Digital ACT Reading Practice Question #1708

As it is used in the passage, the word "parity" most nearly denotes: Passage Excerpt (Social Science): Linguists have long established that no spoken dialect is inherently more systematic or logical than any other. A non-standard variety such as African American Vernacular English (AAVE) or Appalachian English operates under intricate syntactical rules as rigorous as General American English. For instance, the habitual "be" in AAVE conveys an aspectual distinction—marking recurring or customary action—that Standard English lacks a single-word equivalent to express. Despite this linguistic parity, societies persistently assign hierarchical value to dialects, conflating prestige with socioeconomic status. Sociolinguist Dr. Marcus Vance explains that when institutions dismiss vernacular speech as "uneducated," they are not making an empirical linguistic judgment; rather, they are enacting a sociological sorting mechanism that legitimizes existing class privilege.