Communication Is A Basis For Every Society

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

Johnson uses words like “disdainful”, “magnificent”, “pompous”, “incompetent”, “imitate”, “supercilious”, “arrogant,” “meed,” and bold to describe the Negro in Harlem and to show their ‘supercilious’ nature towards other cultures.

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

In the civilized society that everyone lives in today, all languages and culture should be equal. That is the main idea in both Gloria Anzaldua’s essay, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, as well as James Baldwin’s “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?”. The authors in both these texts support their argument in various ways, and in doing so, manages to effectively persuade their audience. The ways that each author approaches their argument is different in their appeals, evidence, and styles. Similarities also exist between the texts of the two authors. The rhetorical strategies that Anzaldua uses makes her argument much stronger than Baldwin’s argument.

Savan explains how close yet how far apart the White and African American languages really are. She writes about how often black language is now being used in everyday “American talk”(381) by white people. She feels that the media has used so many words of African Americans that these words are now becoming part of “Standard English”(368). Although many words of blacks are becoming extremely accepted by white people the entire black language is not accepted. “December 1996, the Oakland, California, school board approved [a new way of teaching] African American students [in the classroom]’’(Savan 385). The school board approved the method of using ebonomics in several African American populated schools around the Oakland area. This new way of teaching created an uproar with the media and white people. Once again African American people were being scrutinized over their language and were being made fun of again. Many of the same white people/media using black language were mocking African American’s saying “to teach ebonomics [is wrong because blacks would be ignoring] standard english”(Savan 386). This is a very thoughtless statement because if blacks would be able to use their own black language in school it could help them understand the standard english system along with several

The reason why I use Ebonics in my everyday language is to show homage to my ancestors. Ebonics started because our ancestors was not granted the right to education so they used Ebonics as a way to communicate with each other. Ebonics is a historical way of speaking and many schools in the Philadelphia Public School district don't teach children to speak like this, but afrocentric charter schools make it their obligation to teach us to speak like that and allow it with in their classrooms. Not teaching allowing black americans to speak ebonics in the school is telling them to neglect their culture and History. Forcing them to

Something Genava said was, “Ebonics: neither “broken” nor “sloppy” speech nor merely “slang” nor some bizarre lingo spoken only by baggy-pants-wearing black kids.” The dominant group or white supremacy want us as blacks to believes that it’s something wrong with the way we speak, or pronounce our words. I personally believe they want blacks to have little to know confidence, so we can start acting like them, and not embracing our culture. I remember one time in class the white teacher name Mrs. Beltowski asked me “Do I know my dad?” and I said, “Yeah” then she said “You mean yes?”

In Moore’s article he describes the impact of language according to racial discrimination and how our words degrate social status among other races. A strong argument pointed out by Moore is the contrast of the words “black and white”. In the argument, Moore uses words that consist of the word “black. For example: Moore uses the word “black-brow” which means to frown or scowl at, “blackhearted” which is a synonym for evil, and “blackjack” which means making an individual undertake an action using pressure. These words indicate a pessimistic look that shows people that the word “black” means “bad” or “evil”. On the other hand, Moore explains the phrase “that is very white of you” which is used to describe a positive gesture that an individual

Ebonics means 'black speech' (a blend of the words ebony 'black' and phonics 'sounds'). The phrase was created in 1973 by a group of black scholars who disliked the negative connotations of terms like 'Nonstandard Negro English' that had been coined in the 1960s when the first modern large-scale linguistic studies of African American speech communities began. However, the term Ebonics never caught on amongst linguists, much less among the general public. That all changed with the 'Ebonics' controversy of December 1996 when the Oakland (CA) School Board recognized it as the 'primary' language of its majority African American students and resolved to take it into account in teaching them standard or academic English.

Speech has always been important; yet being judged by how to speak on a daily basis is what many go through. Not everyone speaks the same, which is why each person is unique. The author Allison Joseph of the poem “On Being Told I Don’t Speak Like a Black Person,” has an precise frame of mind on how people believe that all black people speak differently than others. There is not a certain language that people should speak; it is passed down or learned while growing up. Allison states in the texts “Now I realize there’s nothing more personal than speech that I don’t have to defend how I speak, how any person, black, white, chooses to

“The Word “Nigga” Is Only for Slaves and Sambos” was written by Rob Nelson and first published in a university newspaper in North Carolina. Later on, the article was so meaningful that it was re-published in the academic journal, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. In the article “The Word “Nigga” is only for Slaves and Sambos”, Rob Nelson uses ethos, logos, and especially skillful pathos appeals based on the history of slavery and the illustration about the future of African American, to prove why he thinks the “N-word” is not acceptable. By using ethical argument and those clever appeals, Rob Nelson definitely persuades his young African American audience.

African-American vernacular English has always been up for discussion since the 1990s, whether it is pop culture, mass media or educational journals. Although, it has become very popular during recent American media-whether it’s to ridicule or simply profit off the dialect- the history of AVVE goes back to slavery times. However, this dialect has always in some ways been in the spotlight, mostly negative views. Though this dialect is as special as Standard English. These negatives views or stereotypes can create biases towards those who speak it, in everyday life such as schooling or even being hired for a job.

Historically, humans have always been separated into groups based on appearance, whether that is concerning body shape, the clothes we wear, or the color of our skin. Stereotyping is a natural instinct that humans have because they feel the need to classify people in order to not feel threatened by them. Humans feel an obligation to know and understand people but do not necessarily want to be associated with them, thus they place people into specific groups, labeling them. One of the primary ways that we stereotype people is by their race. Being a minority that has always been prejudiced against in America, African Americans are often judged because of the way that they speak. Black students have struggled in academic settings that use Standard English, such as in the common American classroom. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) harms Black students through discrimination on standardized tests and in classroom environments.