Greer-Pitt "They has their own rules..."

They has their own rules of grammar

by Sue Greer-Pitt

Published: Lexington Herald-Leader, November 22, 1998, page H3.

Recently I passed a local convenience store and noticed a sign of congratulations posted outside. It said: “Brad and Caroline has a baby girl.” My first thought, since I knew Brad and Caroline, was a sense of pleasure at their good news. My second thought, also pleasurable, was noticing yet another example for my growing file on the grammatical rules of the local dialect.

Most of the people that I encounter in Letcher County, where I teach sociology at Southeast Community College, speak a dialect of English, that is distinctive in its pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. It is not, as columnist Bill Bishop reminded us in his September 20 column, a carefully preserved remnant of Elizabethan English. Nor are Eastern Kentuckian’s alone in their use of a regional dialect. Individuals who hail from the coast of Maine, to the Louisiana bayous all have identifiable patterns of speech. There are dozens of different dialects of English, tied to geographic regions, social class and ethnic groups.

Social linguists teach that all dialects have grammar. Many people mistakenly believe that grammar is what you find in textbooks. Not so. Grammar is nothing more, nor nothing less than a set of rules. These rules are understood implicitly by all persons who speak the same dialect. The rules make speech mutually understood by all members of the group. People also mistakenly think that grammar is something that we must be formally taught. Again, this is not true. All children, brought up normally interacting with family, neighbors, and peers, effortlessly and unconsciously learn the rules or grammar of their native dialect.

The catch is that of all the dozens of dialects of English out there, only one has been formalized, written down into textbooks, and designated as the “standard” dialect for educated persons. For better or for worse, it is the dialect of 19th century economic and social elites that became the prescribed standard for all. This is not surprising, as only these elites had the resources to create and colleges and universities, and to educate their children in them. Moreover, they owned the publishing companies responsible for textbooks, grammars and dictionaries that promoted the spread of a standardized dialect through out the nation.

The mistake that most people make (and they are encouraged by many educators to make it), is to view the standard dialect as the only one that is “grammatical.” They therefore label all other dialects as “ungrammatical.” No dialect is any more or any less grammatical than another. Dialects are merely different in their grammatical rules, but they all have rules. For example, in Letcher County one such rule is that verbs ending in “s” are plural, while singular verbs do not. So “has” is plural, as in “Brad and Caroline has a baby girl.” Similarly, “they is..” follows this rule, as does “he ain’t...” This happens to be the opposite of the rule in the standard dialect of English found in textbooks, but it is no less grammatical or rule governed. It is simply a different dialect.

It is necessary for young people in Letcher County to learn to speak, and especially to write, in the standard dialect. Facility with the standard dialect is a prerequisite for success in higher education, and in any field of business or employment where one must interact with people from outside the local area. With the growth of computer networks and the globalization of American business, such interaction becomes necessary even when one does not physically leave Letcher County. Learning this standard dialect is not enhanced by denigration of local speech patterns. On the other hand, encouraging a pride in local culture, including local dialect, should not be made an excuse for failing to tackle the difficult task of teaching standard English.

Part of the problem is no one has formally studied the grammar of the local dialect to understand what its rules are. While there are a multitude of books on Appalachian and southern vocabulary and pronunciation, nothing has been written about the rules of speech found in local dialect. Any one who has studied a foreign language such as Spanish or French, knows that one of the tools to learning another language is the ability to compare the new language’s rules to those of ones native tongue. We are asking young people in Eastern Kentucky to learn a “foreign” dialect, without first consciously knowing and being able to articulate the rules of their own dialect.

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Sue Greer-Pitt/They has their own rules.../Southeast Community College, Whitesburg, Kentucky Campus/ sgree0@pop.uky.edu/January 12, 1999.