African American Vernacular English (Aave)

Having the insight as a former student and a present educator, Linda Christensen wrote about her views on the way English is taught to students in her essay“Teaching Standard English: Whose Standard?” Christensen

“Authority and American Usage,” an interesting essay written by the brilliant and quick-witted David Foster Wallace, presents an argument on different ways of understanding the ever-changing American usage in the English language. Keeping up with the English language in America is like chasing your new, untrained puppy down the street. Tiring and basically impossible to get a hold of. Over the past centuries, the English language has evolved so much, that if you took a person from the 13th century and threw them in the middle of New York City in 2013, it would be as if two different languages were being spoken.

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

English is the standard language of America. In the essay “Nobody Mean More to Me than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan” by June Jordan, Jordan demonstrates and confirms that Black English represents African Americans’ identity, and how the language should be taught. June Jordan, examines the black dialect in United States and evaluates the pros and cons that normal language can have on those who speak black english. Jordan believes if that a specific language of a race is not recognized, then the race, identity and authority as a one are ignored. June Jordan begins the essay by introducing a course she had taught “In Search of the Invisible Black Woman.” She commits most of the essay to describing her personal experience in this college course as well as a different one, “The Art of Black English.”

Upon my arrival in the U.S., I faced a cultural shock. Although I had grown up speaking English, I discovered that American English, colloquial expressions, idioms and literature were all different than what I

The Conference on College Composition and Communication discusses two very important and controversial questions within their article “Students’ Right to Their Own Language”: “What should the schools do about the language habits of students who come from a wide variety of social, economic, and cultural backgrounds?” (2), and “Should the schools try to uphold language variety, or to modify it, or to eradicate it?” (2). While for academic writing purposes students should be expected to use standard American dialect, it is important to respect the diversity and various heritages throughout the country by allowing students to use the dialect they choose when speaking.

Linguistic anthropology can be studied in the African American culture. Jacque Reid stated, “taking the time out to clean up our appearances and choosing a better language can assist in more unity and self-love within the African American community”. Knowing we should be treated as the King and Queens that we are should have be on a higher pedestal. Black people have fought too long and too hard to have history repeating itself. The most horrific thing about history repeating itself is the fact our own kind is destroying each

United States of America, small in history but large in diversity continues to face new challenges with language as time continues to turn. In the documentary “Do You Speak American?” Robert MacNeil analyzes the English language and reveals many dialects that culturally defines us. Regional dialect is one of the many strongholds of all cultures and now it has reached its’ zenith and today it is slowly declining because it does not possess the human nature of advancement. Optimistically, it allows people to learn how to cooperate with each other. In order to advance and adopt a person has to change; I believe that the acceptance of cultural adaptations, diversity, and industrialization can prove that the decline of speech does not cause a

The English language is considered one of the global languages. It is spoken in many countries and is well-known everywhere. But do you ever wonder how many obstacles people face when they speak English as a second language? Or when they speak with an accent or use black vernacular language? In United States (US) people glorify Standard American English (SAE), and it used as a tool to discriminate and oppress. In the Article “8 Harmful Example of Standard American English Privilege”, Hernandez (2015) states that:

Speaking American: A History of English in the United States tells the story of the evolution of English and how it has been effected(affected?) by different regions of the continental United States. The author, Richard W. Bailey, passed away before the book’s publication. I believe that this is one of the reasons for the book’s rambling and inefficient writing style as the editors, because of their inability to contact the deceased, “left potential ambiguity unresolved” (Bailey xi).

For this written task on part 1, I chose to compose a blog about the African American Vernacular English and how is this tongue influencing the English we talk today. In class, while learning about distinctive tongues (dialects) we came across the term African American Vernacular English (AAVE). AAVE is in connected to part 1 as it one of the variety of English like Hinglish, Singlish, etc., as propositions have diverse societies. Language is a mixed bag of dialect that is special in sentence structure, elocution, accent and vocabulary. Specifically for my own interest I researched on this vernacular. I was intrigued by, the way the Ebonics had distinctive importance for the same sentence. The most expansive composed work issue for AAVE speakers

Verbal -s is a linguistic phenomenon that occurs both in African American Dialects and within the Northern Subject Rule. In the NSR, it consists of two separate constraints: the subject type and proximity type rule. The subject type rule states that when a subject is a pronoun, no verbal -s will be used, that is unless it is used in a third person singular. The proximity type rule states that that when the subject of a sentence is not located directly next to the verb, then the presence of verbal -s will be present. An example of the proximity rule is the sentence “I usually goes to the store.” There is an s following the word “go” because of this rule. Its presence in AAVE is much more complex and less researched; in class, we looked at three papers that all discussed the use of verbal -s and its use in several African American Dialects from all around the United States.

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

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.