'Jive,' offensive script, removed from Pantheon

Depending on whom you ask, it is either funny or it is offensive.

Until the program was removed following a Herald inquiry on Mon., Oct. 1, "Jive"—a dialect translator capable of converting text input to a gross stereotype of African-American slang—lurked quietly among the scores of programs saved to the Pantheon, Yale's file-sharing and e-mail gateway.

After connecting to Pantheon, students are presented with a prompt, at which they may enter commands such as "pine" or "ph," programs for email and the Yale phonebook, respectively. A command of "jive" would result in another prompt—at which any text entered by the user would automatically be converted into what Professor Laurence Horn, DUS of Linguistics, calls a "kind of parody of AAVE [African American Vernacular English]."

The translations produced by the program theoretically reflect an actual spoken dialect of English. The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang defines the word "jive" as "a flippant, self-assured, or bantering style of diction...associated with urban black youths, some jazz and swing musicians, disc jockeys, etc., that makes use of much slang and other wordplay and sometimes of rhythm or rhyme."

Horn is skeptical. "I don't think this represents anyone's actual variety of spoken English. [`Jive'] is an attempt to be a racist and get away with it."

Controversy surrounding so-called "ethnic dialects" has periodically made it into the national limelight. According to Horn, the conflict following Oakland County's 1997 decision to teach partially in AAVE has spawned additional caricatures of the dialect and its grammar. Christopher Jordan, PC '04, works for the Director of the Afro-American Cultural Center.

"I get people mocking my accent all the time," Jordan said, acknowledging the unwanted attention his self-described "thick accent" brings him. "It stops being cute after a while."

Although assumptions about the connection between race and speech are widespread—and are often guilty of producing inaccurate and even offensive parodies of such dialects—finding evidence of them on an official Yale computer system surprised some. When confronted with questions about "Jive" on Mon., Oct. 1, Philip Long, JE '70, director of Information Technology Services, declined to comment. University President, Richard Levin, GRD '74, professed his ignorance of the program's existence: "I have never heard of it, but I don't use Pantheon."

Within one day of the Herald's inquiry, the "Jive" program was removed.

Charles Powell, director of Workstation Support Services, believes the program was "validly installed," or installed by Yale staff, prior to 1999. Because of comprehensive security measures, there is only a remote possibility that hackers infiltrated the Pantheon and installed "Jive." Capitoline, Yale's central file storage server, is inaccessible to the average user. To ensure its security, the server also runs integrity checks on scripts against a local copy every hour and against an off-host master copy once a day to help prevent external tampering.

While acknowledging the offensiveness of the program, Powell attributed its creation to someone with too much spare time. "[`Jive'] is not there anymore," Powell said on Tues., Oct. 2. He dubbed the program "baggage that somebody found amusing or useful at some point."

He also cited other inane programs that were recently erased from the system. Hangman, for example, formerly ran on the Pantheon. A command of "Chef" at the Pantheon's prompt, executed a dialect translator similar to "Jive." "Chef" converted a user's input to a dialect based on the speech of the Swedish chef from the children's television show The Muppets.

'We hold dese truds t'be self-evident'

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

De unanimous Declarashun uh de dirteen united States uh America,

When in de Course uh human events, it becomes necessary fo' one sucka's t'dissolve da damn political bands which gots' connected demwid anoder, and t'assume among de powers uh de eard, deseparate and equal stashun t'which de Laws uh Nature and of Nature's God entitle dem, some decent respect t'de opinions of mankind requires dat dey should declare da damn causes which impeldem t'de separashun.

We hold dese truds t'be self-evident, dat all dudes are created equal, dat dey are endowed by deir Creato' wid certain unalienable Rights, dat among dese are Life, Liberty and depursuit uh Happiness.—Dat t'secure dese rights, Governments are instituted among Men, derivin' deir plum powers fum de consentuh de governed, —Dat wheneva' any Fo'm uh Government becomes destructive uh dese ends, it be de Right uh de People t'altero' t'abolish it, and t'institute new Government, layin' its foundashun on such principles and o'ganizin' its powers in such fo'm, as t'dem shall seem most likesly t'effect deir Safety andHappiness. Prudence, indeed, gots'ta dictate dat Governments long established should not be changed fo' light...

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