The goal of this paper is to present an ‘argument mapping’ of William Labov’s article, “The Logic of Nonstandard English”.The way I will proceed to map Labov’s argument is by defining terms and enhance all the supporting evidence that I find important in understanding the full argument. I will then go on to map the main argument while providing claims that will provide evidence. Finally the paper will end the argument mapping through reestablishing the article by establishing new links between presumed claims and evidence in a way that associates with broader argumentative structure. In this situation, I will contend there are four solid ethnographic facts one poor ethnographic fact, one generalized ethnographic fact , and two ethnographic observations.
William Labov’s emphasis in this essay is on the concept of the surplus and how it relates to non-standard English. He reflects in general on how the concept of deficiency relates to kids from metropolitan ghetto areas and Nonstandard Negro English, which will be referred to as NNE.
Labov aims to invalidate ethnographic assumptions given by Deutsch, Bereiter, and Engelmann in his article. To do so, he makes nine claims related to each other. The first four are the same and will be discussed first. Such claims involve: lower-class children that act in monosyllabic, protective actions because of circumstances which they feel threatened; working-class speakers are more active speakers than middle-class speakers; while children who use NNE don’t use standard English forms; they understand the actual grammar; social and cultural differences resulting in various grammar types do not suit their theoretical interpretation capabilities.
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His fifth point is that various forms of expression in college do not lead to different levels of success. As a sixth statement, he argues that Deutsch, Bereiter, Engelmann’s ethnographic facts are wrong. It should be mentioned that the sixth statement is a general statement of the previous five statements because they all attempt to explain against the statements of the above-mentioned writers. The next two were close, as mentioned below.
Both explain the surplus theory’s consequences. He explains the effects as: specific instructor behaviors towards NNE students and decreased confidence in the inferiority of those using NNE. Though the latter of the two statements is self-explanatory, it is necessary to discuss the opposite of these two claims. He argues that because of the auto-fulfilling prophecy, if a teacher has a different attitude towards him because of his different language style, a student would be negatively impacted. The ninth and final statement of Labov is that related papers dismissed the theory of the shortfall, thereby defending the findings of Labov.
Evidence must therefore be discussed for each of Labov’s claims in support of his argument. Most of Labov’s claims have been focused on his field work in south-central Harlem with social groups. Such social networks are made up of kids from households of the lower class or middle class families. It is important to note the difference between the two groups. Lower-class families are generally matrifocal, and female-based, with no financial helping male role model.
On the contrary, middle class families are those with a male role model getting a semi-qualified or professional job. The arguments he presents were focused on two forms of ethnographic data in particular.
The first form is the use of group interviews to advance his statements. His arguments are supported by the fact that the findings of these surveys could be extended to the kids of African American who have used NNE overall. The concept is mentioned several times throughout the document. Labov also provides details of interviews to back up his claims. Those can be seen as indicators of specific ethnographic things he learned from south-central Harlem researching social groups.
As seen above, Labov’s first four claims are validated by ethnographic facts, so I will identify them evenly in this argument mapping. It can be considered strong ethnographic facts and for each of these arguments, Labov offers direct evidence. It is not necessary to combine his fifth statement with the previous four because it is a weaker argument.
He reveals that the fifth statement relies on one of the four preceding arguments and has no clear evidence for it, so I marked it as a weak ethnographic fact. His sixth statement is entirely based on the prior five arguments to be confirmed, and without those five statements he can not build his sixth argument on anything, so I mark it as a generic ethnographic interpretation.
It gives a more general interpretation of what he is attempting to prove in his article, including the other five claims. The seventh and eighth statements are both related since they both explain the potential consequences of the concept of surplus based on previous arguments, so I have marked them as ethnographic findings.
Both used the previous statements and gathered data that shows the negative effects that would occur if the concept of the surplus, which he sought to disprove in those statements, were to be recognized. The ninth and final argument by Labov also shows support for his arguments on the grounds of other researchers observations.
Recent results have shown that NNE should not be ignored and further researched to disprove the notion that NNE use has been influenced by the concept of depletion. Such analysis of other information has been marked as an informative document. Now, I’ve completed my argument mapping of William Labov’s “The Logic of Nonstandard English.”
I stated five varieties of components in the argument structure of Labov in my argument, that I will now review. He composed his argument for its first time from four solid ethnographic facts to which he added a weaker ethnographic fact. He also included a specific ethnographic description addressing the five points. He also provides two ethnographic results which demonstrate on the basis of earlier claims the possible consequences of the deficit hypothesis. Finally, he references an insightful report that supports his observations and outlines them.
