African American English
African American English (AAE) is a variety of English spoken by many African Americans in the United States. It has distinct phonological, grammatical, and lexical features that differentiate it from Standard American English. AAE is a rich and dynamic linguistic system with its own rules and conventions, and it plays a significant role in the cultural and social identity of African American communities.
7 Key excerpts on "African American English"
eBook - ePubLanguage and Linguistic Diversity in the US
An Introduction
- Susan Tamasi, Lamont Antieau(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...That said, we must not ignore the fact that the history of African Americans includes experiences, policies, and social injustices that many Americans would like to ignore, such as slavery, racism, and segregation. We must not dismiss these negative points but, instead, should recognize them as events that undeniably shaped the development of AAE. Particularly because the discussions around AAE are politically and racially sensitive, it is important to note that while there is a close connection between the history of this linguistic system and the history of African Americans, not everyone who identifies as African American speaks AAE, and not everyone who speaks AAE is African American. In other words, AAE is not a group exclusive variety. Furthermore, as is the case with any linguistic system, no individual speaker of AAE uses all of the available features of the dialect, nor does a speaker use the features that he/she has adopted in every possible instance in which they could be used. Therefore, while we discuss African American English in this chapter in broad, generalized terms—including the presentation of AAE as if it were a single, homogeneous form—we do recognize that this linguistic system is regionally and socially variable and that its speakers, as a group, are equally as diverse. EARLY SOCIOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH ON AAE There is a significant body of research on African American English, and it is quite possible that there have been more sociolinguistic explorations, descriptions, and examinations of African American English than of any other single linguistic variety in the United States. According to Rickford and Rickford (2000), the earliest discussion of African American English to appear in an academic publication was James A...
eBook - ePubVarieties of Modern English
An Introduction
- Diane Davies(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...It was the creole-speaking group who were considered by Rampton’s informants to have the greatest influence on the vernacular used in this multi-racial setting, introducing new words, for instance, that the other groups would adopt in order to move towards this leading group. 5.3 African American Vernacular English (AAVE) Spoken by many people of African ancestry in the United States, African American Vernacular English, or AAVE (pronounced / ɑ :veı/ or / ɑ :vi/), has many characteristics that can be found across different regions, so that most linguists agree that this is a distinct ethnic variety, even though it is not spoken by all black people in the United States. 5 Well-educated black speakers from more privileged socio-economic classes do not necessarily use AAVE features in their own speech and may also have more ambivalent attitudes towards this variety. Younger speakers, however, are more likely than older speakers to use AAVE as a badge of peer-group solidarity. Tottie (2002:227) outlines as follows the current theories about the origins of AAVE and why it differs from Standard and other varieties of English: 1 AAVE is descended from a creole, itself derived from an English-based pidgin, i.e. a contact language. 2 AAVE is a dialect of English based on the varieties that the slaves picked up from white speakers. 3 AAVE is derived from West African languages. Those who advocate this theory are often the same people who use the term Ebonics. Tottie notes that the third theory is not ‘accepted by professional linguists but it has had some important political consequences’, as we shall see below when we discuss AAVE in the context of educational policy. As for the first and second theories, Tottie explains that there is evidence in favour of both positions...
eBook - ePubEducating African American Students
And How Are the Children?
- Gloria Swindler Boutte(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...For example, some features of AAL are mistakenly thought to be slang and/or grammatical errors (Boutte, 2007). In 1972, J. L. Dillard estimated that 80 percent of African Americans spoke only AAE, another 10–14 percent were bidialectal, and the remainder spoke only SE. Recent estimates show that these percentages have changed little since then. AAL is the primary language used by 80–90 percent of African American children in their homes and communities (Banks & Banks, 1997; Baugh, 1999; Hoover, 1998; LeMoine, 1999; Smitherman, 1997). African American Language is a Parallel Language System to Standard English Because AAL has linguistic structures and rules, it should be thought of as a parallel language to SE, instead of as being lower on the hierarchy of language systems (Smitherman, 2006). Viewing AAL as a parallel language means that both languages are valid in their own right. Importantly, our goal as educators is to respect and extend whatever language(s) children speak. We should seek to help children add SE to their language repertories, without denigrating their home language. There is debate in the linguistic community regarding whether AAL is a distinct language or whether it is a dialect. There is no consensus among linguists (Rickford, 1999), but I agree with Smitherman (2006) that dialects are often viewed as corruptions of a given language. Therefore, I prefer the term African American Language versus African American English, African American Vernacular English, Ebonics, or other terminology. Viewing AAL as a co-parallel language to SE (instead of referring to it as a dialect) allows me to elevate my emphasis on the linguistic capabilities of AAL speakers (Smitherman, 2006). Most linguists concede that, even if AAL is considered a dialect, it is among the most distinctive of all English dialects and it differs substantively from SE (Rickford, 1999)...
eBook - ePub- Robert D. King(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Austin Macauley Publishers(Publisher)
...The Swiss identify with their dialect, but elsewhere, dialects are normally looked down on, whether with disdain or with affection depends on the situation, but down on in any case. Somehow, not quite pukka as the British say, or used to say. Section 2: African-American Vernacular English. Race is a touchy topic in any country, and especially so in America with its history of slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, and, more recently, the civil rights movement. It behooves us to treat the topic of AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) with the dispassion of a clinical linguist, for it is a language with rules, a grammar, and all else that makes up a language. A note on nomenclature. AAVE currently appears to be the preferred designation in the usage of linguists. Black English and Black English Vernacular were used in the 1960s and 1970s, and the neologism ‘Ebonics’ was coined in 1973 by the psychologist, Robert Williams. In his book, Ebonics: The True Language of Black Folks, Williams explains it: Ebonics may be defined as ‘the linguistic and paralinguistic features which, on a concentric continuum, represent the communicative competence of the West African, Caribbean, and United States slave descendant of African origin. It includes the various idioms, patois, argots, idiolects, and social dialects of black people,’ especially those who have adapted to colonial circumstances. Ebonics derives its form from ebony (black) and phonics (sound, the study of sound) and refers to the study of the language of black people in all its cultural uniqueness. AAVE is spoken by many though far from all African-Americans within the United States. It is most common and was first studied in heavily African-American areas such as the ‘ghettos’ of big cities such as New York (Harlem), Philadelphia, Chicago, and Oakland...
eBook - ePubThe Skin That We Speak
Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom
- Lisa Delpit, Joanne Kilgour Dowdy, Lisa Delpit, Joanne Kilgour Dowdy(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- The New Press(Publisher)
...Appendix: Linguistic Society of America Resolution on the Oakland “Ebonics” Issue Whereas there has been a great deal of discussion in the media and among the American public about the 18 December 1996 decision of the Oakland School Board to recognize the language variety spoken by many African American students and to take it into account in teaching Standard English, the Linguistic Society of America, as a society of scholars engaged in the scientific study of language, hereby resolves to make it known that: a. The variety known as “Ebonics,” “African American Vernacular English” (AAVE), and “Vernacular Black English” and by other names is systematic and rule-governed like all natural speech varieties. In fact, all human linguistic systems—spoken, signed, and written—are fundamentally regular. The systematic and expressive nature of the grammar and pronunciation patterns of the African American vernacular has been established by numerous scientific studies over the past thirty years. Characterizations of Ebonics as “slang,” “mutant,” “lazy,” “defective,” “ungrammatical,” or “broken English” are incorrect and demeaning. b. The distinction between “languages” and “dialects” is usually made more on social and political grounds than on purely linguistic ones. For example, different varieties of Chinese are popularly regarded as “dialects,” though their speakers cannot understand each other, but speakers of Swedish and Norwegian, which are regarded as separate “languages,” generally understand each other. What is important from a linguistic and educational point of view is not whether AAVE is called a “language” or a “dialect” but rather that its systematicity be recognized. c. As affirmed in the LSA Statement of Language Rights (June 1996), there are individual and group benefits to maintaining vernacular speech varieties and there are scientific and human advantages to linguistic diversity...
eBook - ePub- Shondel J. Nero(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Part II African American Vernacular English (AAVE)/Ebonics Chapter 3 Linguistics, Education, and the Ebonics Firestorm * John R. Rickford Stanford University Key Points Reasons for poor academic achievement among African American students. Reading achievement data for African American students in urban schools. English language proficiency and the Standard English Proficiency Program. Controversial 1996 Oakland School Board Resolution on Ebonics. Arguments for and against the Contrastive Analysis, bidialectal approach to language instruction. Introduction One profession with which linguistics has long been associated—at least through the research and activities of linguists in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and other subfields—is education. Applied linguistics has been primarily concerned with the teaching and learning of foreign languages, but it also includes the study of language disorders and mother tongue/bilingual education as well as other topics (Crystal, 1991, p. 22). Key journals in this area, among them Applied Linguistics and the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, go back to the early 1980s and the late 1960s, respectively. In the early 1960s, leading descriptive linguists like Leonard Bloomfield (Bloomfield & Barnhart, 1961) and Charles Fries (1962) contributed book-length works on the teaching of reading using a linguistics approach. More recently, Kenneth Goodman (1998) waded in to defend the whole language approach to the teaching of reading after the California legislature mandated that reading be taught through phonics and phonemic awareness...
- Thomas Cable(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Refer to Baugh and Cable §250 to fill in as much of the chart as you can with the relevant phonetic transcriptions, leaving blank the pronunciations in regions that are not discussed. 11.3 AFRICAN AMERICAN VERNACULAR ENGLISH: PHONOLOGY (§250) Although most individual features of phonology and grammar that occur in African American Vernacular English occur also in other varieties of English at comparable socioeconomic levels, the features listed in this section and the next are significant for their particular array within AAVE. 1 Description Standard English AAVE 1. Reduction of final consonant clusters list lis' 2. Plural formation that follows change 1 above lists lisses Description Standard English AAVE 3. Loss of postvocalic liquids, [r] and [l]i four [for] fo' [fo] 4. Loss of postvocalic final stops and (less frequently) fricatives boot [but] boo' [bu] 5. Initial [d] for [ð] the, they, that [ð] de, dey, dat [d] 6. Initial [t] or [θ] for [θ] thought [θ] tough' [t] or though' [θ] 7. Medial [f] for [θ] nothing [θ] nuf 'n [f] 8. Final [f] for. [θ] mouth [θ] mouf [f] 9. [in] for the -ing suffix [iŋ] singing [siŋiŋ] singin' [siŋiŋ] Each of the following sentences contains words that illustrate features of AAVE pronunciation from the list above. Write down each word that illustrates a feature, and after it in parentheses give the number of the feature...
