this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
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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

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[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I had that same problem as a kid because my mom read to us every night and I had all the books memorized. They realized I basically couldn't read along with severe test taking anxiety, so they nearly put me in special ed in first grade. Somehow I ended up in gifted ed by second grade

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

That's almost exactly what happened. Except my stepbrother did it intentionally. Not that he was trying to pass a test or anything. But he would intentionally request the same books over and over until he had memorized them.