our heads at this idea that the general public, including the educated general public has with there is something wrong the way the black people talk. We always say the public just doesnt get it. But to tell you the truth i started to feel as if a lot of why the the public doesnt get it was linguists f b linguists i include myself. I thought, somebody needs to put something out there that maybe addresses all of this in a new way. First, what do i mean by black english . These days if the troll the academic literature you call hit africanamerican vernacular english or aave. I learned it in black english in the 80s, and i formed habits. I will stick with black english. But what is meant by that . Okay, it doesnt only mean the slang that is more commonly used by black people and especially black young people and others. Thats part of it. But it is not only the slang. We linguists are not shaking our head about slang. People dont like dissertations about slang. I would not waste a book about slang. The slang is 1 8 of it. That is not what we mean by black english. What we mean is two other things. First of all there is the different now in linguistics we call it foe nollgy. But in real world we call it an accent. You could say the white people have an accent. Any american has a sense on some level there is a black way to sound. If it bothers you for me to say that, i will be talking about that in 15 minutes but most people have a sense that you can usually tell a person is a blackamerican even if youre not looking at them, you could tellissenning over the phone even if no slang is used. That is proven scientifically again and again. Americans both white and black are very, very good at that. To a linguist, black english has different phonology than black english. The slang is a sound system. It is how you put words together. Linguists call that grammar but we learned that is not a good word to use in the real world because the way were all taught grammar is that grammar is about a bunch of things that people do wrong. And so to the general ear, to the extent black english has grammar it is bad grammar. To the linguist, what black english has is different but legitimately coherent grammar. The grammar is absolutely essential to the way were speaking. The sound system and the grammar. That is what im talking about when i say black english. And who speaks it . Definitely not all black americans, definitely not. There are black americans who do not speak black english on any of those three levels. However, it is impossible to put an exact figure to it, especially because as with almost anything were talking about continuum and declines. It may be in only the sound. It might be the sound and the grammar but the vast majority, in other words this corresponds to the gut sense that we have that there is a black way of speaking or a black sound. So that is what i mean by black english. It is not the same thing as southern whitening like. I will get to that. Its a black heritage potential. That is what black english is. A great many people think of it as trash. This goes on decade after decade after decade. There are scholars who have come before me who have done magnificent detailed work on black english. Yet whenever the dialect comes up in the news for whatever reason people have the same misimpressions. It is frustrating and i wondered if it has to be that way. Now there are two things that linguists have often said about how black english should be perceived. There are two major prongs, there is a message that weve given the public. One of them is that if you dont like black english, that you dont like black people. That if you diss black english you are a racist. That has been said not in so few words but that is point people make in classes. You can read it in books and have conversations about it. I dont think that goes through. Not just because some of you may know i have a reputation on being a contrarian on race issues. Any linguist would agree with me. People that Say Something about black english that it is bad grammar say the same thing about poor southern whites grammar is very sim lear. No one is saying that they are using perfect english grammar and black people doing the same thing are getting it wrong. There is a general sense in this country in the general educated angloworld that most people walk around breaking the rules of their own language. There are all of these grammatical constructions that people say wrong. People say less books than fewer books. That it is wrong billy and me went to the rather than billy and i went to the store. Yes, i could do a whole talk on that but we have a sense that people mess up their grammar. So you can listen to black people using constructions that are considered bad grammar in the same way as very similar and often the same constructions as seen as bad grammar when white people use them. You dont have to be a racist. Something i heard many whites would say i would be a racist if i didnt think that would be bad grammar. I understand black people have been condemned to bad grammar by slavery and jim crow but our job is to teach them out of it, not pretend it is okay to use bad grammar. You may disagree, thats not a bigot. Racism alone doesnt help us here. Im not saying it is not part of it. Certainly racism plays a part but is it the only part and more to the point can the racism itself be changed . But it is not the only part and by not the only part, i dont mean it is 85 . It is really not the only part. Another aspect of it is that linguists will say black english is okay because it is systemic. What that means is that you look at the things that are different in blacking like and they actually follow rules in the same way as your own language follows rules. So that means that it is a structured and legitimate form of speech. And you know, i, im sorry to say this, to my own dissertation advisor and all the people who came before me and frankly the ones right along with me and ones that have come after, but folks, some of you are watching, i will say it, the system tisty argument doesnt convince the public and it doesnt and youve seen it. What i mean is Something Like this. The verb, to be, which is very different in black english than it is in standard english. So a black person might say, she my sister. You dont have the verb, to be. Then again the same person would never say, i your sister. That is bad grammer in black english. It has to it be im. You use the word to be with some persons and numbers but not others. And so it is omitted as linguists put it only in certain contexts as we put it. So if a martian were learning how to speak black english for real and would be indistinguishable they a lot to learn how that to be would learn. It would surprise you how high the stack of papers have been written about the verb to be in black english. It is complicated. Nobody would want a mafia torun the town. Poinciana is very systematic, i couldnt believe a piano at gunpoint, nobody wants to see her on a toy piano. Felicity alone doesnt make the argument so here we are. And that phrase that we are is where i started, i thought is that it, is it basically a matter of saying your racist if you dont like the dialect and or the system matter, where while the American Public thinks thats an appropriatesystem and so , talking back, talking black yes across for quick points. Designed to other or maybe around the peripheral argument and im going to quickly outline what they are. One of them is black english is full of things that it does not do that mainstream standard english does. The verb is not there so you can simply send blackout is broken. What is less covered is that black english is more complex in many ways then mainstream standard english but we have a hard time hearing it because all we can here is the quote unquote bad grammar , the slang also gets in the way. There are things in black english that would be more challenging for a foreigner to learn and if they had to learn the language of the wall street journal. Ill give you two quick ones. In all of these things found the light what we classify as slang, theyre not slang. Theyre beautiful, for example, you could listen to, i picture a little black boy for the first time i heard it was one of my cousins. Sounds like an overusing ad when theyre telling a story and so what had happened was she had come to my house and she had said i want some lemonade and i said ill go get you some that i came out and dropped the picture and i had bent over on the floor to clean it up and she had said what are you doing . I said im having a bad day. And youre wondering, where does it end. Then you notice the head is at the end. Some people listen to that anything that person doesnt know how to use the pluperfect, thats not what it is. Black english has some things you can find in languages spoken by obscure groups of people all over the world that has a narrative class that strikes it from the regular path, you can find this in many language if youre a linguist that describes language you wait for it. It will be the path you use to Say Something like i still do lemonade on the floor but then theres going to be a path that you use its going to be some different suspects, some prefix of words that use when youre spinning through a narrative. It would be as if in english we didnt have the ed path but then we had some other suffix that we use. Black english happens to be as each variety that has a narrow path so its not in my cousin doesnt know how to put ed on the end of things but when hes telling a story id say hes a grown man now but he would use it now because hes a fluent speaker of black english when you telling a story, he piles in the hats. When you think about that, anymore than any of us could really explain when you use a and when you use the if we really thought about how we use it going throughout the day. Human beings beach language selfconsciously, same thing with black english so nobody walks around thinking about narrative path, theres an awareness, theres a sense of a joke that people will say what had happened, that one thing. But really its a kind of grammar and its more complex than what you have to do to tell a story in standard english. A better example is john, heres somebodys science and the natural thought is well that person is saying something blackly and you might think what you mean done eight, while you say done eating . And in general why not just you ate it, whats that usage and you move on thinking like people talk wrong. Don is really interesting. And i dont mean just subtle in that its endless complexity meaning that does no system at all, that would be a way of tricking you into thinking something is complex. Its actually a very precise usage but it took people a long time to figure out and its interesting, the recent past like you done eight which was something we had 10 minutes ago, but no, there are other things that you could use done for. Somebody could say i dont have a crush on you since you were 12. That is recent, that was presumably a long time ago. Its a recent passage between its challenging but its not random. Nobody walks around using some bit of stuff in a language randomly. Thats not what black people are doing any more than anybody else is doing and it turns out that don marks expectations and what i mean is that whenever you hear a black person using done where its you dont speak black english you would just use the path, what theyre talking about is something you wouldnt have expected so you donated is somebody who thought it was going to be them for them to eat. I dont had a crush on you since you were 12 means you wouldnt have known it but here you are 40 and ive had a crush on you since you were 12. Its not how do you get here, i dont took the subway. No, unless the subway was just yesterday and it was your first time or Something Like that, otherwise just took the subway. This is grammar, this is what people study. This is this thick, black english has lots of those things. Im giving you two for the purpose of time. Black english is full of these things so you listen to it as trash causes got the slang and it breaks mainstream standard english rule but was part of harder to hear is there are all these things in that are more complex than what we of english thats the first thing and and i wish that had been made clearer to the public that has been because it has to be, people respect complexity, not just difference but complexity, black english is very complex, thats the first thing. Second thing, if we are on our way to understanding black english is not wrong and that its not not wrong because the people who speak in our black but is not not wrong because its not only thematic but complicated, then we can address this prickly issue of whether its wrong to say that somebody does or does not sound black. Because it can be really tricky to talk about sounding or not sounding black because given the way black english is perceived, and given the way black people are often perceived, its very hard not to hear that person black sound as meaning something negative as sounding like kind of slurry. The idea is they must have something wrong with the black sound and we think it must mean that person uses bad grammar quote unquote, etc. But actually, what would be sizing as if there were no black sound because human speech starts in one place and then theres some people who go in this direction and some people who go in that direction. Now latin started here, the people who went in this direction ended up speaking french latin changing in various random ways. The people who went in this direction ended up speaking spanish because latin changed in random ways different than the ones over there. Same thing with dialects. Some people over here, theyre going to end up speaking a different kind of language and people over here and this is every bit the points even when the people live like this because its not always a matter of geography, its also social identification, youtalk like the people you are most intimate with. English is going to change in Different Directions and sounds are always changing in any language. Listen to most americans now, its gotten to the point under 40. And youll notice they are more likely to say i caught the fist rather that i caught a fish, very subtle. Theres no value judgment attached to it but the all sound is nothing into the house down. I caught a fish, sushi is raw fish. Approximate lazy circles in the sky. It isnt the way you talk, the more common. More recent in america every decade. Thats a sound change. That is one example of whats happening in all human speech all the time. So of course, black people have a sound. The sound has nothing to do with sinuses or anything like that, its just the vowels are a little different. This is study in horses so obscure that it seems almost willful, nobody wants to touch it. You find in journals that have nothing to do with linguistics, journals where they only seem to print one issue and its in finland or Something Like that but its been proven again and again person will study one vowel at a time and easily never tell the world. So about three years ago i decided what would happen if you actually use especially modern technology and analyze a few black peoples vowels and a few white peoples house. You find the vowels just sit in a different place . I put two students on this, call men and sam having rich, thank you guys and really it was just like it was one morning i was driving and visiting to npr and i had an experience like a lot of us have often, somebody was talking about tax policy and in the back of my mind i thought, how do you know . In the back of my mind. I wasnt sitting there tabulating, no but i said thats a black person and i thought how do i know . It was interesting because were trade think know, if your wife im a racist for even supposing that and black people often think know, theres not a black way to talk because it seems like its playing into the whole idea theres racism on a certain level what i think all of us know southern whites dont sounded exactly like black people but what i was listening to on npr wasnt a southerner, it was a black person. And i thought to myself what are the vowels . And there are some. Its kind of hard to talk about in this format, it would be kind of boring but there are different files. Theres also a different timber which has nothing to do with anatomy but just where you happen to produce your sound, if youre an opera singer youre taught to play your voice in a different way. Different languages have different timber in that way. Different dialogue has different timbre in that way. Theres very subtle factors of cameras that give you all subconsciously that this person is viola davis and not Melissa Mccarthy. And you know instantly and it could be analyzed scientifically, its interesting. That got out there and an interesting thing is, what are your kids . Your kids are going to ask, i asked my mother 1973, im sure people asked it all over the place and imagine your wife and your kid says how come you can always tell somebodys black even if you cant see them mommy to mark the impulses to say thats not true, black people sound like southerners. And you know thats not true. Or the impulse to say no, everybody talks in different ways. You shouldnt stereotype. Your kid has an iq over 40, theyre going to think im not stereotyping, im hearing the truth so what do you tell a kid . And i think that we need to get comfortable saying black people have a slightly different sound because they often spend m