Download or read book African American Vernacular English in Lyrical Discourse written by Yoshi Denis and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book African American Vernacular English in Contemporary Music written by A. Glatz and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2012-01-25 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bachelor Thesis from the year 2011 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, language: English, abstract: This thesis investigates the use of African American Vernacular English in contemporary music. AAVE is an ethnic variety spoken by many, though not all, African Americans living in the United States. This dialect does not have one name only, but is also called “Negro dialect,” “Nonstandard Negro English,” “Black English,” “Black Street Speech,” “Black Vernacular English,” “Black Vernacular English,” or “African American English.” I would like to add that some terms are historical. It is crucial to know that researchers call it differently because to a large degree it depends on the time he/she conducted research on this topic. Today, the dialect is either called African American Vernacular English or African American English. The words “contemporary music” in the title refer to Hip Hop. This music genre was chosen to be investigated because out of the music genres African Americans are involved in, it is the one that generates most of the sales and is the most popular one. The rappers which are going to be analyzed in this thesis use many of the features of the African American vernacular. Given the huge number of AAVE features, only one of them will be analyzed, the copula verb to be, which in the following will only be called “the copula.” According to Wolfram, the copula is “one of the most often described structures of AAVE” (2008: 517). For this reason, the copula might be an interesting feature to look at. When researchers examined AAVE in the past, they did not necessarily take music as a source of data, but rather spoken language. One has to know that language in music is a different genre of language use, which differs from the usual use of the language. Music can be considered an artistic expression, but not “real” speech. Nevertheless, as music has always been and presumably will always be a big part in African American culture, it should be possible to recognize features of AAVE and use music as a reliable source. In the analysis conducted in this thesis, the use of the copula will be examined by having a look at the lyrics of three famous rappers from the US: Tupac, Jay-Z and 50 Cent. Even though the three of them can be assigned to “gangsta rap”, they all differ from each other. They all started their careers in different decades, come from different cities and have a different style of rapping. What they have in common is that they are African American rappers from a lower class who grew up in poverty and have become successful musicians.
Download or read book Features of African American Vernacular English in Snoop Dogg s Rap Lyrics written by Seda Evirgen and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2016-05-10 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,0, , course: Varieties of English: New Englishes, language: English, abstract: First of all, this term paper will give some general information about the variety African American Vernacular English itself, its origins and who the speakers of AAVE are. Furthermore, it will give an overview of some features of AAVE and finally the analysis of two of the features on different rap songs from the famous rapper Snoop Dogg. The first feature that I will be looking at is zero copula and the second feature is the omission of the third-person singular –s in the present tense. In this term paper I will investigate the occurrence of these two features in Snoop Dogg’s lyrics from his first album “Doggystyle” and his latest album “Bush” and if they decreased or increased with time. Since music plays such a huge part in African American culture it should be possible to see these features of AAVE in the lyrics. The analysis will contain 16 rap songs from Snoop Dogg’s first album Doggystyle from 1993 and 10 rap songs from his latest album Bush from 2015. English is a language with many varieties and also one of the most spoken languages in the world. The varieties of English are results of colonial expansion and may differ from each other in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the variety that people associate with as the language used by the black community. The additional term vernacular refers to the speech style in everyday communication and differentiates black African American Vernacular English speakers from black speakers of Standard English. Especially in rap and hip-hop music the number of black performers is very high since it was introduced as a new music genre. The style of language that is used in hip-hop lyrics is highly influenced by the African Americans. AAVE is a variant of English that you can hear every day on the radio or television for example and that also makes it so interesting to analyze its use, features and origin.
Download or read book Features of African American Vernacular English in Snoop Dogg s Rap Lyrics written by Seda Evirgen and published by . This book was released on 2016-05-20 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,0, course: Varieties of English: New Englishes, language: English, abstract: First of all, this term paper will give some general information about the variety African American Vernacular English itself, its origins and who the speakers of AAVE are. Furthermore, it will give an overview of some features of AAVE and finally the analysis of two of the features on different rap songs from the famous rapper Snoop Dogg. The first feature that I will be looking at is zero copula and the second feature is the omission of the third-person singular -s in the present tense. In this term paper I will investigate the occurrence of these two features in Snoop Dogg's lyrics from his first album "Doggystyle" and his latest album "Bush" and if they decreased or increased with time. Since music plays such a huge part in African American culture it should be possible to see these features of AAVE in the lyrics. The analysis will contain 16 rap songs from Snoop Dogg's first album Doggystyle from 1993 and 10 rap songs from his latest album Bush from 2015. English is a language with many varieties and also one of the most spoken languages in the world. The varieties of English are results of colonial expansion and may differ from each other in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the variety that people associate with as the language used by the black community. The additional term vernacular refers to the speech style in everyday communication and differentiates black African American Vernacular English speakers from black speakers of Standard English. Especially in rap and hip-hop music the number of black performers is very high since it was introduced as a new music genre. The style of language that is used in hip-hop lyrics is highly influenced by the African Americans. AAVE is a variant of English that you can
Download or read book The Morphology of African American English in African American Rap Lyrics written by Yasemin Genc and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2009-11 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,7, University of Cologne (Englisches Seminar), course: B-Seminar: Morphology, language: English, abstract: This term paper will mainly focus on the morphological studies of Lisa J. Green who is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Texas and who published a linguistic introduction to African American English which focuses on the phonological, morphological, syntactical and semantic properties of this variety of American English. In this paper we will firstly have a closer look at the well researched areas of African American English like origins and (social)history. Subsequently, certain morphological features like verbal -s, past morphology, genetive marking and copula absence will be illustrated. To bring evidence for the linguistic theses concerning morphology that will have been made in the first part, rap texts by two well-known African American rap artists will be taken into account. This is due to the fact that authentic texts with sufficient morphological features of African American English are not easy to find. However, rap lyrics offer a wide range of morphological features that can provide evidence for many linguistic theses illustrated in this paper. On account of this, this paper will analyze 60 rap texts by the African American artists Kanye West and Talib Kweli. The aim hereby is to see whether African American English consequently pursues a morphological pattern or if the features occur optionally. Is the widespread prejudice among many non-linguists true? Namley that African American English is a non-rule-based variety of English?
Download or read book Spoken Soul written by John Russell Rickford and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2007-08-10 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Praise of Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English "Spoken Soul brilliantly fills a huge gap. . . . a delightfully readable introduction to the elegant interweave between the language and its culture." –Ralph W. Fasold, Georgetown university "A lively, well-documented history of Black English . . . that will enlighten and inform not only educators, for whom it should be required reading, but all who value and question language." –Kirkus Reviews "Spoken Soul is a must read for anyone who is interested in the connection between language and identity." –Chicago Defender Claude Brown called Black English "Spoken Soul." Toni Morrison said, "It's a love, a passion. Its function is like a preacher’s: to make you stand out of your seat, make you lose yourself and hear yourself. The worst of all possible things that could happen would be to lose that language." Now renowned linguist John R. Rickford and journalist Russell J. Rickford provide the definitive guide to African American vernacular English–from its origins and features to its powerful fascination for society at large.
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 The Uniqueness of African American Vernacular English written by Lea Lorena Jerns and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2014-06-13 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, Humboldt-University of Berlin, language: English, abstract: "The language, only the language...it is the thing that black people love so much – the saying of words, holding them on the tongue, experimenting with them, playing with them. It’s a love, a passion. Its function is like a preacher’s: to make you stand up out of your seat, make you lose yourself and ear yourself. The worst of all possible things that could happen is to lose that language. There are certain things I cannot say with-out recourse to my language." With these words Toni Morrison, an American professor and novelist, probably expressed exactly what many African American people felt and still feel. In her statement she refers to the so-called “African American Vernacular English”, abbreviated AAVE, which is “a variant of English spoken mostly by black people in the United States.” (Jokinen 2008: 1) It is also known as “African American English”, “Black English Vernacular”, “Black Vernacular Eng-lish”, “Black Vernacular”, “Black English” or “Ebonics”. It is important to point out that not all African Americans inevitably speak this ethnolect and that there are also people with a non-African American background who nonetheless may speak it. (cf. Patrick 2007: 1) Fur-thermore, it is hard to define who actually speaks AAVE as some speakers may only use some features, e.g. vocabulary or grammatical aspects, of this variant. (cf. Jokinen 2008: 1) AAVE is a variant of English that you can see and hear every day – it is present in the Internet and in many songs and that makes it so interesting to find out more about it and to get a better understanding of AAVE. In this paper, I will focus on different aspects. I will start dealing with the question “Where does AAVE come from?” under point two and will continue with a brief overview of some basic grammatical features of AAVE in point three. Under point four, I will present and discuss a concrete example of a text, in which AAVE plays an important role, namely in the short story The Gilded Six-Bits of Zora Neale Hurston, written in 1933. Afterwards, under point five, I am going to talk about AAVE in Rap and HipHop songs as there can be found a considerable number of this kind of music all around the world and, under point 6, I will deal with the controversial question whether AAVE should be taught in schools or not. Finally, in the conclusion of my paper, I would like to let the uniqueness of AAVE and the importance of recognizing...
Download or read book African American Vernacular English A New Dialect of the English Language written by Patrick Tretina and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2012-06-20 with total page 21 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2012 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: A, University of New Hampshire, course: English 550 - Graduate Studies in English Language, language: English, abstract: This scholarly research paper examines the substantial reasoning behind why African American Vernacular English is a true dialect of the English language. The AAVE controversy has been long debated by scholars and linguists alike. The debate is centered on two substantial ideas of its definition and genesis. The debate is split; half of the spectrum believes AAVE is simply an apathetic form of speech, while other concrete theories suggest that AAVE is a dialect of the English language that stems from the West African Slave Trade. This research paper not only analyzes a number of scholarly theories to credit the idea that AAVE is a true dialect of the English Language, but it also calls on a number of other variants to supplement the facts provided.
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 333 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 Word from the Mother written by Geneva Smitherman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-04-18 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by the hugely respected linguist, Geneva Smitherman, this book presents a definitive statement on African American English. Enriched by her evocative and inimitable prose style, the study presents an overview of past debates on the speech of African Americans, as well as providing a vision for the future. Featuring cartoons which demonstrate the relationship between language and race, as well as common perceptions of African American Language, she explores its contribution to mainstream American English and includes a summary of expressions as a suggested linguistic core of AAL. As global manifestations of Black Language increase, she argues that, through education, we must broaden our conception of AAL and its speakers, and further examine the implications of gender, age and class on AAL. Perhaps most of all we must appreciate the ‘artistic and linguistic genius’ of AAL, presented in this book through rap and Hip Hop lyrics and the explorations of rhyme and rhetoric in the Black speech community. Word from the Mother is an essential read for students of African American English, language, culture and sociolinguistics, as well as the general reader interested in the worldwide ‘crossover’ of black popular culture.
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 with total page 396 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 within American Gangsta Rap written by Jan Skordos and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2011-02-23 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,7, University of Münster (Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: Proseminar American English, language: English, abstract: This abstract shall give another piece of the puzzle to what is considered to be African-American Vernacular English. With scientific aid of well-known concepts by linguists such as Green in particular but also Wolfram, Schilling-Estes, Mufwene and Poplack we want to focus on specific grammatical features of AAVE and to what extend these can be recovered in the Hip-Hop subgenre of American West Coast Gangsta Rap. A small but significant text corpus of four representative songs (added to the appendix in the shape of lyrics) cover the source for a quantitative and qualitative evaluation. The given text shall give a short overview about the origin and different theories on AAVE first and will further on primarily adapt the characteristic linguistic features L. Green and Wolfram & Schilling-Estes worked out and apply them to our little song text corpus.
Download or read book African American Vernacular English and its Use in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston written by Leonie Weißweiler and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2016-09-09 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pre-University Paper from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 15, , language: English, abstract: African American English (AAVE) was first brought to the attention of linguists when in the 1960s, the government realised that African American (AA) children from urban ghettoes were worse in school than white pupils. To counteract this, it financed compensation programmes in which AA children should be taught Standard English (SE) “by means of structural drills and techniques adopted from foreign language learning”. When this approach failed, linguists suggested that AA children only spoke a different dialect than white children and that consequently, it would be necessary to teach them SE as an additional dialect. However, this approach also failed because the failure of AA children in school seems to be a result of a cultural and social divide between AA and white American society, of which separate dialects of English are only a symptom. It will therefore be the aims of this paper to prove this belief wrong and prove that AAVE is indeed a rule-governed language, to investigate its origins and its use in Zora Neale Hurston’s most famous novel, Their EyesWereWatching God.
Download or read book Language in the Inner City written by William Labov and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 1973-09-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the recent controversy in the Oakland, California school district about Ebonics—or as it is referred to in sociolinguistic circles, African American Vernacular English or Black English Vernacular—much attention has been paid to the patterns of speech prevalent among African Americans in the inner city. In January 1997, at the height of the Ebonics debate, author and prominent sociolinguist William Labov testified before a Senate subcommittee that for most inner city African American children, the relation of sound to spelling is different, and more complicated than for speakers of other dialects. He suggested that it was time to apply this knowledge to the teaching of reading. The testimony harkened back to research contained in his groundbreaking book Language in the Inner City, originally published in 1972. In it, Labov probed the question "Does 'Black English' exist?" and emerged with an answer that was well ahead of his time, and that remains essential to our contemporary understanding of the subject. Language in the Inner City firmly establishes African American Vernacular English not simply as slang but as a well-formed set of rules of pronunciation and grammar capable of conveying complex logic and reasoning. Studying not only the normal processes of communication in the inner city but such art forms as the ritual insult and ritualized narrative, Labov confirms the Black vernacular as a separate and independent dialect of English. His analysis goes on to clarify the nature and processes of linguistic change in the context of a changing society. Perhaps even more today than two decades ago, Labov's conclusions are mandatory reading for anyone concerned with education and social change, with African American culture, and with the future of race relations in this country.
Download or read book Out of the Mouths of Slaves written by John Baugh and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Oakland, California, school board called African American English "Ebonics" and claimed that it "is not a black dialect or any dialect of English," they reignited a debate over language, race, and culture that reaches back to the era of slavery in the United States. In this book, John Baugh, an authority on African American English, sets new parameters for the debate by dissecting and challenging many of the prevailing myths about African American language and its place in American society. Baugh's inquiry ranges from the origins of African American English among slaves and their descendants to its recent adoption by standard English speakers of various races. Some of the topics he considers include practices and malpractices for educating language minority students, linguistic discrimination in the administration of justice, cross-cultural communication between Blacks and whites, and specific linguistic aspects of African American English. This detailed overview of the main points of debate about African American language will be important reading for both scholars and the concerned public.
Download or read book Language Discourse and Power in African American Culture written by Marcyliena Morgan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-07-04 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African American language is central to the teaching of linguistics and language in the United States, and this book, in the series Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language, is aimed specifically at upper level undergraduates and graduates. It covers the entire field - grammar, speech, and verbal genres, and it also discusses the various historical strands that need to be identified in order to understand the development of African American English. The first section deals with the social and cultural history of the American South, the second with urban and northern black popular culture, and the third with policy issues. Morgan examines the language within the context of the changing and complex African American and general American speech communities, and their culture, politics, art and institutions. She also covers the current heated political and educational debates about the status of the African American dialect.
