As W. Labov has passed away, I came across a comment reposting this screenshotted request, along with the paper in question:
https://betsysneller.github.io/pdfs/Labov1966-Rabbit.pdf
The paper is quite a rollercoaster, ranging from describing of disturbingly racist ideas about native Hawaiian and Black children that some scientists still pushed at the time (1970!*), to Labov’s own disarmingly cute and humane solution to the issue of testing children’s language abilities.
Edit: *1970 - according to the article itself, which is apparently based on Labov’s 1970 talk; however, the URL suggests that the article was published in 1966, which is contradictory. I’ll try to find out where and when this was actually published…
Edit 2: It looks like it is from 1970, from Working Papers in Communication, vol. 1 (Honolulu: Pacific Speech Association). It is surprising that a recently published book also claims that it’s from 1966, probably the authors got the file from the same URL with the wrong year.
Edit 3: The original Twitter thread: https://xcancel.com/betsysneller/status/1516848959284678656
A lot of people who are non verbal are perfectly capable of speech…
They just don’t want to for whatever reason, and “forcing” them to rarely works. You gotta come up with a scenario where they want to speak
A little 6 year-old boy doesn’t talk.
His Mother takes him to the doctor, who says, “He’s fine. Just give him time.”
A couple months later, his Mother takes him to a Child Psychologist, who says, “He’s fine. Just give him time.”
A couple months later, his Mother is cooking his breakfast and she accidentally burns his toast.
Scraping the burnt toast over the sink, She thinks to herself, “He’ll never know the difference”, and she serves the toast.
As she turns back to the sink, the little boy says,“This damn toast is burnt!”
Shocked, the Mother turns and says,“What did you say?”
“This damn toast is burnt!”
She says,“Omigod! You’re talking! What happened? Why did you take so long to talk?”
“Up till now, everything was OK.”
Reminds me too much of “children are like fig trees, they grow during times of (heat) stress”. Unfortunately that leads to a lot of parents being unnecessarily strict with their children.
When in reality, kids (really people of all ages) grow when challenged. It doesn’t have to be through trauma.
This reminds me of my experience when I was entering kindergarten.
There was a basic test/interview to assess reading skills to determine whether a kid should be in the “this kid doesn’t even know the alphabet” group or the “this kid can at least read a tiny bit” group. I was already a fluent reader (of books aimed at 5-year-olds, of course), but they tried to put me in the group that didn’t even know the alphabet.
I was afraid to read because I found the test taker intimidating. Fortunately, my mother knew that I knew how to read and she insisted that I go into the other group.
My favorite ADHD moment as a child was my school insisting I could read because I could answer the questions about the book.
My mother took me home and demanded I read the book. I still couldn’t answer the questions.
Frustrated she made me read the book out loud to her. I did so perfectly. Still couldn’t answer the questions. I read just fine, I just had trouble paying attention. I read the entire book out loud while thinking entirely about something else.
My step brother had a somewhat similar story but in reverse. He couldn’t read, though. He memorized the words of the picture books. So he could go through them all beginning to end and answer questions about the stories, but if you opened to a random page, he had no idea.
I think you left out the word “not” at least twice?
I found the one time I left the word out. Where was the other? Edit: there it is. Like I said, ADHD, I tend to just skim read. It’s lightning fast for me but it’s hard to proof read that way
You can edit your comments.
I can also go kayaking. I choose not to
As I’m reading this I’m getting angry. Not because of Labov himself (he’s simply denouncing this crap), but because this sort of adult that he’s describing is the one that I’d expect screaming with children.
And I’m glad that nowadays this sort of researcher would be barred from doing field work.
The rabbit approach was genius. Just like hiding himself behind the cloth hangers in another study; sure, nowadays this raises ethical concerns, but in his times it was the way to register spontaneous speech.
disturbingly racist ideas about native Hawaiian and Black children that some scientists still pushed at the time (1970!*),
Until a couple years ago, one of the main training manuals for nurses had racist and sexist assumptions about pain resistance.
