Time for Some Remedial Legal Studies

Tiffany Schley, this year's valedictorian at Brooklyn's High School for Legal Studies, used her valedictory graduation speech to highlight persistent problems at the school, from overcrowded classrooms and the high turnover in principals to textbook shortages. She probably should've stressed ineptitude in the school's putative specialization as well, since someone apparently thought it would be OK to deny her the diploma she'd earned on the basis of those remarks. Mayor Mike Bloomberg has since called it a "bonehead" move and pledged to get the diploma to Schley with all deliberate speed.

Comments

[s.a.m.]

“Our information was that her farewell address did not receive universal support”

Funny, our information is your school system and your school does not receive universal support.

[matthew hogan]

This was an outrage. But the best evidence of the failure of the school showed when the young lady was being interviewed on the news (I saw this) and she protested that she was being denied her diploma “because I told the troof [sic — prnunciation].”

Now I know that’s not an individual speech defect or a slip of the tongue. How can one be a valedictorian in a specialized field (law) that depends on proper verbiage and a distinct interest in “the truth” and be unaware of how to pronounce it properly in a key public statement?

Such a school has to be a joke of its ostensible purpose. (I am all for dialects but one doesn’t apply them strongly in public statements, at least if law, clear communication, and excelling in education is your goal.)

[matthew hogan]

This was an outrage. But the best evidence of the failure of the school showed when the young lady was being interviewed on the news (I saw this) and she protested that she was being denied her diploma “because I told the troof [sic — prnunciation].”

Now I know that’s not an individual speech defect or a slip of the tongue. How can one be a valedictorian in a specialized field (law) that depends on proper verbiage and a distinct interest in “the truth” and be unaware of how to pronounce it properly in a key public statement?

Such a school has to be a joke of its ostensible purpose. (I am all for dialects but one doesn’t apply them strongly in public statements, at least if law, clear communication, and excelling in education is your goal.)

[Jennifer]

Matt-

Cuz nowadayz its, like, wrong for an English teecher to be all judgmental an shit about how people sound when they talks or how they spellz when they writes, so long as you can UNDERSTAND them, yo.

I know this is the troof-I wuz an English teacher for three YEARZ, yo.

(Back to normal wording again–I wish I still had the news article my supervisor passed out at an English department meeting about two years ago, showing a sample essay that would be considered “passing” for tenth graders taking the MCAS test that is standard in Massachusetts. The topic was “Of Mice and Men,” but the spelling and grammar were basically equivalent to what I wrote above. After all–as atrocious as my spelling and grammar were, you knew exactly what I was trying to say, didn’t you? Just as you knew exactly what the valedictorian meant by “the troof.” According to modern educational theory, that is all that matters.)

I have seen the future of this country, people. Invest your money overseas.

[Julian Sanchez]

I don’t know… I have friends from the South, Canada, and England, all of whom pronounce very many words rather differently than I do. I don’t know why “troof” is automatically worse than those variations.

[titus]

If you judge someone based on how they speak, you’re going to be selling some people short and giving others too much credit.

Just like fashion, speech is very personal. Making the effort to switch from “troof” to “truth” or “aks” to “ask” can feel like a betrayal.

However, I think it comes down to style – a future lawyer saying “troof” is about as big a deal as wearing jeans to a nice restaurant. On an ethical, big-picture level it doesn’t matter. But it matters.

I love jeans. There is nothing wrong or inferior about jeans. Just not all the time.

People need to learn how to speak in given situations just like they need to learn how to dress for certain occasions. People don’t need to be made to feel the way they speak is inferior.

[MALAK]

Sorry titus, but one of my biggest fingernails on blackboard feelings is when I hear people try to “aks” me a question. I’m not an elitist but, damn it, there is no such word! If people feel inferior because someone corrects their poor/lazy speech habits, there is a simple solution: CORRECT them. I get pissed at my daughter’s grade two teacher for allowing what jennifer mentioned earlier. If it’s incorrect, I do not care if I can figure it out. I do not want my daughter to be illiterate. Or anyone else, for that matter.

[Skeptikos]

Oh, I can’t hold it against the girl, she pronounces “truth” more accurately than Bush does…bada boom. Really though, ever heard an un-tv processed Bush speech. It is really difficult for me to hold mis-pronounciation against anyone. I mean he is bad. REALLY BAD.

When I heard this story on the radio this afternoon, I was definitely proud of this student. Standing up for yourself,and others these days may be more important than a lot of other items. Although think of how much things have improved. In the fifties she would never, and I mean never have gotten her hands on that diploma. Back than the Mayor of New York would have agreed with the school and slapped this kid around for a while.

[Phil]

Julian: I don’t know why “troof” is automatically worse than those variations.

I suspect, given Jennifer’s clumsy attempt at transcribing dialect, that the answer is “Because black people, and people who adopt urban dialect, say it, and I find that culture threatening.”

Malak: Sorry titus, but one of my biggest fingernails on blackboard feelings is when I hear people try to “aks” me a question. I’m not an elitist but, damn it, there is no such word!

Ahem:

While the pronunciation /aks/ for ask is not considered standard, it is a very common regional pronunciation with a long history. The Old English verb ?scian underwent a normal linguistic process called metathesis sometime in the 14th century. Metathesis is what occurs when two sounds or syllables switch places in a word. This happens all the time in spoken language (think nuclear pronounced as /nukular/ and asterisk pronounced as /asteriks/).

Metathesis is usually a slip of the tongue, but (as in the cases of /asteriks/ and /nukular/) it can become a variant of the original word. This alternative version in Old English was axian or acsian, as in Chaucer’s: “I axe, why the fyfte man Was nought housband to the Samaritan?” (Wife’s Prologue 1386). Ascian and axian co-existed and evolved separately in various regions of England. The ascian version gives us the modern standard English ask, but the axian variant ax can still be found in England’s Midland and Southern dialects.

In American English, the /aks/ pronunciation was originally dominant in New England. The popularity of this pronunciation faded in the North early in the 19th century as it became more common in the South. Today the pronunciation is perceived in the US as either Southern or African-American. Both of these perceptions underestimate the popularity of the form.

/aks/ is still found frequently in the South, and is a characteristic of some speech communities as far North as New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Iowa. It is one of the shared characteristics between African-American English and Southern dialects of American English. The wide distribution of speakers from these two groups accounts for the presence of the /aks/ pronunciation in Northern urban communities.

So in fact, your colleague is correct in calling /aks/ a regional pronunciation, one with a distribution that covers nearly half of the territory in the United States and England.

Maybe one day, everyone in the world will be exactly as smart as they think they are, and will stop embarrassing themselves in public. Maybe. But I doubt it.

[MALAK]

Phil, if it’s in Webster’s fine. Otherwise . . .
Calling something a regional dialect as a way of excusing poor pronunciation is just that, an excuse. It doesn’t matter how much you sugar-coat it. Like I said, if it’s in Webster’s, I will stand corrected.

[MALAK]

A quick search of Webster’s online bears me out. There is no such word in the dictionary. Your explanation of metathesis is interesting but off target. Metathesis is a problem which needs correcting, not acceptance. The words you mentioned are pronounced asteriSK and nucLEAr. Just because your President is a victim, does not excuse the problem. The only embarassment I feel is for people who think this nonsense is okay.

[KentInDC]

Jennifer,
I have my own problems with vowels. I was looking for a house on “I” Street in Idaho Falls and someone asked me to spell it – they WERE serious.

[matthew hogan]

KentinDC —

Allowing for hyperbole and Hollywood, My Cousin Vinny was better law than L.A. Law and other popular presentations.

[JohnL]

At least it was the “troof” and not the “toof”. I hate “r”‘s dropped in the middle of words. I hope the woman writes better than she talks.

Jennifer – Sometimes my eye falls on homework my wife has graded for a third year undergraduate class. I am shocked to see what gets a “B” these days. Kids who were born and schooled in OC write like they are just off the boat.

[joe]

Jennifer, in the example you gave, you conflate a violation of basic grammer “to tells me” with the pronunciations you don’t like. They are not the same thing at all. What you did there, probably without realizing it, was interpolate in an undeniable, though unrelated error, when trying to write an example of the topic at hand.

What does that suggest to you about your assumptions?

[Phil]

“My president?” I voted for Harry Browne, jerkass. Interesting, though, that you would jump to that conclusion when someone corrects you about something. A touch defensive, are we?

I take it, then, that your, erm, how to put this . . . “studied linguistic analysis” is that a) there is only one proper pronunciation of every single word, ever; b) every dialect that differs from yours is ipso facto the wrong one, and c) a pronunciation spoken for more than 500 years by literally tens of millions of people is nevertheless “not a word?” Does that about sum it up?

By the way, it’s delicious to see you embarrass yourself twice in only three hours:

One entry found for ask

Main Entry: ask
Pronunciation: ‘ask, ‘[a’]sk; dial ‘aks dial ‘akst/;

[Jennifer]

Lest I be accused of racism, I just wanted to point out that my students were almost entirely white, but they still talked as I transcribed above. Lots of luck to the valedictorian in her quest for a legal career; she gon’ need it, thatz the troof.

[Jennifer]

Joe-
Well, am I wrong to assume that a young lady who says “troof” is going to have a hard time making it as a lawyer? I’ve already admitted it’s not exactly fair, but the fact is, talking about the unfairness of looking down on those who say “troof” might help you feel better about your open-minded self, but it won’t do a damn thing to help that child get the career she wants.

What does that tell you about your priorities?

[Jennifer]

In Malak’s defense, I’d point out that “ain’t” was once a perfectly acceptable word, but that doesn’t change the fact that anyone who uses it while interviewing for an intellectual-type job ain’t gonna have much luck.

[Jennifer]

Also I wanted to add that the “classist” argument doesn’t hold much water these days. Yes, poor people have it tougher than the rich (I was poor as a child and broke as an adult, so I know something about that) but even the poorest Americans have access to education. Library books can be borrowed for free; other books can be purchased cheaply in thrift store. My own personal library has over three thousand volumes, most of which were purchased over the last ten years for between twenty-five cents to a dollar each at thrift stores and secondhand book shops. If a kid has cable, he can turn off MTV long enough to watch something educational. If he doesn’t, he can still choose to emulate the speech on the network news rather than the modern equivalent of “Homeboys in Outer Space.” Knowledge and education are NOT the exclusive provinces of the rich or even the middle-class; if they were I wouldn’t have the education I do now.

[Phil]

Yes, but we ain’t talking about a separate word; we’re talking about a widespread regional variant of the word spelled “ask,” as noted in the M-W entry I linked to. You might want to ask yourself why “ain’t” is no longer considered acceptable, by the way. I hate to start sounding like a mushy-headed liberal, but there are classist reasons why these words and dialects get “condemned,” as it were.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Ain’t it the troof.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Phil:

Your arguments about regional dialects seem pretty well-informed and (to me) very interesting. I also think arguments on the side of tolerance should win out at the end.

But..

Would you honestly want this young lady, purely from the way she chooses to speak, defending you in court?

[matthew hogan]

The troof hurts.

Of course it is elitism; personally I think dialects and pronunciation are fine. The legal profession is built around elitist rhetoric. If I lapsed into my own native subruban NY regional/class dialect and said to a judge or general audience in Texas (where practiced law): “Dat guy’s brief — Da t’ing ain’t got a cawtuh [quarter] of what it needs.” I’d be unprofessional. Same with the troof. It is not an indictment of the young lady — it is the oposite, an ironic indictment of the uncaring system that edicates her. She was a valdictorian — a high acheiving SPEAKER in a legal vocational school. It’s a demonstrative failure that she reached that level without minimal rhetorical training.

Law is a persuasive rhetoric profession, aimed at an elite audienceand aimed at giving the appearance of rhetorical standardization. Clinton a lawyer was effective as a rhetorician because he toned down dialect (he didn’t have to lose it entirely).

The girl is not the problem and the outrage over this petty slight is real and valid; it’s just that she ironically demonstrated her case by revealing how negligent her school is.

[matthew hogan]

See how rhetoric matters: you wouldn’t want someone who spells like the above (me) without editing (“edicate”, etc.) filing your legal briefs.

The general issue of the “troof” has nothing to due with the validity of dialects, it has to do with the quality and level of professional training, which is evidently a failure.

“Mr. Witness, did you not swear to tell the troof, the whole troof, and nothing but the troof?”

[Jennifer]

If you have a kid’s best interests at heart, do you train her for what the world is, or how it should be?

Let’s ignore grammar for a moment and talk about clothing. It is appalling the way people are judged based upon how they dress. In a truly enlightened, utopian society, we would not make assumptions about a woman’s virtue and/or competence simply because she’s wearing a leather miniskirt, fishnet stockings, and a sleeveless shirt with a neckline down to her navel.

But suppose you know a young woman who dresses like that and wishes to be taken seriously as a lawyer. Do you advise her to nix the miniskirts and belly shirts in favor of something more conservative, or do you let her continue as she is and gripe about how unfair it is that people ignore her mind in favor of her cleavage?

Spelling, grammar and pronunciation are in the same league as sleazy clothes. Ideally they should not matter, but they do nonetheless, and telling kids not to worry about such elitism is not doing them any favors.

[Andrew Lynch]

Jennifer,

NOT that I want to appear to be siding with joe, but aren’t you characterizing a desirable state — a normative state of articulation — that not everyone shares? If becoming a lawyer is impossible when you say troof, what’s to prevent you from becoming a major MTV star, pop musician, urban poetess, or other kind of popular grammar-be-damned professional?

It irks me no end to hear the English language butchered, but the argument that speaking properly gets you places sounds like the legacy of a conservative, white, university-educated, cigar-smoking, country-club snob from the 1950s (that was a lot of fun to type and I’m not labeling you).

In San Francisco (and elsewhere, I’m sure) you’ll find a hell of a lot of powerful, productive Asian lawyers and business people who can’t get past the “r” and “l” thing. I work regularly with young male Indian engineers who talk so fast and in such accented English that I have to remind myself that they’re brilliant and worth the language impasses. That’s foreigners.

Americans — usually blacks — are often held in disdain for their — pardon the oh-so-passe phrase — ebonic approach to English. I’m rambling here, but I think I have a point. I was sitting in the park next to a group of black high-school boys who were speaking TO EACH OTHER in a patois I couldn’t decipher. When they noticed my dogs, they switched to perfect — impressive, even — English. The homies and I had a nifty little conversation about Beagles. They then reverted to whatever the hell they were saying, and all was good.

Um, my point. There’s a huge difference between speaking properly because there’s evidence you’ll fail otherwise, and speaking properly because those around you don’t like the sound of “troof.”

[Evan McElravy]

OK, I’m all for the proper deployment of the Mother Tongue, and I suppose when it came down to cases, I’d self-describe as a linguistic reactionary. BUT this,

“Metathesis is a problem which needs correcting, not acceptance.”

is just too much. This isn’t a speech impediment like a lisp, but rather a basic and well-understood linguistic process. In some languages (e.g., Ancient Greek) it occurred in systematic paradigms that had to be learnt to speak the language correctly (and if you think people are prescriptionists nowadays…). In English etymology, the phenomenon prevailed in the formation of such words as third (originally three-d) and wasp (or. waps). Now, prestige dialects are a fact of life, and I’d much prefer my lawyer mastered one (though I’d really prefer not to have one at all), but you can go a bit too far with the One Best Way thing, especially in a country like the U.S. with a comparatively weak tradition of regional dialects and raging denial of its own class consciousness. (For instance, how many of you really noticed that I used the hoity-toity, but very non-standard, “learnt” above, not “learned?”)

[Evan McElravy]

“I am a patent attorney with a mega-firm. I recently told a woman who had been hired to improve our presentation skills that I wanted to tone down my redneck Alabama accent. She responded that I should keep the accent because most people, like her, found it charming and tended to put more trust in people with Southern accents. A local psychologist (with whom I have had no professional relationship) also asked if I thought people trusted me more because of my accent.”

Very possibly. I suppose it depends on where you are. I suspect at my location, a lawyer with a deep south gulf coast accent would not be an asset, though probably not so much a liability as someone sounding like Chuck Schumer. There’s a certain generic middle ground, though, where no one is likely to be too offended. But I suppose that’s among the most important lawyering skills: judging the crowd.

[Daley]

Everyone knows “troof” is wrong. The right pronunciation is “troot”.

[kevrob]

The young valedectorian attended school in Brooklyn, where, as previously mentioned, “troot” was long the informal pronounciation. That’s because the sound represented in English by the digraph th doesn’t occur in Gaeilge (Irish), and so the heavy influx of Irish immigrants, bringing the form of English they already spoke to America, gave us the sterotypical “Toidy-Toid and Toid” (33rd & 3rd) and “dese, dem and dose.” Switching the oi and er dipthongs is also an Irishism. My Dad, who was first generation, said things like “earl” for “oil”, and he had a masters degree. A generation of social mobility or three, families moving from Flatbush to Levittown, and absorbing the nebulous mid-continental tones of radio and TV broadcasting eventually taught us children of the narrowbacks to pronounce the th sound in the standard manner.

In the U.S., any dialect or accent that persists in a geographic area is a marker for a lower level of emigration of the natives to other states, and a lesser immigration of foreigners and folks from other regions, and/or a lack of social mobility. This would seem to describe some of the denizens of some of our urban areas, and some of our more rural ones, too. I live in a state (WI) where a higher percentage of residents live in the state where they were raised than most other states, and local accents do persist. I was born in Brooklyn, and raised out on Long Island, and though I’ve lived in the Midwest for umpteen years, sometimes people hear New Yorkisms in my speech, especially if I get excited. (“I’m wawkin’ heeaahh!! Gotta Kwaaatah?) Think Ratso Rizzo. I’m amused that, 40 years past a heavy wave of emigration from the Southeast to the Northeast, African-American New Yorkers have merged their Southern drawls with New Yorkese. To my ears, they sound different than their cousins in, say, Atlanta, whose parents or grandparents stayed South.

Undoubtedly, there are remnants of Dutch in the classic Brooklyn accent that I am ignorant of, and would not find extraordinary, if I could even notice them. Actual linguists would be able to tell you.

Kevin
(I gotcha dipt’awng right heeahh, ai’ight?)

[iconoclast]

Actually, depending on what dialect region you’re in, I would want the person whom the jury could best relate. If I was in the south, I certainly wouldn’t want a northerner (with northern dialect) defending me. I’d want the good ole’ boy and his charming southern drawl.

So in the case of the troof, I’d have to sample the jury pool. If the believed troof was just fine if not charming, I’d go with her.

[matthew hogan]

Speaking of troot, the movie My Cousin Vinny implicitly makes the point I am making but better (but with a Hollywood not real life happy ending), the guy’s dialect made him a failure as a lawyer {(“Your Honor, these two yooots (youths)…”; “Mr. Gandini, what is a yoot’?”).

He wasn’t valedictorian.

[KentInDC]

Evan and iconoclast,
I am a patent attorney with a mega-firm. I recently told a woman who had been hired to improve our presentation skills that I wanted to tone down my redneck Alabama accent. She responded that I should keep the accent because most people, like her, found it charming and tended to put more trust in people with Southern accents. A local psychologist (with whom I have had no professional relationship) also asked if I thought people trusted me more because of my accent.

By the way, one of my law professors showed excerpts from “My Cousin Vinny” in class to point out what Mr. Gandini did right and wrong.

[joe]

Please note how people who say “bahth” (bath) don’t get put down for it.

The overclass always has a reason why its own idiosynchracies are acceptable, but those of others are legitimate reasons for censure.

[Jennifer]

Kent and others-
There’s a difference between an accent (which usually involves varying the amount of stress placed on certain sounds) versus mere mispronunciation. There’s a British guy in my office who pronounces “privacy” so that the first syllable rhymes with the first syllable of “rivet.” That is an accent, not a mistake. But suppose he pronounced “privacy” to that it rhymed with “racy?” Nobody would find him charming; we’d just think he was ignorant.

This may not be fair, but the fact remains that while there are many people who are charmed by British or Southern accents (I myself tend to give my vowels a Virginia drawl when I’m tired), there aren’t any people who find it charming to hear someone say, “I aks you to tells me de troof.” Possibly because there are and have been many highly educated, intelligent people with accents from Mother England, or the Old South, or a Midwestern drawl, but thus far there have been no intelligent, knowledgeable people “aksing” about the “troof.” Unfair to be sure, but if the young valedictorian wants to get ahead in her chosen profession she needs to learn that in English, the letters “th” are not pronounced “fff.”

[Rick Barton]

This outrage is another example of the growing authoritarianism that was given a huge boost in the wake of 9/11. Students are more vulnerable to those in positions of power mistreating them in this way.

From the oppression of teen curfews to this type of outrage; kids are taught that might makes right and trouble awaits those who speak out. We will all lose if a generation of Americans gets so used to impositions by those in power that they don’t resist or even question them.

Who ever is responsible for denying Ms. Schley her diploma should be fired “with all deliberate speed”. That would be a valuable lesson for the students of that high school.

[kevrob]

Kent:

“By” is often used for “to” in German-influenced Milwaukee.

Q. “I’m going shopping down by Schuster’s, where the streetcar bends the corner around. You want to come with?”

A. “Ya, sure. Let me get my coat, aina hey?”

I’m told “aina” may be a much shortened remnant of nicht wahr. It compares to the Canadian “eh” and the New England “ayuh.”

Kevin

[Jennifer]

Andrew-
You’re right in saying her speech would be an asset if she wanted to be a gritty urban poet or some such thing, but she herself said she wanted to be a lawyer. If she makes it with her speech, more power to her; I just think it would be much more difficult.

[Jennifer]

Also want to add–the example of the Asian accent not being a handicap to a computer science degree doesn’t quite work, at least not in society’s current state. This country has already learned that a lot of Asians are extremely intelligent despite their accents; furthermore, when writing software the way you pronounce words does not matter. When being a lawyer, pronunciation does.

Or to put it another way: an Asian accent is not a handicap in the computer-science subculture; an “urban” accent is a handicap in the subculture of the legal profession.

Again let me say: IF she succeeds as a lawyer despite her pronunciation I will certainly not complain, but unless and until that happens I will continue to think that she is at a disadvantage.

[KentInDC]

Kevin,
An interesting holdover I have seen in descendants of Dutch immigrants (at least those in the Midwest) is a tendency to use the word “by” in the place of “with”. I think that is because the Dutch word for “with” is “bij”, with the dipthong “ij” usually written as a “y” with a diacritic mark (I don’t think there is a true “y” in the Dutch alphabet.).

[joe]

‘am I wrong to assume that a young lady who says “troof” is going to have a hard time making it as a lawyer?’

As discussed above, I suppose it depends. What you are certainly wrong about is assuming that her accent is an indication of a lack of education.

When I was an undergrad, I had the distinct honor of being in a class taught by Dr. James Horton, who you may have seen on the history channel. He had a similar accent, even making the dread error of sometime dropping internal rs (provide -> puhvide – the phonetic spelling exaggerates, but you get the point). Anyone who assumes from his accent that this highly accredited genius was dumb or uneducation (as I caught myself doing once) is making a huge mistake.

“What does that tell you about your priorities?” That I’m more interested in denouncing and undermining bogus systems of oppression than enabling them. How about you?

And what was that about “America has learned that Asians are smart?” Huh?

[MALAK]

Phil, I will concede your point re: aks. I was looking under ‘aks’ rather than ‘ask’. Silly me. Sorry for the late post, I was away for a day.

[Jennifer]

It means that the stereotype of Asians is one of intelligent, hard-working people, whereas, as of this writing, the stereotype of those who say “troof” is somewhat less flattering.

But back to my original rhetorical question: if you saw a wannabe professional woman who dresses in hooker outfits, would you encourage her to change to something more conservative, or condemn society for equating minimal clothing with minimal ability?

[joe]

“It means that the stereotype of Asians is one of intelligent, hard-working people, whereas, as of this writing, the stereotype of those who say “troof” is somewhat less flattering.”

The language you use to describe beliefs about the intelligence and educational attinnment of people with various backgrounds/habits has shifted quite a bit over the course of the thread, from presenting them as facts/your view to presenting them as stereotypes that society unfortunately holds. I hope your thinking has shifted as well – or perhaps, you’ve clarified the difference between what you think is true, and what you think others think is true.

I’m not sure the “hooker outfits” analogy works, because the sight of displayed women’s bodies influences the viewer in a manner that has nothing to do with culture (and is unrelated to ability), whereas the feelings one has about certain word pronunciations are entirely culturally-determined. Furthermore, the choices one makes in clothing are much more subject to choice than the accent that one’s brain has developed around since infancy.

Finally, I’m quite sure that a High School valedectorian with an accent is quite aware of the larger culture’s opinion of that accent, and its treatment of people with that accent, without her teacher presuming to act as the madame of a finishing school.

[Jennifer]

Joe-
But how do you know she’s aware of the society’s opinion? The reason this whole topic came up was as an indictment of an educational system that would make a valedictorian out of one with such poor speaking skills.

I would also suggest that my clothing metaphor is more apt than you give it credit for being. Your claim that “the sight of a woman’s body affects the viewer in ways unrelated to culture” is not true. After all, a hundred years ago a woman who showed her calves in public would be arrested for indecency, whereas nowadays a respectable woman can go out in skirts an inch or two above the knee and nobody would look twice. The idea of how much skin is too much changes just as the idea of appropriate speech changes. Hell, this very minute I am wearing an outfit which is quite conservative by modern American standards, but in Saudi Arabia (or America ninety years ago) I’d be arrested for it.

As a former teacher, I tried to teach my students to talk in the way considered “proper” rather than try to change society’s perceptions of what IS proper; I had and have no desire to sacrifice an individual’s chance of success on the altar of Social Change for the Greater Good.

[matthew hogan]

Jennifer —

“…whereas nowadays a respectable woman can go out in skirts an inch or two above the knee and nobody would look twice.”

Some of us will look at lot more than twice…:-)

[MALAK]

Phil, et al: Please see Dr. Cosby’s remarks at the recent PUSH gathering.