African American Vernacular English Essay

As Americans, we are privileged with diverse experiences. With this comes a perceived understanding of many cultures and their influences but in fact full cultural literacy is impossible to achieve.

During my early years of school, I remember being taught white accomplishments and wondering if blacks and other people of color had made any significant contributions to today's world. I noticed that television consist of all white people. Throughout my research paper I hope to cover certain aspects of African American heritage. Aspects such as blacks making up the largest minority group in the United States, although Mexican-Americans are rapidly changing that. The contributions blacks have provided to our country are immeasurable. Unfortunately though rather than recognizing these contributions, white America would rather focus on oppressing and degrading these people. As a consequence American

Slavery began in the late 16th century to early 18th century. Africans were brought to American colonies by white masters to come and work on their plantations in the South. They were treated harshly with no payments for all their hard work. In addition, they lived under harsh living conditions, and this led to their resistance against these harsh conditions. The racism towards the African Americans who were slaves was at its extreme as they did not have any rights; no civil nor political rights.

1 . What issues most concerned black political leaders during Reconstruction? Reconstruction brought important social changes to former slaves. Families that had been separated before and during the Civil War were reunited, and slave marriages were formalized through legally recognized ceremonies. Families also took advantage of the schools established by the Freedmen's Bureau and the expansion of public education, albeit segregated, under the Reconstruction legislatures. New opportunities for higher education also became available with the founding soon after the Civil War of black colleges, such as Howard University in Washington, D.C., and Fisk University in Nashville,

Bowles, M. (2011). A history of the United States since 1865. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.

Does the unlearned history of the Black/ Africa-American community affect our position in society? If this unlearned history of the Black/African-American community was common knowledge would the world be different today?

African Americans have a long history in the Americas. Their experience in United States is however laden with historical records of oppression and segregation. It has been difficult to shed off slavery tags that emanates from their historical entry into the Americas. There are many issues that emerge when considering the experience of African Americans. One of the most important issues that has been extensively studied in regard to African American experience is the issue of leadership and politics. For a long time, African-American leadership has been sidelined until the rise of civil rights movements starting from 1950s. Since then, African Americans have exerted their position in United States leadership culminating in election of

After reviewing the interactive website, Slavery and making of America: “The Slave Experience: Men, Women, and Gender”, my perspective of the African American experience changed. Prior to reviewing the interactive tool, I assumed that African Americans as slaves were always weary due to being oppressed by Caucasians. I always felt that slaves lacked the enthusiasm to be innovative, or creative. However, I now know that even slavery could not stop the creativity of the African American race. Although slave masters tried numerous acts, such as making their slaves dress in old and unfit clothing, slaves still found ways to make the most out of the clothing they had. According to “Slavery and making of America”, women slaves would take handkerchiefs that slave masters required them to wear and would make all kinds of creative wraps for their heads. Although their

African American and Indian cultures were examined through a comparison process, in the context of cross-cultural research. The comparison process included similarities and differences between the two cultures, recognition to whether the cultures were collectivistic or individualistic, a theory analysis, influence of culture development and an explanation of any personal biasness concerning the analysis. The research suggest that the Indian culture is a collectivistic culture, focusing more on placing the needs of the group before the individual needs. In contrast, the African American culture was found to be a individualistic culture, focusing more on the needs of the individual over the group, encouraging personal advancement. A theory concerning

As aforementioned, AAVE is the most prevalent native English vernacular in America. Consequently, educators often encounter AAVE speakers and writers in their classrooms. Educators must inform students that their home language is not Standard American English and create effective classroom methods to educate non-native SAE speakers. Faced with these constant occurrences, the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) issued a statement on students’ rights to their own language. The resolution states:

Hi Farhat, I guess that there are majority part of African Americans can both speak General American English and AAVE and switch them fluently. It is similar to the situation as we speak our national language and vernacular. You know, some time people will forget to switch vernacular to a common language that both speaker and listener can understand. So probably next time you can tell your friend that you are not familiar with AAVE and to see if he can switch to General American

“Our language is the reflection of ourselves. A language is an exact reflection of the character and growth of its speakers” (Chavez). Language a puzzle piece of a person’s culture. In history Americans used the demise of others to receive their glory. People like the African slaves and Native Americans suffered at the hand of the Americans. Focusing mostly on the African slaves, Americans cut their culture away from them by forbidding their language in their new “home” and forced their language onto them. Though the Americans believed that they had the upper hand by cutting off the African culture, the Africans exceeded their power by founding their own american culture, through African American Vernacular English.

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.

Among the most important concepts to emerge are those relating to dialects and language standards. Sociolinguists have documented the presence of dialects in every language. These dialects, all of which are legitimate, are associated with educational, economic, social and historical conditions. Hence, even if an individual scrupulously studies all the possible dictionaries of a random language, he would still be somewhat of a stranger to that language since he is unaware of all the dialectal changes.

Talking about “dialects”, a term often mentioned along is “standard language”. When being brought into comparison with “dialect”, “standard language” usually serves as a legitimate variant with the highest level of excellence (Bex & Watts, 1999). Though positive in nature, standardization - the procedure of standardizing a language – often raises heated controversy because of its consequences on not only linguistics field but also the society. In the second part of the essay, I will focus on the disadvantages of language standardization.