Saturday, March 8, 2008

AAE

"African American English" (="AAE") is one name for a collection of varieties (ways of speaking) characteristically used by African Slave Descendants in North America. Over the years a number of names have been used, and a number of different varieties or dialects have been the focus of both linguistic and general public attention. Some of the more common terms include "Black English", "Ebonics", "Black Vernacular English" (="BEV"), and "African American Vernacular English" (="AAVE"). In an earlier period (mid/late 1960s), the name “Negro Non-standard English” was often used. It’s obvious that the terms for this language variety change more or less in step with terms of self-identification for the people who speak it. Thus, the term “Negro” gave way in popular (and eventually out-group) usage to the term “Black”, which was followed by “African American” (though as Geneva Smitherman points out, this term is actually much older).
The use of these names, and their changes over time, has sometimes been cited as an example of “political correctness”. One valid response to this might be to point out that the term “PC” is typically used as a way to attack or show contempt for a set of values, ideas, practices, or a group of people by ridiculing the language they are expressed in. It is a basic that bias against a language or dialect stands in for bias against its speakers. From this point of view, an attack by outsiders on the validity of changing names for an ethnic group of people or their language could be seen as quite simply racist. It’s also worth considering the question of names and ethnic self-identification in a global context, as a case study of Lingustic Human Rights. AAE is a systematic language variety, with patterns of pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and usage that extend far beyond slang. Because it has a set of rules that is distinct from those of Standard American English, characterizations of the variety as bad English are incorrect; speakers of AAE do not fail to speak Standard American English, but succeed in speaking African American English with all its systematicity. The term Ebonics (a blend of ebony and phonics) gained recognition in 1996 as a result of the Oakland School Board’s use of the term in its proposal to use African American English in teaching Standard English in the Oakland Schools. The term was coined by Robert Williams in 1973, but it wasn’t until the Ebonics controversy that Ebonics became widely used. Most linguists prefer the term African American English as it aligns the variety with regional, national, and sociocultural varieties of English such as British English, Southern English, Cajun English.
Of cause as all others dialects are alive and always developing. The have a big population among Africans-Americans and so language always has different transmissions. Early, even 20 years ago African American communities were closed, because of social racism, so they kept their dialect without changes. However, now we have a big cultural diversity and their language changing with more influence of white speakers. However, because in same areas still we witnessed cultural limits we need to teach children from those black communities classical English. This will help a future generations to be adapted in the society.

1 comment:

Dathan said...

Hey -
Just a reminder - it's a good idea to credit your sources:

http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~patrickp/AAVE.html

http://www.cal.org/topics/dialects/aae.html