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Why
are we here?
Why have a webpage about African American English? And why me as creator? Glad you asked... click here»
This page is an introduction to African American English from a sociolinguist’s point of view. First, what should it be called, and why does that matter?
"African American English" (="AAE") is one name for a
collection of varieties (ways of speaking) characteristically used by African
Slave Descendants in
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 axiom of sociolinguistics 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
Linguistic Human Rights.
· See the Wikipedia entry on political correctness, which gives some useful history and criticism, and discusses derogatory stereotyping and terminology change from a linguistic point of view.
· See Articles 31 and 33 of the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights, according to which all language communities have the right to use their own system of proper names and refer to themselves using the names of their own language.
People: Who are the speakers?
The speakers of African American English have often been assumed to be black Americans, or African Americans, and indeed most of them are. But there are obvious problems with defining a language (or anything else) racially, including:
Prof John Baugh, a prominent African American linguist at Washington University, has referred to the core group of speakers not in a racial, but in a historical way, as American Slave Descendants (ASD), particularly those who participate in Vernacular African American Culture (VAAC; from Baugh 1991; for these and other citations, see Selected Readings). Baugh doesn’t propose that people should start using “ASD” as a popular term – rather, as a technical term, it’s a way of avoiding loaded and potentially offensive words, and pointing neutrally to what those terms refer to.
As Prof Geneva Smitherman (one of the best and best-known African American linguists who teaches at Michigan State University) points out, such a process of social change – and there is no doubt that names have power – means that at any one moment, there are likely to be generational, regional and social differences of preference for a name within the community that Baugh calls African Slave Descendants (ASD). It would certainly be presumptuous for people who are not well acquainted with the community to take a prescriptive stance about which terms are better, best, ridiculous, etc. One clear thing – and Smitherman’s and Baugh’s research shows substantial consensus within the community on this – is that certain terms are known to be offensive to all community members when used by outsiders, while others are neutral or positive to some group members (e.g. older people) but offensive to others (e.g. younger people). The process of changing terms of self-reference, and language names, is socially complex, has political and ethnic goals, and draws on a sophisticated knowledge of both intra-group and inter-group relations. In short, it’s worth taking seriously – failure to do so can itself be offensive – and even in-group members can learn something from the work of the scholars mentioned above.
"Ebonics" is a popular name for African American English, but is
used most often for the vernacular (=colloquial, working-class, street,
disrespected) forms of it. Periodically debate erupts in the USA -- most
recently in 1996/7 -- over whether "Ebonics" exists; ought to be
spoken; ought to be recognized in schools; etc. etc. Click here for the Ebonics FAQ.
Bibliography of
Works on African American English
This is a bibliography of classic and current works on AAE, mostly by
linguists. It's not complete, of course, but contained around 700 items at last count. A few are not linguistic
works, but sources for African American folk speech; a few are comparative
(e.g. to Caribbean Creoles, British Afro-Caribbean English, or
other
Course
materials on African American Vernacular English
·
Coursepage: Here you’ll find my current courses on African American
English, British Afro-Caribbean
English, and Pidgins and Creoles
·
An old syllabus from the first course I taught on AAE, in Fall
1997 at
·
Selected Readings from that 1997
course: this was a good introduction to what linguists knew then about AAE
o Here is the current 2007 reading list
·
You can also read brief Summaries
for many articles on AAE
·
A smaller bibliography of mine on Attitudes to African American English
– over 50 articles, with abstracts for about half
·
Courses by other linguists: John
Baugh (2004), Lisa Green (2005), John
Rickford, Elaine Richardson (“Dr. E!”), Tracey Weldon (2002) and one by the original champ and teacher
of us all, Bill Labov (2007)
·
A page on AAE
phonology from the
Texts
of various kinds of AAE speech
· Remembering Slavery – oral history from the WPA/Library of Congress recordings
·
Fred McDowell was a turn-of-the-century rural speaker from
near
· Child speech from mid-1960s – an excerpt from “Mike and Greg”
· Brief annotated transcript of speech from “Kansas City” by Seldom Seen, Harry Belafonte’s character in the Robert Altman film (1995)
· Some lyrics excerpted from poet-activist-musician Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Ghetto Code” (1978)
· Some Ways of Speaking in AAE – genres of African American discourse
· Here are four good text collections of African American folk speech, some under-used as resources for linguistic analysis, with my comments.
Links
to good websites with AAE info
Go to my general links page, section on AAVE
Resources for beginning linguists
(last updated 20 November 2007)