Opinion
Nebraskan
Editorial Board
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Chris Hopfensperger.Editor, 472-1766
Dionne Searcey..Opinion Page Editor
Kris Karnopp. Managing Editor
Alan Phelps.Wire Editor
Wendy Navratil. Writing Coach
Stacey McKenzie..Senior Reporter
Jeremy Fitzpatrick.Columnist
Round one
- ■ --- **' *
President By.sh prepares for first bout
All of a sudden President Bush wants to pull on the gloves
and get in the ring. After dodging debates for weeks, the
president on Tuesday challenged Democrat Bill Clinton to
go head-to-head on the last four Sundays of the campaign season.
“Let’s get itbn,'” Bush said.
The president should have been wiser than to use a boxing
.allusion with the candidate he *
has been painting as a heavy
weight throughout the cam
paign.
“If Governor Clinton is
serious about debating, he will
accept this challenge,” Bush
said.
But if Bush was serious
about debating, he would have
put up his verbal dukes much
earlier.
Clinton, who has been
bashing Bush because the
president has refused to debate
x under the rules proposed by the
bipartisan Commission on
Presidential Debates, should be
more than willing to go four
rounds with the current champ.
Bush’s offer does come at an opportune time to stop the
bleeding of support and ward off further negative effects of Ross
Perot’s possible re-entry.
Obviously oblivious to the potential two-on-one situation,
Bush also invited the non-candidate into the fray.
Let’s get ready to rrrrrumble.
Save-the-economy
Environmental president threatens parks
President Bush, the environmental president, is about to
open the door on another ecological disaster.
Bush, whose lip service to the environment was revealed
at this summer’s summit in Rio de Janeiro, has already helped
relax restrictions that protected wetlands and limited oil explora
tion, mineral mining and logging on federal lands.
Now, a new Interior Department regulation, set to become final
shortly after the Nov. 3 election, will alter the interpretation of a
vague 15-year-old law protecting America’s national parks.
The change will allow coal companies to gain access to coal
buried beneath 40 million acres of the protected lands. It is a
technicality that could result in the destruction of 16 percent of
the parkland.
But instead of allowing the policy change to be made, the
ambiguity in the original law should be cleared up.
When a national park is established, the government saves
money by buying only what is on the surface. The previous
landowner holds — and may sell — anything below ground.
The environment is already threatened by Bush’s savc-the
cconomy, not the trees, policies. The regulation could turn the
national parks into an endangered species.
President Bush should take a stand to protect what earlier,
greater presidents set aside.
Suff editorials represent the official policy of the Fall 1992 Daily Nebraskan. Policy is set by
the Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board. Editorials do not necessarily reflect the views of the
university, its employees, the students ortheNU Board of Regents. Editorial columns represent
the opinion of the author. The regents publish the Daily Nebraskan. They establish the UNL
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__ Don Qmxgxe.
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■ 1 ——■ -" —1
Black language
In a letter to the editor (DN, Sept.
23); Scott S. Boito challenged Kim
Spurlock’s assertion (DN, Sept. 17)
that Black English is a language in its,
own right, with roots in Africa and the'
experience of slavery. Boito conde
scendingly “offers the suggestion” that
Black English is instead “the result of
generations of lesser education of mi
norities.” In other words, merely
ungrammatical English, rather than
the language that Ms. Spurlock cel
ebrates as having a power and beauty
of its own.
Boito has said nothing new here:
The opinion he expresses was once
widely believed, even by educated
people. Unfortunately for him, the
theory lhalBlack English was just bad
English was conclusively disproved
more than 20 years ago. When lin
guists finally got around to studying
black speech patterns carefully, they
discovered that the differences from
standard English were consistent and
regular and could be explained by
well-known linguistic principles. That
is, Black English is not ungrammatical
English, but a dialect of English with
a grammar of its own.
rur example, me USC 01 10 DC in
Black English varies significantly
from the standard dialect. Where the
standard dialect requires a form of
“is” to be grammatical (My sister is
late), Black English does not: “My
sister late.” However, if a Black En
glish speaker says: “My sister be late,”
she means that her sister is habitually
tardy—a distinclion that the standard
dialect makes with modifiers rather
than the verb: “My sister is always
late.”
For another example, where stan
dard dialect uses “s” to indicate plural
and “*s” to indicate possession, Black
English relies on word order and se
mantic content: “Two boy come into
Mr. Brown store.”“Two” tells us how
many boys, making the final “s” un
necessary for clarity, and the relative
positions of “Mr. Brown” and “store”
make clear whose store it is.
Or lake multiple negatives. The
standard dialect insists that multiple
negatives logically cancel each other
out, so that “I will not do nothing”
means “I will do something” or “I
refuse to do nothing.” But Black En
glish typically rejoices in multiple
negatives as a way of creating empha
sis: “Ain’t nobody leavin for no toot
ball game till this mess cleaned up.”
And in fact, standard English used
multiple negatives for emphasis in the
same way until the 18th century, when
grammarians invented the logical
cancellation argument, based on the
rules of Latin grammar.
These features of Black English,
with many others I have omitted for
brevity’s sake, are also found in those
West African languages spoken by
most of the blacks transported to sla
very in America. Linguists postulate
that Black English results from the
combination of English vocabulary
with the grammatical structures of the
slaves’ native language — thus sup
r porting Spurlock’s comment about
the roots of black speech.
Anyone interested in more details
about Black English, either gram
matical structure or its cultural role,
can consult Geneva Smitherman’s
“Talkin and Testifyin: The Structure
of Black English, or any of several
other volumes on the subject avail
able in Love Library.
The suggestion Boito has offered
so confidently is, in fact, simply wrong,
- a theory based on ignorance and
prejudice that was exploded a genera
tion ago. I offer him the suggestion
that, if he wants us to take his opinion
on such matters seriously, he should
find out the facts first. They are readily
available.
Kathleen L. Spencer
Lecturer
English department
NU sports
Growing up in Lincoln has been
rewarding and overall, very exciting.
As a little boy, 1 grew up six blocks
from Memorial Stadium. Football was
king, especially because of the back
to-back national championships that
Nebraska won in the early ’70s.
Football, needless to say, has been
very exciting to watch over the years.
Sports such as baseball, basketball
and volleyball have risen to new
heights in the ’80s and early ’90s —
all of w'hich I can barely remember as
a boy. It is great to see other sports at
UNL continuing their grand tradi
tions, and the future looks very bright
for all of Nebraska’s athletic teams.
One thing has changed definitely
for the worse. Enthusiasm at husker
sports events has gone downhill. As a
freshman in 1987, I can remember
very clearly how Nebraska fans would
stand and create total mayhem
throughout the entire game (or at least
the second half).
Crowd noise can be a big factor
that can provide the home team with
momentum and spirit that will more
often than not spell victory.
Don’t get me wrong — Nebraska
fans are still the most loyal in the
nation. But more craziness and all-out
fun needs to be created. Pep rallies,
pre-game parties and other related
events arc almost always attended by
very few.
Certain areas of the football sta
dium look like a morgue. Students
need to fill in these “pace maker”
sections and gel the true spirit back
that we once had. You saw very clearly
what happens when a home team
(Washington) makes a lot of noise.
It does not matter what sport you
arc attending — the wilder you are,
the better. Just don’t get caught run
ning around on the playing surface
before the game is over. Good luck to
all sports.
Steve Kruse
senior
speech communication
Unexplained
The issue of Diversions on unex
plained phenomena (DN, Sept. 28)
was incomplete in its coverage be
cause it failed to mention courses
offered at the University of Ncbraska
Lincoln that arc directly relevant to
understanding reportsof psychic pow
ers, UFO sightings and abductions,
cattle mutilations, etc.
I WU alivll lUUJ^d aiv llt/W UV1II5,
offered each year in the psychology
department. The first course (Para
psychology: Skeptical Perspectives)
has been offered as a summer reading
course for the last six years and is
expected to be offered again next
spring. This course is intended as
general education and involves read
ing three books, two of which were
reviewed by Deborah McAdams in
the Daily Nebraskan. The books rep
resent the modern skeptical perspec
tive that has developed in recent de
cades. —
The second course (Special Top
ics: Science and Parapsychology) will
be offered for the first time next se
mester. This uses some of the same
reading material as the skeptical per
spectives course but considers in m uch
greater detail the methodological and
statistical shortcomings of popular
treatments of paranormal phenomena
as well asihc variety of alternative
explanations that are available from a
number of different research tradi
tions within modem psychology.
This course has a prerequisite of
Psychology 350 and is intended as an
“applications” course'of psychology
majors; the focus of this course is the
application of methodological con
siderations of modem science to para
psychology and the use of well-estab
lished principles from perceptual,
learning, social, physiological and
abnormal psychology to provide al
ternative naturalistic explanations ol
reports of paranormal events.
Because of the similarity in con
tent in the courses, credit can be earned
from only one of them. Interested
persons can call me at 472-3144 for
more information.
**■*•«. Donald Jensen
professor
psychology