African-American Spectacular English

Talking Black In America addresses how advanced, unique, and culturally important African American English is (Hutcheson and Cullinan, 2017).

She states, “White standards of English persist, supreme and unquestioned, in these United States” (124). White english is hardly doubted as the only language accepted in the United States. Jordan acknowledges many of the African American students in her class don’t relate with the language they speak everyday. The class pinpoints their discussion of The Color Purple around the

In this essay, June Jordan primarily focuses on explaining what Black English and how it’s become oppressed by Caucasian Americans throughout the years. Jordan believes African Americans have been raised to modify Black English to Standard English in order to be accepted into the societal and scholarly norms of America. Jordan states early on her essay, “As we learn our way around this environment, either we hide our original word habits,or we completely

With a background affected tremendously by the dark history of African Americans, language has become a significant problem to what the term Black English really means to different people. In If Black Language Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is, James Baldwin attempts to analyze what a language really means and how Black English evolved to fulfill an important role for Americans. Black English sounds proper to blacks, but to whites it may not be a proper use of language. Throughout this essay, Baldwin uses a specific tone and relates to his audience by opening his mind to both emotion and logic while still upholding his credibility. Baldwin tries to persuade the audience to respect the language of Black English using his personal experience. The history of different languages mentioned in the essay is used to help convince the audience of thinking about the term language from a new perspective. Whites and Blacks both may speak the same language, but that does not mean that they understand each other because the language can be spoken in different matters. As Baldwin states, “The white man could not possibly understand, and that, indeed, he cannot understand, until today”. A white man or black man had to be careful about the words they used in front of each other because some words would be considered offensive for one another. Baldwin uses African American language and culture to reveal the impact that the English language Americans use has created.

Speech is often associate with race because some individuals believe that if the person does not sound “educated” enough the person comes from a lower class and was brought up in the so called “ghettos” and this association is often made towards someone that forms part of a minority group. The author illustrates that race is tight up with speech

Through her use of southern black language in the book Zora Neale Hurston illustrates the vernacular she grew up speaking. Black Vernacular is “any of the nonstandard varieties of English Spoken by African American. It is also called Black English, Black English vernacular.” In the “Black Vernacular” article,

Self-Reflection seems to be one of the bigger inner conflict that people of all ages seem find themselves struggling with. No one wants to genuinely look inside themselves and challenge their character, motives, and their actions. It seems much more tempting to run away and hide from all of our faults then to come face to face with them. Writers do a phenomenal job of exposing the struggle a person goes though trying to grasp an understand of a group of people from a different culture or society when they have yet to figure themselves out. A person can not answer why for someone else or for a group of people until they can answer the why in their own life. Both James Baldwin author of “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What

Zora Neale Hurston wrote her stories from an “insider’s” perspective. Her effective use of black dialect in her writings of “Sweat,” “The Gilded Six-Bits,” and “Their Eyes Were Watching God” often created a superficial realism which, by verging on racial stereotyping, overlooks the experiences and motivations of her characters (Cornish)<http://www. csmonitor.com/1985/0531/dbspun-f.html>. The writings of the author not only included the linguistic structure of dialect----i.e, grammar (specifically morphology and syntax) and vocabulary (David Crystal)<http://www.britannica.com/topic/dialect>, but the English

The last stanza of the poem “On Being Told I Don’t Speak Like a Black Person,” explains how a persons speech really is. “Let us speak. Let us talk with the sounds of our mothers and fathers still reverberating in our minds, wherever our mothers or fathers come from: Arkansas, Belize, Alabama, Brazil, Aruba, Arizona. Let us simply speak to one another, listen and prize the inflections,

It is important to note that Hurston’s use of more vulgar vernacular for her characters does not detract from the poetic or the metaphoric. The use of unconventional spelling and diction functions to create a much more personal tone which fully conveys, as Gates phrases it, “the Negro way of saying,” capturing not only what is spoken but also how it is spoken. The natural, rhythmic dialect, often set up in a variation of parallel structure— “folks is playin’ it wid sense and folks is playin’ it without”— coupled with the heavy use of italics and common idiomatic phrases of the Afro-American south— “B’lieve Ah done cut uh hawg”— encapsulates not just language but lifestyle (96, 97). One of the biggest parts of Afro-American culture is the legacy of oral tradition.

In “The Lesson,” it tells the story of a young black girl named Sylvia living in Harlem in the 70s. From the beginning of “The Lesson,” Sylvia uses a frequent amount of African American Vernacular English, “…hated the way we did the winos who cluttered up our parks and pissed on our handball walls and stank up our hallways and stairs…” (Bambara 98). AAVE has a distinctive vocabulary, unique use of verb tense and aspect, and the frequent uses of double negative. Although AAVE is considered normal in today’s society it is still too different to be considered American Standard English, especially since AAVE is (almost) exclusively used by African Americans, for African Americans. Consequently, despite its history, the use of AAVE has an intense domino effect because it shows a lack of education; the frequent use of double negatives and slang words make it

African American vernacular traditions have been around for many centuries and still cease to exist in their culture. The vernacular traditions of the African Americans started when slaves were existent in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. It is believed that the slaves spoke a mix of Creole and partial English, in which they had to create in order to communicate between them discreetly. The vernacular traditions originated from the way the slaves lived their lives and their creativity. The relationship between the slaves and their masters, were very weak because the master’s believed that the slaves were inferior to them. It is believed that African American

It is arguable that African American English is a dialect of contemporary American English. While AAE is different and is easily distinguishable from Standard American English, the two dialects still share similarities and are forms of vernacular English. As AAE stems from and shares many linguistic patterns with Creole and other African languages, it is possible to argue that AAE is in fact not related to contemporary American English at all. However, I feel that the different influences on language are simple markers of regional variation and not enough to fully

This course focused on a numerous languages that were undergoing change. The simplest and most relevant for many Americans are the changes that are occurring in English. America is a great melting pot of different people and as such English’s multiple dialects reflect cultural diversity. One of the most studied and still not understood dialects is African American English. The point of contention between the ideas for the origin of African American English is whether it was based on an existing dialect in the south or if it was creole of English and different West African languages. Either way this is an example of a rapid language change that has persisted over time. It is illogical to believe that the slaves who were forced to learn English did not incorporate some of their own language. How else could they have communicated before they fully understood English. An example of slower language

African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the variety previously known as Black English Vernacular or Vernacular Black English by sociolinguists, and commonly called Ebonics outside the academic community. However, some characteristics of AAVE are seemingly unique in its structure. It also includes a number of standard and nonstandard English varieties are spoken by the US and the Caribbean people. AAVE has been the core of many public debates and also the analysis of this variety has encouraged and sustained debates amongst sociolinguists.  Some speakers may use some special aspects of pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the grammatical features are not connected with the variety. Several sociolinguists would reserve the term AAVE for varieties which are marked by the existence of specific distinctive grammatical features and some of them are discussed below. The history of AAVE and what language varieties it is related to are also a matter of argument. Some scholars confirm that AAVE developed out a connection between speakers of West African languages and speakers of vernacular English varieties. According to such an opinion, West Africans learnt English on plantations in the southern Coastal States from very few native speakers. Some say that this led to the development of a rudimentary pidgin, a very simple language which has been extended through a process of colorization later.