1. Semicolon, Maeri
2. History of Punctuation, Kasey
3. Colon, Andrew
4. Dashes, David
5. Parentheses, Justin
6. Brackets, Lyann
7. The Future of Punctuation, Katie
8. Hyphen, Michelle
9. Question Mark, Cara
10. Exclamation Point, Christine
11. Quotation Marks, Mikael
12. Apostrophe, Sarah
13. Ellipses, Megan
14. Period, Amanda
15. Comma, Aida

It's hard for me to think of Ebonics as a language, simply because it sounds a lot to me like the language I speak at home and in the classroom. It is comprised of the same words I use, I can understand it, and, if I wanted to, I could probably speak Ebonics without a formal instructor.
It may be well and true that Ebonics has its roots in the African slave trade, evolving by force from tribal tongues into a way to talk back to 'Ol Massa without him realizing it. But this can be said about many of the dialects of English...even those spoken by the illiterate rednecks of backwoods Mississippi, who I'm sure inherited their speech patterns from a variety of sources. But are we advocating a federal fund for Mississippi-ites?

No. Because they speak INCORRECT English.

We have been doing a lot of reading over the controversy surrounding the Oakland school board's resolution stating that "black English" is a language in and of itself; thus qualifying for more federal money under bilingual education. This has brought into question, what is a new language. Language, such as species, change over time and across geographic location. In the biological sense of evolution, as it pertains to the genesis of species, molecular changes to a population's genetics accumulate to a degree in which it cannot mate successfully with other individuals outside of its population to produce viable, fertile offspring. Though this may initially sound disparate, I believe that focusing on functionality in the process of defining language, as oppose to social or political discrepancies, can be more adequate and effective means to define a new language. Under such conditions, variations or dialects of a particular language can exist as long as the function of language, i.e. communication, is upheld.

Oh, the excitement. Since we can't talk about religion anymore, why not make small talk about linguistic discrepancies that are hardly of any consequence to many of the people who discuss them? Walt Wolfram, in my opinion, offers the most insightful explanation not as to what Ebonics is, but rather what this whole Oakland controversy was about in the first place and who it affects.

According to Wolfram, the resolution's point was to officially acknowledge that African American Vernacular English is a legitimate language system. Whether it is a separate language or a dialect is not important, as it has been made clear that the intention of the Oakland Resolution was not to declare African Americans 'bilingual' in order to gain federal funding.

My question is this: So what if this whole resolution was just a ploy to gain federal financial support? Would this be a bad thing? Would it be so shocking to the nation if *gasp* the Oakland schools splurged on some new textbooks, or invested in materials/training to increase the standardized test scores of a significant percentage of students? What next-bathrooms with a constant supply of toilet paper?

I found Wolfram’s article quite helpful in getting an overview of the controversy regarding Oakland School Board Resolution on Ebonics. The notion of “language ideology,” which Wolfram defines as “an underlying, consensus belief system about the way language is and is supposed to be” (109) is also very illuminating. He basically argues that the Oakland incident called into question the implicit language ideology people have, which otherwise might not necessarily even be given much thought by anyone, and that is why the public and/or the media (over)reacted. While his point is very well taken, I am still a little skeptical as to what exactly is the “language ideology” and whether the public (who are the “public”?) share the unified ideology. In other words, I am wondering if the (over)reaction of the media was really a reflection of public opinion, or if it was something orchestrated by the media. Wolfram states that “Americans in general have been socialized in the same language ideology, which appears to be no respecter of ethnic background, social class, and position” (111), but is it really true?

McWhorter makes many interesting arguments about ebonics or black english one beinmg whether or not black english is just slang. He points out that even white americans have slang such the famous quote "whatever" or "as if" from clueless a popular movie in the 90's. He notes that blacks also have slang such as "crib" or "heezee" for house. His point is that "slang to language is like clothes to people, like fashion, slang changes all the time", so if black english is slang, and slang changes, then obvioulsy it is not a language because languages don't change decade to decade like slang does. He further explains that there are even different variations in slang depending on location therefore it is not one common language, it changes from city to city.

When I was reading McWhorter's discussion on Ebonics, a lot of the word choices contradicted the story line. I felt that he approached the issue from an informative and pro stance. There were several phrases like "refusal to conjugate the verb..." I thought this should not be thought of as a refusal, but rather a decision or a choice. I did appreciate all of the information regarding the diversion from "standard English." He went into a lot of detail on the issue of the lack of the "th" sound and the difference in the standard English rice and the Ebonics rice. The way he depicts the old Hollywood stance on Ebonics in the scripts was very interesting. When he explains this he talks about the ability for African Americans to "turn off" their Ebonics speech when talking to a white person and to "turn on" their deeper, more consistent use when talking to other blacks. His comparision to the melting pot of English language was an important fact because it makes us realize that we are not superior.

Whether or not ebonics is a language became a distinctive, controversial issue because of the Oakland School Board's resolution. Their resolution was that ebonics is indeed a language, and with that, funds should be given to help educate the native ebonic speakers of standard English to improve their grades and scores on standardized tests. Issues arose because many people do not believe it is a language for the fact that it is just a variation of English or black slang. They claim that ebonics is a dialect rather than a language and that funds should not be given for ebonic speakers.
I do not believe ebonics is a language because it is based off of English with variations in pronunciations and different verb tenses, but still using the same alphabet and words. A few different articles explained that ebonics developed in the slave era by creating a type of variation or code so whites could not understand it, proving it is just a variation of English. Since it is not a language i do not think funds should be given. I am not saying Ebonics is bad in any sort of way, but since Standard English is the basis of education, then if the ebonic speakers want to succeed, Standard English should be learned.