The Ebonics controversy in my backyard: a sociolinguist’s experiences and reflections

The phrase 'Not in my backyard' abbreviated to NIMBY is commonly used to refer to the stiff opjwsition which local citizens mount to prevent individuals or institutions that they consider undesirable from moving into their communities. Linguists sometimes seem to have a NIMBY attitude towards Applied Linguistics issues and the Great Language Debates of our Times, motivated perhaps by the fear that they will distract us from the theoretical and descriptive research we consider our bread and butter (if not our fame and fortune), that they will devour our time and dilute our expertise, or that they will lead us into uncharted waters for which our training and experience provide little preparation. In December 1996 the Ebonics controversy landed plumb in my backyard, however, before I could say or even think 'NIMBYI' The controversy which erupted from the Oakland School Board's December 18 resolution to recognize Ebonics as the 'primary language of African American children' and take it into account in their Language Arts lessons fell in my backyard for two reasons: (1) geography, since Oakland was one hour away from Stanford; and (2) specialization, since 1 was one of a relatively small group of linguists who had been studying African American Vernacular English (or AAVE, as sociolinguists preferred to call it) for some time, and one of only a handful of such people near Oakland, California, where the media were beginning to converge. Mary Hoover, the longtime AAVE and Education specialist from Howard University (see Hoover 1996), was working in the Oakland School District at the time, and she arranged for Carolyn Getddge, the Superintendent of the Oakland School Board, to contact me for linguistic references and information which she could use in dealing with a skeptical if not hostile press. Of course, to echo Laforest's point below with respect to the debates about Quebec French, linguists were not at first considered to have any special expertise to contribute to this issue, and the people initially quoted in the media were either policy makers (like Delaine Eastin, California Superintendent of Education, and Richard Riley, US Secretary of Education) or African American celebrities (like Maya Angelou, poet and author, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, political activist). Within a few days, however, the media began turning to linguists to provide examples and descriptions of Ebonics and