Download or read book African American English and White Southern English Segregational Factors in the Development of a Dialect written by Timm Gehrmann and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2007-09 with total page 33 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,7, University of Wuppertal, course: African American Culture as Resistance, 14 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: In 1619 the first Black People were violently taken to Virginia, United States. Many more Blacks were to follow and hence had to work as slaves on the plantations in the south, fueling the trade of an emerging economic power. Families and friends were separated and people from different regions who spoke different African dialects were grouped together. This was to make sure that no communication in their respective native languages would take place in order to prevent mutinies. Thus the Africans had to learn the language of their new surroundings, namely English. Today the English of the Blacks in America is distinguishable as African American Vernacular English (AAVE). AAVE and American White Southern English (AWSE) were very similar in colonial times, and according to Feagin1 AWSE still has features of AAVE, such as the non-rhoticism and falsetto pitch2, which is supposed to add to the apparent musicality of both AAVE and AWSE today. Many commonalities can be attributed to the coexistence of the two cultures for almost 200 years, while many differences are claimed to be due to segregation. Crystal claims that first forms of Pidgin English spoken by Africans already emerged during the journey on the slave ships, where communication was also made difficult due to the grouping of different dialects in order to prevent mutiny. The slave traders who often spoken English had already shaped the new pidgin languages on the ships and helped shape a creole that was to be established in the Carribean colonies as well southern US colonies in the 17th century.
Download or read book The Development of African American English written by Walt Wolfram and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on one of the most persistent and controversial questions in modern sociolinguistics: the past and present development of African American Vernacular English (AAVE).
Download or read book African American Vernacular English written by Desirée Kuthe and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2007-07-18 with total page 13 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essay from the year 2007 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, University of Córdoba (Spain: Universidad de Córdoba), course: Sociolinguistics, language: English, abstract: African American Vernacular English or AAVE, which is also variously labelled ‘African American English’, ‘Black English’, ‘Black Vernacular English’ or ‘Ebonics’, is the non-standard variety of English spoken by many African Americans, at least to some extent and in some contexts. The now very popular term Ebonics is a portmanteau of the words ‚ebony’ and ‚phonics’, created in 1973 by a group of black scholars, who disliked the term 'Nonstandard Negro English', which was in use at that time. The circumstances of the creation of the term, (which has gained considerable popularity during a huge debate in 1996, which will be discussed later), already highlights one of the main features associated with AAVE: the controversies which centre upon it, “even” – according to McCrum et al. – “within the Black community. For some, it is an authentic means of self-expression for Black English speakers throughout America and the world. For others, who prefer the norms of Standard English, Black English represents the disadvantaged past, an obstacle to advancement, something better unlearned, denied or forgotten.” The first thorough sociolinguistic study of AAVE was carried out by William Labov in 1968. It was funded by the US Office of Education, which was interested in “the relation between social dialects and the teaching of English.” The problems many Black American children had to acquire thorough reading skills was, in fact, what first brought attention to AAVE. Still scholars can’t seem to agree on what exactly AAVE is and where it comes from. Scholars on one end of the scale of opinions hold it to be very different from Standard English, even a distinct language, those on the other end claim it to be a mere product of regional and socio-economical differences between Blacks and Whites. These two aspects will be the main points of interest in this paper. After a rough linguistic description of the dialect I’m going to turn to its possible history, before finally concluding with a short outline of the main sociolinguistic aspects surrounding AAVE, including the educational problems it presents, which have, after all, been the catalyst for linguistic interest in the dialect.
Download or read book The Historical Development of the Relationship Between African American Vernacular English and White Vernaculars written by Melissa Yunker and published by Grin Publishing. This book was released on 2017-02-17 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bachelor Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject English - Pedagogy, Didactics, Literature Studies, grade: 1,0, Humboldt-University of Berlin, language: English, abstract: African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is one of the most researched and controversially discussed varieties by sociolinguists. In this paper the controversial origin debate of AAVE will be discussed on the basis of the sociohistorical context and, more importantly, linguistic patterns. Following a chronological order, the way in which AAVE and Southern White Vernaculars (SWV) developed with respect to each other after slavery was abolished will be outlined after. In the following chapter, the socioeconomic impacts of the Great Migration and Urbanization on the African American community will be laid out, as this historic development is essential in understanding contemporary sociolinguistic developments. These will finally be discussed by looking at a number of studies that focused on linguistic innovations and changes that occurred during the 1980's in different parts of the country. While the focus of this paper lies on AAVE, the development of a number of white vernaculars spoken both in the North as well as in the South of the US will be outlined and compared to AAVE as well. Linguistic structural features will be compared, put into their sociohistorical context and will therefore serve as a basis to describe the overall dynamics between white and black vernaculars.
Download or read book African American English written by and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2007-04-03 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1, University of Hannover, language: English, abstract: Since there are different terms for the English of African Americans and in order to not confuse the reader chapter 2 lists and defines the most common terms used by linguists concerned with this topic. In chapter 3 the Oakland School Board proposal is mentioned and its contents are summarised. Before investigating the features of the African American dialect of English, I am going to take a look at its history as well as different theories of how it actually arose. Chapter 5 is concerned with various phonological, grammatical, semantic, and pragmatic features which are characteristic for the English of African Americans and make it an interesting and unique dialect.
Download or read book Black English written by Joey Lee Dillard and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1973 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'An important, provocative study....Black English is not a sloppy imitation of white English, Dillard insists, but a precise language with a history and grammar of its own. A teacher of linguistics, he marshals an impressive--and often fascinating--case.'--Charles Michener, Newsweek
Download or read book Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English written by Sonja L. Lanehart and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume, based on presentations at a 1998 state of the art conference at the University of Georgia, critically examines African American English (AAE) socially, culturally, historically, and educationally. It explores the relationship between AAE and other varieties of English (namely Southern White Vernaculars, Gullah, and Caribbean English creoles), language use in the African American community (e.g., Hip Hop, women's language, and directness), and application of our knowledge about AAE to issues in education (e.g., improving overall academic success). To its credit (since most books avoid the issue), the volume also seeks to define the term 'AAE' and challenge researchers to address the complexity of defining a language and its speakers. The volume collectively tries to help readers better understand language use in the African American community and how that understanding benefits all who value language variation and the knowledge such study brings to our society.
Download or read book African American Vernacular English written by John Russell Rickford and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 1999-07-16 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In response to the flood of interest in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) following the recent controversy over "Ebonics," this book brings together sixteen essays on the subject by a leading expert in the field, one who has been researching and writing on it for a quarter of a century.
Download or read book African American English written by Guy Bailey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African-American English: Structure, History and Use provides a comprehensive survey of linguistic research into African-American English. The main linguistic features are covered, in particular the grammar, phonology and lexicon. Further chapters explore the sociological, political and educational issues connected with African-American English. The editors are the leading experts in the field and along with other key figures, notably William Labov, Geneva Smitherman and Walt Wolfram, they provide an authoritative, diverse guide to this topical subject area. Drawing on many contemporary references: the Oakland School controversy, the rap of Ice-T, the contributors reflect the state of current scholarship on African-American English, and actively dispel many misconceptions, address new questions and explore new approaches. The book is designed to serve as a text for the increasing number of courses on African-American English and as a convenient reference for students of linguistics, black studies and anthropology at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of African American Language written by Sonja L. Lanehart and published by Oxford Handbooks. This book was released on 2015 with total page 945 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a set of diverse analyses of traditional and contemporary work on language structure and use in African American communities.
Download or read book Language Variety in the South Revisited written by Cynthia Bernstein and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2014-01-22 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Top linguists from diverse fields address language varieties in the South. Language Variety in the South Revisited is a comprehensive collection of new research on southern United States English by foremost scholars of regional language variation. Like its predecessor, Language Variety in the South: Perspectives in Black and White (The University of Alabama Press, 1986), this book includes current research into African American vernacular English, but it greatly expands the scope of investigation and offers an extensive assessment of the field. The volume encompasses studies of contact involving African and European languages; analysis of discourse, pragmatic, lexical, phonological, and syntactic features; and evaluations of methods of collecting and examining data. The 38 essays not only offer a wealth of information about southern language varieties but also serve as models for regional linguistic investigation.
Download or read book The Promised Land written by Nicholas Lemann and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1992-03-31 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller, the groundbreaking authoritative history of the migration of African-Americans from the rural South to the urban North. A definitive book on American history, The Promised Land is also essential reading for educators and policymakers at both national and local levels.
Download or read book African American English properties and features written by Florian Paulus and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2008-06-30 with total page 19 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, University of Dusseldorf "Heinrich Heine", language: English, abstract: Content 1. Introduction..............................................................................3 2. The roots of African American English............................................3 3. Features..................................................................................5 3.1Phonetics..............................................................................5 3.1.1.The “th” in AAE.........................................................5 3.1.2The Consonant Cluster education(CCR)..............................7 3.2AAE as a non-rhotic dialect........................................................9 3.3 Grammatical Features...............................................................10 3.3.1Negation..................................................................10 3.3.2Time Reference.........................................................11 3.4 BIN.................................................................................12 4. Conclusion 5. Works cited 6. Appendix 2. The roots of African American English Geneva Smitherman answers the question where the “black language and style” came from with the beginning of slavery in Colonial America. In 1619 a Dutch vessel brought with a cargo twenty Africans to Jamestown, Virginia to work there as “indentured servants”. The blacks where mostly brought from countries of the African West Coast over the so called “West passage” to the Colonies in America. They were forced to work on the cash crop plantations, harvesting tobacco, cotton, Sugar and coffee. Because there is, of course, no tape recordings of the language the slaves spoke, linguists have “to rely on reconstructions of black talk based on indirect evidence [...] written reproductions of the dialect in Journals, letters and diaries by whites [...]. African slaves developed a pidgin, what Smitherman calls a “language of transaction” used to communicate between themselves and the whites. This pidgin developed over the years as a widespread Creole among slaves. It consisted of the West-African words which were substituted little by little by English words but with the same basic language structures of West- African Languages. These Languages for example allow sentence constructions without the verb to be. According to that, sentences like “He going” still occur today in African American Vernacular English environments. Because the American settlers did not speak Standard British English as they came from Ireland, Scotland, and Germany etc. the slaves adopted certain features of the pidgin the settlers spoke to their Creole. Especially in the South, where a lot of Irish settled, a typical feature of Irish phonology is wide spread. Words like red and hat are pronounced with diphthongs, as “reɑd” and “həat”, respectively, which the blacks adopted to their language.
Download or read book The Historical Evolution of Earlier African American English written by Alexander Kautzsch and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-05-02 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on a 500,000 word corpus of early sources collected from ex-slave narratives, ex-slave recordings, and interviews with hoodoo priests, this book reconstructs the English spoken by African Americans between 1830 and 1920. By means of detailed quantitative analyses, three linguistic features (negation patterns, copula usage, and relative marker choice) are interpreted along the lines of temporal change, regional diversity, and variation across gender. Additionally, some 300 non-standard letters written by African Americans in the 19th century are compared to the main corpus in order to identify differences between speech and writing.
Download or read book Overcoming Language Barriers written by Amanda J. Jones Ed D. and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2013-05 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black English dialect has long been rooted in the socio-historical experience of many African Americans. When discussing the most appropriate means of promoting the success of those who speak Black English, educators essentially focus on African American learners because the dialect is most commonly associated with this ethnic group. While some may emphasize the importance of recognizing and respecting dialect differences, others place emphasis on the stigma often associated with Black English usage in mainstream society. Regardless of how one characterizes Black English, it is a dialect on which many African American students rely during their daily interactions with mainstream speakers in society. Overcoming Language Barriers lays the foundation for readers who are genuinely concerned about understanding fundamental Black English concepts and promoting the success of those who speak the dialect. In this practical resource book, Dr. Jones "thinks outside the box" by including pertinent topics such as brain-based learning in addition to focusing on dialect differences. She shares insightful data from her English language arts research study as well as practical strategies to be utilized in mainstream classrooms. The study highlights examples of Black English features and feedback from English language arts teachers across the United States regarding their perceptions of Black English usage in their classrooms. This publication is ideal for both beginning and veteran educators and researchers seeking to effect meaningful change for linguistically different students.
Download or read book Dialect Diversity in America written by William Labov and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sociolinguist William Labov has worked for decades on change in progress in American dialects and on African American Vernacular English (AAVE). In Dialect Diversity in America, Labov examines the diversity among American dialects and presents the counterintuitive finding that geographically localized dialects of North American English are increasingly diverging from one another over time. Contrary to the general expectation that mass culture would diminish regional differences, the dialects of Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Birmingham, Buffalo, Philadelphia, and New York are now more different from each other than they were a hundred years ago. Equally significant is Labov's finding that AAVE does not map with the geography and timing of changes in other dialects. The home dialect of most African American speakers has developed a grammar that is more and more different from that of the white mainstream dialects in the major cities studied and yet highly homogeneous throughout the United States. Labov describes the political forces that drive these ongoing changes, as well as the political consequences in public debate. The author also considers the recent geographical reversal of political parties in the Blue States and the Red States and the parallels between dialect differences and the results of recent presidential elections. Finally, in attempting to account for the history and geography of linguistic change among whites, Labov highlights fascinating correlations between patterns of linguistic divergence and the politics of race and slavery, going back to the antebellum United States. Complemented by an online collection of audio files that illustrate key dialectical nuances, Dialect Diversity in America offers an unparalleled sociolinguistic study from a preeminent scholar in the field.
Download or read book Whether or not African American Vernacular English should be used in Schools written by Niklas Tänzer and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2018-03-21 with total page 11 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essay from the year 2017 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, University of Osnabrück, language: English, abstract: The United States is characterized by a notedly broad linguistic diversity. One part of this diversity in American English has always been at the center of scholarly research and publications: African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). It is one of the most influential varieties of English that is spoken across the US. This paper will shortly present the most distinctive featuring AAVE. Further, the main differences between AAVE and Standard American English, which can be largely found in grammar, phonology and semantics will be explained. History, discussions and hypotheses about AAVE, as well as the scorching criticism it received in recent attempts to implement it into the curriculum will also be included. Having elaborated on that, the question arises whether AAVE should be integrated into the educational system these days. Although African-American Vernacular English has been chosen as the standard term in linguistics it is important to note that there are many labels referring to AAVE. It is also known as African American English, Black English Vernacular, Black Vernacular English, Black Vernacular, Black English or Ebonics. These terms are most common amongst linguists today and all refer to the same variety.
