[morgante]

> So every form of English is an "informal dialect" then?

Yes, the majority of spoken English does not follow the rules of Standard English. Pretending that such rules don't exist is willful ignorance though: the WSJ obviously write a more formalized version of English than teenagers do in text messages.

> Do you also say that the languages of remote Amazon tribes aren't "real languages" because they don't have a formal government body publishing written rules?

Nowhere did I say that AAVE is "not a real language" because it's less formalized than Standard English. Prior to spelling reforms, English itself was extremely inconsistent and informal, but I certainly don't pretend that it wasn't a language.

> Or do you just want to bash on AAVE and are grasping at straws for reasons why?

I'm not trying to bash AAVE. In fact, I'd even posit that the reason AAVE isn't more codified is perhaps because of racial bias which treated it simply as "incorrect" English instead of a separate dialect worthy of formalization. Pretending that all languages are equally formalized is simply willful ignorance though.