Teachers should learn how to speak in Ebonics if teaching in a community where it is prevalent.

Con states that "linguistic disparities should be embraced only in so much as is necessary to correct the disparities." These disparities do not need to be "corrected"; linguistic disparities allow language to evolve. We see this in many facets of English language. The meaning of the word "awesome," for example, has changed much over time. What at one point was viewed as a vernacular sense of the word (e.g., "Dude, you got a guitar! that's awesome!") is now the most prominent interpretation of the word. Moreover, we adopt words from other languages into our own (e.g., "vodka") when we notice that the word is significant in our own cultural context, so linguistic disparities already do resolve naturally through the evolution of language and adoption of loanwords. [1] Con then states that the Inuit study was irrelevant for two reasons, which I will address. 1) The opponent argues that "all other languages" have been spoken for a thousand or more years, while AAVE has not. On the contrary, it should be noted once again that languages are constantly evolving. The English spoken several centuries ago is very, very different from the English spoken now; in fact, one can say that they are entirely different languages (or dialects, depending on one's arbitrary definition.) Another point that should be established is that one language, through evolution, can branch into different ones. An example of this would be the branching off of Latin into many languages, such as the Romance languages. [2] In the same way, English branched off into AAVE. 2) The opponent's second argument claims that Ebonics should not be embraced as a minority language because it is "not a language of progress, nor does it offer us a rich history or fresh outlook." Contrary to the opponent's claims, there is no such thing as a "language of progress," and the opponent has yet to prove that Standard English encourages progress more than AAVE. Furthermore, the opponent has yet to validate his claims that AAVE does not offer a rich history or fresh outlook. It is worth noting that such a claim is subjective, anyway; who is to judge the "richness" of history or the "freshness" of an outlook? The opponent argues that AAVE is an "inadequate and limiting dialect, is invalid, [and] ungrammatical." A question arises: What is the opponent comparing the adequacy, restrictiveness, validity, and grammatical soundness of AAVE to? Indeed, translating one language into another is difficult, and it is often impossible to maintain identical semantic structure. A translation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in French would probably be imperfect, especially due to the heavy use of English vernacular that could only be equivocated with rough French translations. This issue would be due to fundamental structural differences between French and English, as well as a different lexicon, leading to differences in semantic representation. This, however, cannot lead one to infer that one language is superior to another. If we were to translate AAVE into English, we would not come out with a perfect product; in the same way, an English-to-AAVE translation would not be perfect. This does not show the superiority of one language to another, but rather shows that there are fundamental differences in structure. Ebonics "does not contain the necessary components to convey essential messages about defined thoughts and concepts" (in the words of the opponent) in English just like English does not contain the necessary components to convey all messages in French, or German, or Ebonics, for that matter. The opponent claims that "it is unfair to train our teachers in certain areas to speak to child that come from homes where apparently parents cannot do their jobs." Firstly, it is not necessarily true that the parents of children who learn to speak AAVE "cannot do their jobs." They speak in the AAVE language/dialect, and their children acquire the same native language. This has nothing to do with how adequately the parents "do their jobs" or the families' socioeconomic status. The fact of the matter is that the youth of certain communities are more familiar with AAVE than Standard English and therefore, for the purpose of more efficient instruction, AAVE should be integrated into the schooling curricula of educational institutions in those areas. The "No Child Left Behind Act" does not involve the implementation of specific languages to suit the linguistic knowledge of youth within a given community [3]; hence, it is not germane to the resolution. The opponent states that AAVE involves "creating a long list of abbreviations and constantly referencing rap songs." This is a ridiculously oversimplified interpretation of AAVE, which has its own morphological, syntactical, and phonological rules that differ from those of English. [4] The opponent describes it as "a dialect of the dominant language," when it was already established (and conceded by the opponent) that the disparity between "language" and "dialect" are insignificant in the context of this debate. And, in accordance to the opponent's logic, the Romance languages, which stem from Latin, are all skewed versions of Latin, or "the dominant language," as the opponent would call it. In conclusion, the concept of dominance of one language over another that the opponent is advocating is a blatantly false concept, and it fails to attack the resolution. In order to teach students in class more efficiently, it would be pedagogically sound to incorporate the students' native tongue, as explained by the Linguistic Society of America. [5] --- (As an aside, Con should use in-text citations in order to assert his points in a more clear, organized manner.) [1] http://www.ruf.rice.edu... [2] http://www.britannica.com... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org... [4] http://www.hawaii.edu... [5] http://www-personal.umich.edu...