geophysicist
I would argue there is a distinction between the prestige markers you’re talking about and the more general grammatical rules that are followed. You can use grammatically correct English without subscribing to the over complexity that is, yes, possible.
A dialect can work locally, but there is a reason why many who have travelled abroad find themselves deliberately softening their dialect and shifting closer to proper English /queen’s English / whatever we’re calling it. It’s because their dialect is hard to understand for people who are not used to it. My girlfriend always comments how my dialect comes out of the woodwork when I’m back home with family.
Saying “I be lit” or “gimme a pint guvna” just will not be understood outside of the area or cultural group that it is spoken in. Therefore for business and/or travel you need a more standard form of English that everyone can understand. That’s not some overly complex cultural dance we play to keep the powerful powerful, that’s just basic requirements of communication.
For climbing, those are called “punters”
You do understand that English has grammatical rules, right? That’s not up for debate. It’s not controversial to say that standard English would be following the standard spellings and grammatical rules for the language. If you genuinely don’t know what those are, then please buy a dictionary or hire an English teacher. You could also look up what the rules are for the English language exam required to become a citizen. These are taught in schools around the world. About the extent that the rules vary is if you are learning American English or British English. Each of those two has the backing of a nation state
Really good reply, thanks for the effort you put in. Its good to see they did compare with other dialects. It’s interesting that the same bias was not seen.
I would still disagree with the statement that AAE could be considered equally proper to textbook, grammatically correct according to the Oxford English dictionary (or the American equivalent). A dialect by definition is an adaptation of the language from the standard ‘proper’ grammatical rules.
Of course there is a proper english. As defined by standard grammatical rules of the English language. A dialect is a variation upon that. I am not saying “black people don’t speak proper English”. There are plenty of black people who speak proper English, the same as there are plenty of white people who speak proper English and plenty of white people who speak dialects. I am saying that any and all dialects are not formal English, by definition of what the grammatical rules of the language are
This seems to be based on a racist assumption. Why is speaking improper English labelled as “African American english”?. I would want to see the LLM assumptions also for southern drawl and for general incorrectly spelled / grammared speech, to compare to the assumptions made for the African American english version.
Speaking with slang / incorrect grammar is of course, in general, inversely correlated with education level and/or preference for shorthand forms of speech over writing/speaking the full grammatically correct form. The LLM is saying speaking in slang = stupid/lazy.
The researcher is labelling slang as specifically African American speak, therefore interpreting the LLM response as assuming African Americans are stupid/lazy.
