African American Vernacular English

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African American Vernacular English (AAVE)also called African American

English (AAE); less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English
Vernacular (BEV), or Black Vernacular English (BVE)is
a variety (dialect, ethnolect and sociolect) ofAmerican English, most commonly spoken
today by urban working-class and largely bi-dialectal middle-class African Americans.
[1]
Non-linguists[2] often call it Ebonics (a term that also has other meanings and
connotations).

It shares a large portion of its grammar and phonology with the rural dialects of the
Southern United States.[3] Several creolists, including William Stewart, John Dillard
and John Rickford, argue that AAVE shares enough characteristics with African Creole
languages spoken around the world that AAVE itself may be an English-based creole
language separate from English; [4][5] however, most linguists maintain that there are no
significant parallels,[6][7][8] and that AAVE is, in fact, a demonstrable variety of the English
language,[9][10] having features that can be traced back mostly to the nonstandard British
English of early settlers in the American South.[11]
As with all linguistic forms, its usage is influenced by age, status, topic and setting. There
are many literary uses of this variety of English, particularly in African-American literature.
Contents
[hide]

1Overview
2Origins

3Distinctive features
o

3.1Phonology

3.2Tense and aspect

3.3Negation

3.4Other grammatical characteristics

3.5"Deep" AAVE

4Lexical features

5Social context

6In literature and media

6.1In music

7In education

8See also

9Notes

10References

11External links and further reading

Overview[edit]
AAVE shares several characteristics with Creole English language-forms spoken by
people throughout much of the world. AAVE has pronunciation, grammatical structures,
and vocabulary in common with various West African languages. [12]
Many features of AAVE are shared with English dialects spoken in the American South.
While these are mostly regionalisms (i.e. originating from the dialect commonly spoken in
the area, regardless of color), a number of themsuch as the deletion of isare used
much more frequently by black speakers, suggesting that they have their origins in black

speech.[13] The traits of AAVE that distinguish it from the General American accent and
other American English dialects include the following:

specific pronunciation features along definable patterns, many of which are found
in creoles and dialects of other populations of West African descent and that also
emerge in English dialects that may be uninfluenced by West African languages,
such as Newfoundland English
distinctive vocabulary

distinctive use of verb tense and aspect

the use of negative concord

Early AAVE contributed a number of African-originated words to the American English

mainstream, including gumbo,[14] goober,[15] yam, and banjo. AAVE has also contributed
slang expressions such as cool and hip.[16]
Misconceptions about AAVE are, and have long been, common, and have stigmatized its
use. One myth is that AAVE is grammatically simple or sloppy. Another is that AAVE is
the native dialect (or even more inaccurately, a linguistic fad) employed by all African
Americans. Wheeler (1999) warns that "AAVE should not be thought of as the language
of Black people in America. Many African Americans neither speak it nor know much
about it."[17]

Origins[edit]
While it is clear that there is a strong relationship between AAVE and Southern U.S.
dialects, the unique characteristics of AAVE are not fully understood and its origins are
still a matter of debate.
One theory is that AAVE arose from one or more slave creoles that arose from the transAtlantic African slave trade and the need for African captives to communicate among
themselves and with their captors.[18] According to this theory, these captives developed
what are called pidgins, simplified mixtures of two or more languages. As pidgins form
from close contact between members of different language communities, the slave trade
would have been exactly such a situation. Dillard quotes slave ship Captain William
Smith:[19]
As for the languages of Gambia, they are so many and so different, that the Natives, on
either Side of the River, cannot understand each other.... [T]he safest Way is to trade with
the different Nations, on either Side of the River, and having some of every Sort on
board, there will be no more Likelihood of their succeeding in a Plot, than of finishing the
Tower of Babel.
By 1715, this African pidgin had made its way into novels by Daniel Defoe, in
particular, The Life of Colonel Jacque. In 1721, Cotton Mather conducted the first attempt
at recording the speech of slaves in his interviews regarding the practice of smallpox
inoculation.[20]
By the time of the American Revolution, varieties among slave creoles were not
quite mutually intelligible. Dillard quotes a recollection of "slave language" toward the
latter part of the 18th century:[19]
Kay, massa, you just leave me, me sit here, great fish jump up into da canoe, here he be,
massa, fine fish, massa; me den very grad; den me sit very still, until another great fish
jump into de canoe; but me fall asleep, massa, and no wake 'til you come...
Not until the time of the American Civil War did the language of the slaves become
familiar to a large number of educated whites. The abolitionist papers before the war form
a rich corpus of examples of plantation creole. In Army Life in a Black

Regiment (1870), Thomas Wentworth Higginson detailed many features of his soldiers'
language.
In the early 2000s, Shana Poplack provided corpus-based evidence[7][8]evidence from a
body of writingfrom isolated enclaves in Saman and Nova Scotia peopled by
descendants of migrations of early AAVE-speaking groups (see Saman English), that
suggests that the grammar of early AAVE was closer to that of contemporary British
dialects than modern urban AAVE is to current American dialects, suggesting that the
modern language is a result of divergence from mainstream varieties, rather than the
result of decreolization from a widespread American creole. [21]
Linguist John McWhorter maintains that the contribution of West African languages to
AAVE is minimal. In an interview on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation, Dr.
McWhorter characterized AAVE as a "hybrid of regional dialects of Great Britain that
slaves in America were exposed to because they often worked alongside the indentured
servants who spoke those dialects..." According to Dr. McWhorter, virtually all linguists
who have carefully studied the origins of AAVE "agree that the West African connection is
quite minor."[22]

Distinctive features[edit]
Although the distinction between AAVE and General American accents is clear to
speakers, some characteristics, notably double negatives and the omission of
certain auxiliaries(see below) such as the has in has been are also characteristic of
general colloquial American English. [citation needed]

Phonology[edit]
[show]

All AAVE vowels

There is near uniformity of AAVE grammar, despite its vast geographic spread. [24] This
may be due in part to relatively recent migrations of African Americans out of
the American South (see Great Migration and Second Great Migration) as well as to
long-term racial segregation.[25] Phonological features that may set AAVE apart from other
forms ofAmerican English (particularly, General American) include:

Word-final devoicing of /b/, /d/, and //, whereby for example cub sounds like cup.
[26]

Reduction of certain diphthong forms to monophthongs, in particular, /a/ is

monophthongized to [a] except before voiceless consonants (this is also a feature of
manySouthern dialects). The vowel sound in boil (// in General American) is also
monophthongized, especially before /l/, making it indistinguishable from ball.
[27]
Conversely, older speakers in some regions (such as the American South) may
use [o] in words like coach and road that have [o] in General American
(i.e. [kot], [rod]).[28]

AAVE speakers may not use the fricatives [] (the th in thin)

and [] (the th of then) that are present in standard varieties of English. The actual
alternative phone used depends on the sound's position in a word. [29]

Word-initially, // is normally the same as in other English dialects

(so thin is [n]); in other situations, it may move forward in the mouth, going
from dental (with the tongue near the top teeth) to labiodental (with the lower lip
near the top teeth).

Word-initially, // is [~dd ] (so this may be [dd s]). In other words, rather
than the tongue simply being close to the top teeth, it can actually touch the top

teeth. In other situations, // may move forward in the mouth, much like the
aformentioned behavior of //.

Realization of final ng //, the velar nasal, as the alveolar

nasal [n] in function morphemes and content morphemes with two or more syllables
like -ing, e.g. tripping is pronounced as trippin. This change does not occur in onesyllable content morphemes such as sing, which is [s] and not *[sn].
However, singing is [sn]. Other examples
include wedding [wn], morning [mnn], nothing [nfn]. Realization
of // as [n] in these contexts is commonly found in many other English dialects.[30]

A marked feature of AAVE is final consonant cluster reduction. There are several
phenomena that are similar but are governed by different grammatical rules. This
tendency has been used by creolists to compare AAVE to West African languages
since such languages do not have final clusters. [31]

Final consonant clusters that are homorganic (have the same place of
articulation) and share the same voicing are reduced. E.g. test is
pronounced [ts] since /t/ and /s/are both voiceless; hand is pronounced [hn],
since /n/ and /d/ are both voiced; but pant is unchanged, as it contains both a
voiced and a voiceless consonant in the cluster.[32] Note also that it is the plosive
(/t/ and /d/) in these examples that is lost rather than the fricative or nasal.
Speakers may carry this declustered pronunciation when pluralizing so that the
plural of test is [tss] rather than [tsts].[33] The clusters /ft/, /md/, are also
affected.[34]

More often, word-final /sp/, /st/, and /sk/ are reduced, again with the final
element being deleted rather than the former.[35]

For younger speakers, /skr/ also occurs in words that other varieties of
English have /str/ so that, for example, street is pronounced [skrit].[28]

Clusters ending in /s/ or /z/ exhibit variation in whether the first or second
element is deleted.[36]

Similarly, final consonants may be deleted (although there is a great deal of

variation between speakers in this regard). Most often, /t/ and /d/ are deleted. As with
other dialects of English, final /t/ and /k/ may reduce to a glottal stop. Nasal
consonants may be lost while nasalization of the vowel is retained (e.g., find may be
pronounced [f]). More rarely, /s/ and /z/ may also be deleted.[37]
Use of metathesised forms like aks for "ask"[38] or graps for "grasp".

General non-rhotic behavior, in which the rhotic consonant /r/ is typically dropped
when not followed by a vowel; it may also manifest as an unstressed [] or the
lengthening of the preceding vowel. [39] Intervocalic /r/ may also be dropped, e.g.
General American story ([stri]) can be pronounced [st.i], though this doesn't occur
across morpheme boundaries.[40] /r/ may also be deleted between a consonant and a
back rounded vowel, especially in words like throw, throat, and through.[41]

/l/ is often vocalized in patterns similar to that of /r/ (though never between
vowels)[42] and, in combination with cluster simplification (see above), can make
homophones of tolland toe, fault and fought, and tool and too. Homonymy may be
reduced by vowel lengthening and by an off-glide [].[43]

Before nasal consonants (/m/, /n/, and //), // and // are both pronounced [],
making pen and pin homophones.[27] This feature is also present in other dialects.

The distinction between // and /i/ before liquid consonants is frequently reduced,
making feel and fill homophones. /r/ and /r/ also merge,
making poor and pourhomophones.[27]

In addition to these, there are a handful of multisyllabic words that differ from
General American in their stress placement so that, for
example, police, guitar and Detroit are pronounced with initial stress instead of
ultimate stress.[44]

Tense and aspect[edit]

Although AAVE does not necessarily feature the preterite marker of other English
varieties (that is, the -ed of worked), it does feature an optional tense system with four
past and two future tenses or (because they indicate tense in degrees) phases. [45]
Phases/Tenses of AAVE[46]

Phase

Example

Pre-recent

I been flown it

Recent

I done fly ita

Pre-present

I did fly it

Past Inceptive

I do fly it

Past

Present

Future

I be flying it

Immediate

I'm a-fly it

Post-immediate

I'm a-gonna fly it

Indefinite future

I gonna fly it

^a Syntactically, I flew it is grammatical, but done (always unstressed) is used to

emphasize the completed nature of the action. [47]
As phase auxiliary verbs, been and done must occur as the first auxiliary; when they
occur as the second, they carry additional aspects:[46]
He been done work means "he finished work a long time ago".
He done been work means "until recently, he worked over a long period of time".

This latter example highlights one of the most distinguishing features of AAVE,
which is the use of be to indicate that performance of the verb is of a habitual
nature. In most other American English dialects, this can only be expressed
unambiguously by using adverbs such as usually.[48]
This aspect-marking form of been or BIN[49] is stressed and semantically distinct
from the unstressed form: She BIN running ('She has been running for a long
time') and She been running ('She has been running').[50] This aspect has been
given several names, including perfect phase, remote past, and remote
phase (this article uses the third).[51] As shown above, been places action in the
distant past. However, when been is used with stative
verbs or gerund forms, been shows that the action began in the distant past and
that it is continuing now. Rickford (1999) suggests that a better translation when
used with stative verbs is "for a long time". For instance, in response to "I like
your new dress", one might hear Oh, I been had this dress, meaning that the
speaker has had the dress for a long time and that it isn't new.[51]
To see the difference between the simple past and the gerund when used
with been, consider the following expressions:
I been bought her clothes means "I bought her clothes a long time ago".
I been buying her clothes means "I've been buying her clothes for a long time".
AAVE grammatical aspects

Aspect

Example

Standard English meaning

Habitual/continuative
aspect[52]

He be working
Tuesdays.

Intensified continuative
(habitual)

He stay working. He is always working.

Intensified continuative (not

habitual)[53]

He steady
working.

He keeps on working.

Perfect progressive

He been
working.

He has been working.

Irrealis

He finna go to
work.

He is about to go to work.a

He works frequently (or

habitually) on Tuesdays.

^a Finna corresponds to "fixing to" in other varieties.[54] it is also

written fixina, fixna, fitna, and finta[55]

In addition to these, come (which may or may not be an auxiliary[56]) may

be used to indicate speaker indignation, such as in Don't come acting

like you don't know what happened and you started the whole
thing ('Don't try to act as if you don't know what happened, because you
started the whole thing').[57]

Negation[edit]
Negatives are formed differently from most other varieties of English: [58]

Use of ain't as a general negative indicator. As in other dialects, it

can be used where most other dialects would use am
not, isn't, aren't, haven't and hasn't. However, in marked contrast to
other varieties of English in the U.S., some speakers of AAVE also
use ain't instead of don't, doesn't, or didn't (e.g., I ain't know that).
[59]
Ain't had its origins in common English, but became increasingly
stigmatized since the 19th century. See also amn't.
Negative concord, popularly called "double negation", as in I didn't
go nowhere; if the sentence is negative, all negatable forms are
negated. This contrasts with standard written English conventions,
which have traditionally prescribed that a double negative is
considered incorrect to mean anything other than a positive
(although this wasn't always so; see double negative).
In a negative construction, an indefinite pronoun such
as nobody or nothing can be inverted with the negative verb particle
for emphasis (e.g. Don't nobody know the answer,Ain't nothing
going on.)

While these are features that AAVE has in common with Creole
languages,[60] Howe & Walker (2000) use data from early recordings of
African Nova Scotian English, Saman English, and the recordings of
former slaves to demonstrate that negation was inherited from
nonstandard colonial English.[58]

Other grammatical characteristics[edit]

The copula be in the present tense is often dropped, as

in Russian, Hebrew, Arabic and other languages. For example: You
crazy ("You're crazy") or She my sister ("She's my sister"). The
phenomenon is also observed in questions: Who you? ("Who're
you?") and Where you at? ("Where are you (at)?"). On the other
hand, a stressed is cannot be dropped: She is my sister. The
general rules are:

Only the forms is and are (of which the latter is anyway often
replaced by is) can be omitted; am, was, and were are not
deleted.

These forms cannot be omitted when they would be pronounced

with stress in General American (whether or not the stress
serves specifically to impart an emphatic sense to the verb's
meaning).

These forms cannot be omitted when the corresponding form in

standard English cannot show contraction (and vice versa). For
example, I don't know where he is cannot be reduced to *I don't
know where he just as in standard English forms the
corresponding reduction *I don't know where he's is likewise
impossible. (I don't know where he at is possible, paralleling I
don't know where he's at in standard English.)

Possibly some other minor conditions apply as well. [61]

Present-tense verbs are uninflected for number/person: there is no

-s ending in the present-tense third-person singular. Example: She
write poetry ("She writes poetry"). Similarly, was is used for what in
standard English are contexts for both was and were.[62]

The genitive -'s ending may or may not be used.[63] Genitive case is
inferrable from adjacency. This is similar to many creoles throughout
the Caribbean. Many language forms throughout the world use an
unmarked possessive; it may here result from a simplification of
grammatical structures. Example: my momma sister ('my mother's
sister')

The words it and they denote the existence of something, equivalent

to standard English's there is, or there are.[64]

Altered syntax in questions: Why they ain't growing? ('Why aren't

they growing?') and Who the hell she think she is? ('Who the hell
does she think she is?') lack the inversion of most other forms of
English. Because of this, there is also no need for the auxiliary DO.
[65]

Usage of personal pronoun "them" instead of definite article "those".

[citation needed]

"Deep" AAVE [edit]

According to John McWhorter, there is a continuum from "a 'deep' Black
English through a 'light' Black English to standard English," and the
sound on this continuum may vary from one African American speaker to
the next or even in a single speaker from one situational context to the
next.[66] McWhorter argues that what truly unites all varieties of AAVE is
its unique intonation pattern or "melody," which characterizes even the
most "neutral" light Black English. McWhorter regards the following as
rarer features, characteristic only of a deep Black English but which
speakers of light Black English may occasionally "dip into for humorous
or emotive effect":[67]

Lowering of // before //, causing pronunciations such

as [~] for thing (sounding something like thang).[28]
Word-medially and word-finally,
pronouncing // as [f] (so [mmf] for month and [mf] for mouth),
and // as [v] (so [smuv] for smooth and [v()] for rather.[68] This
is called th-fronting. Wordinitially, // is [d] (so those and doze sound identical). In other words,
the tongue fully touches the top teeth.

Glide deletion (monophthongization) of all instances of /a/,

universally, resulting in [a~] (so that, for example, even rice may
sound like rahs.)

Full gliding (diphthongization) of //, resulting in [i] (so that win may
sound like wee-un).

Raising the vowel // of words like strut, mud, tough, etc. to

something like [].

Using the word bees even in place of be to mean is or are in

standard English, as in the sentence "That's the way it bees." This is
one of the rarest of all deep AAVE features today, and most middleclass AAVE speakers would recognize the verb bees as part of only
a deep "Southern" or "country" speaker's vocabulary.

Lexical features[edit]
AAVE shares much of its lexicon with other varieties of English,
particularly that of informal and Southern dialects. There are some
notable differences between the two, however. It has been suggested
that some of the vocabulary unique to AAVE has its origin in West
African languages, but etymology is often difficult to trace and, without a
trail of recorded usage, the suggestions below cannot be considered
proven; in many cases, the postulated etymologies are not recognized
by linguists or the Oxford English Dictionary.[69]

dig from Wolof dgg or dgga, meaning "to

understand/appreciate"[70] (It may instead come from Irish dtuig.)[71]
jazz.[72]

tote[72]

bad-mouth, a calque from Mandinka[73]

AAVE also has words that either are not part of most other American
English dialects or have strikingly different meanings from their common
usage in these other dialects. For example, there are several words in
AAVE referring to white people which are not part of mainstream
American English; these include gray as an adjective for whites (as
in gray dude), possibly from the color of Confederate uniforms;
and paddy, an extension of the slang use for "Irish".[74] "Ofay," which
is pejorative, is another general term for a white person; it might derive
from the Ibibio word afia, which means "light-colored,"; or from
the Yoruba word ofe, spoken in hopes of disappearing from danger such
as that posed by European traders; or via Pig Latin from "foe". However,
most dictionaries simply refer to this word as having an unknown
etymology.[75] Kitchen refers to the particularly curly or kinky hair at the
nape of the neck, and siditty or seddity means snobbish or bourgeois.[76]
AAVE has also contributed various words and phrases to other varieties
of English; including chill out, main squeeze, soul, funky, and threads.[77]

Social context[edit]
Linguists maintain that there is nothing intrinsically "wrong" or "sloppy"
about AAVE as a language variety since, like all dialects, AAVE shows
consistent internal logic and grammatical complexity, and is used
naturally to express thoughts and ideas.[78] Other attitudes about AAVE
are less positive; since AAVE deviates from the standard, its use is
commonly misinterpreted as a sign of ignorance, laziness, or both. [79]
[80]
Perhaps because of this attitude (as well as similar attitudes among
white and other Americans), most speakers of AAVE are bidialectal,
being able to speak with a more General American accent as well as
AAVE. Such linguistic adaptation in different environments is
called code-switching[81][82]though Linnes (1998) argues that the
situation is actually one of diglossia:[83] each dialect, or code, is applied in

different settings. Generally speaking, the degree of exclusive use of

AAVE decreases with increasing socioeconomic status (although AAVE
is still used by even well-educated African Americans). [84][85][86][87]
United States Courts are divided over how to admit statements made in
AAVE into evidence. In United States v. Arnold, the United States Court
of Appeals for the Sixth Circuitheld that "he finna shoot me" was a
statement made in the present tense, so it was
admissible hearsay under the excited utterance exception; however, the
dissent held that past or present tense could not be determined by the
statement, so the statement should not have been admitted into
evidence.[88]
Ogbu (1999) argues that the use of AAVE carries racially affirmative
political undertones as its use allows African Americans to assert their
cultural upbringing. Nevertheless, use of AAVE also carries strong social
connotations; Sweetland (2002) presents a white female speaker of
AAVE who is accepted as a member into African American social groups
despite her race.
Amid related research in the 1960s and 1970sincluding William
Labov's groundbreaking thorough grammatical study, Language in the
Inner Citythere was doubt as to the existence of a distinct variety of
English spoken by African Americans; Williamson (1970) noted that
distinctive features of African American speech were present in the
speech of Southerners and Farrison (1970) argued that there were really
no substantial vocabulary or grammatical differences between the
speech of blacks and that of other English dialects. [89]

In literature and media[edit]

There is a long tradition of representing the speech of blacks
in American literature. A number of researchers[90] have looked into the
ways that American authors have depicted the speech of black
characters, investigating how black identity is established and how it
connects to other characters. Brasch (1981:x) argues that early mass
media portrayals of black speech are the strongest historical evidence of
a separate variety of English for blacks.[91] Early popular works are also
used to determine the similarities that historical varieties of black speech
have in common with modern AAVE.[92][93]
The earliest depictions of black speech came from works written in the
eighteenth century,[94] primarily by white authors. A notable exception
is Clotel, the first novel written by an African American (William Wells
Brown).[51][95] Depictions have largely been restricted to dialogue and the
first novel written entirely in AAVE was June Jordan's His Own
Where(1971),[96] though Alice Walker's epistolary novel The Color
Purple is a much more widely known work written entirely in AAVE.
[97]
Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun also has near
exclusive use of AAVE.[98] The poetry of Langston Hughes uses AAVE
extensively.[99][page needed]
Some other notable works that have incorporated representations of
black speech (with varying degrees of perceived authenticity) include: [100]

Edgar Allan Poe: "The Gold-Bug" (1843)

Herman Melville: Moby-Dick (1851)
Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom's Cabin (18511852)

Joel Chandler Harris: Uncle Remus (1880)

Mark Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

Thomas Nelson Page: In Ole Virginia (1887)

Thomas Dixon: The Clansman (1905)

Margaret Mitchell: Gone with the Wind (1936)

Zora Neale Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)[101]

William Faulkner: Go Down, Moses (1942)

John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces (1980)[102]

As there is no established spelling system for AAVE,[103] depicting it in

literature is instead often done through spelling changes to indicate its
phonological features,[104] or to contribute to the impression that AAVE is
being used (eye dialect).[105] More recently, authors have begun focusing
on grammatical cues,[51] and even the use of certain rhetorical strategies.
[106]

Portrayals of black characters in movies and television are also done

with varying degrees of authenticity.[107] In Imitation of Life (1934), the
speech and behavioral patterns of Delilah (an African American
character) are reminiscent of minstrel performances that set out to
exaggerate stereotypes, rather than depict black speech authentically.
[108]
More authentic performances, such as those in the following movies
and TV shows, occur when certain speech events, vocabulary, and
syntactic features are used to indicate AAVE usage, often with particular
emphasis on young, urban African Americans:[109]

Do the Right Thing (1989)

The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (19901996)

Jungle Fever (1991)

Laurel Avenue (1993)

Fresh (1994)

The Best Man (1999)

In music[edit]
Spirituals, blues, jazz, R & B, and most recently, hip-hop are all genres
associated with African American music; as such, AAVE is featured in
these musical forms. Examples of morphosyntactic features of AAVE in
genres other than hip-hop are given below:
Artist

Nina
Simone

Song

Lyric

"It Be's That Way "It Be's That Way

Sometime"
Sometime"

AAVE Feature

habitual aspect
with be

Vera Hall

"Trouble So
Hard"

"Don't nobody know my

negative concord
trouble but God"

Texas
Alexander

"She got something

"The Rising Sun" round and it look just
like a bat"

lack of inflection on
present-tense verb

More recently, AAVE has been used heavily in hip-hop to show street
cred.[110] Examples of morphosyntactic AAVE features used by black hiphop artists are given below:
Artist

Song

Lyric

AAVE Feature

LL Cool J

"Control
Myself"

"She said her name

Shayeeda"

absence of copula

LL Cool J

"Control
Myself"

"I could tell her mama

feed her"

lack of inflection on
present-tense verb

Kanye
West ft. Jay-Z

"Gotta Have "You can bank I ain't

It"
got no ceilin'"

Nick Cannon

"Can I Live"

negative concord

"It's a lot of angels

expletive it
waiting on their wings"

In addition to grammatical features, lexical items specific to AAVE are

often used in hip-hop:

Artist

Song

Lyric

AAVE
lexical
itema

Standard
English
definition

Kanye
West ft. Jay-Z

"Otis"

"Or the big-face

rollie, I got two of rollie
those"

Rolex (watch)

Tupac Shakur

"Straight
Ballin'"

"And getting
ghost on the 5-0"

police

Lil Wayne

"Blinded"

"I can put bangles ashy

5-0 ("fiveoh")

dry skin

around yo ashy
ankles"
^a Lexical items taken from Smitherman (2000)
Because hip-hop is so intimately related to the African American oral
tradition, non-black hip-hop artists also use certain features of AAVE; for
example, in an MC battle, Eyedeasaid, "What that mean,
yo?"[111] displaying lack of subject-verb inversion and also the auxiliary
DO. However, they tend to avoid the term nigga, even as a marker of
solidarity.[111]White hip-hop artists such as Eyedea can choose to
accentuate their whiteness by hyper-articulating postvocalic r sounds
(i.e. the retroflex approximant).[111]
AAVE is also used by non-black artists in genres other than hip-hop, if
less frequently. For instance, in "Tonight, Tonight", Hot Chelle Rae uses
the term dime to mean "an attractive woman".[112] Jewel's "Sometimes It
Be That Way" employs habitual BE in the title to indicate habitual aspect.
If they do not employ similar features of AAVE in their speech, then it can
be argued that they are modeling their musical performance to evoke
aspects of particular musical genres such as R & B or the blues (as
British pop musicians of the 1960s and beyond did to evoke rock, pop,
and the blues).[113]
Some research suggests that non-African American young adults learn
AAVE vocabulary from voluntary listening of hip-hop music.[110]

In education[edit]
AAVE has been the center of controversy about the education of African
American youths, the role AAVE should play in public schools and
education, and its place in broader society.[114] Educators have held that
attempts should be made to eliminate AAVE usage through the public
education system. Criticism from social commentators and educators
has ranged from asserting that AAVE is an intrinsically deficient form of
speech to arguments that its use, by being considered unacceptable in
most cultural contexts, is socially limiting. [115] Some of the harshest
criticism of AAVE or its use has come from African Americans.[116][117][118] A
conspicuous example was the "Pound Cake speech", in which Bill
Cosby criticized some African Americans for various social behaviors,
including the way they talked.
Faced with such attitudes, the Conference on College Composition and
Communication (CCCC), a division of National Council of Teachers of
English (NCTE), issued a position statement on students' rights to their
own language. This was adopted by CCCC members in April 1974 and
appeared in a special issue of College Composition and
Communication in Fall of 1974. The resolution was as follows:[119]
"We affirm the students' right to their own patterns and varieties of
languagethe dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they
find their own identity and style. Language scholars long ago denied that
the myth of a standard American dialect has any validity. The claim that
any one dialect is unacceptable amounts to an attempt of one social
group to exert its dominance over another. Such a claim leads to false
advice for speakers and writers and immoral advice for humans. A nation
proud of its diverse heritage and its cultural and racial variety will
preserve its heritage of dialects. We affirm strongly that teachers must

have the experiences and training that will enable them to respect
diversity and uphold the right of students to their own language."
Around this time, pedagogical techniques similar to those used to teach
English to speakers of foreign languages were shown to hold promise
for speakers of AAVE. William Stewart experimented with the use of
dialect readerssets of text in both AAVE and standard English. [120] The
idea was that children could learn to read in their own dialect and then
shift to "Standard English" with subsequent textbooks. [121] Simpkins, Holt
& Simpkins (1977) developed a comprehensive set of dialect readers,
called bridge readers, which included the same content in three different
dialects: AAVE, a "bridge" version that was closer to "Standard American
English" without being prohibitively formal, and a Standard English
version.[122] Despite studies that showed promise for such "Standard
English as a Second Dialect" (SESD) programs, reaction to them was
largely hostile[123] and both Stewart's research and the Bridge Program
were rejected for various political and social reasons, including strong
resistance from parents.[121][124][125]
A more formal shift in the recognition of AAVE came in the "Ann Arbor
Decision" of 1979 (Martin Luther King Junior Elementary School
Children et al., v. Ann Arbor School District). In it, a federal judge ruled
that in teaching black children to read, a school board must adjust to the
children's dialect, not the children to the school, [121] and that, by not taking
students language into consideration, teachers were contributing to the
failure of such students to read and use mainstream English proficiently.
[126]

National attitudes towards AAVE were revisited when a controversial

resolution from the Oakland (California) school board (Oakland Unified
School District) on December 18, 1996, called on "Ebonics" to be
recognized as a language of African Americans.[127] The proposal was to
implement a program similar to the Language Development Program for
African American Students (LDPAAS) in Los Angeles, which began in
1988 and uses methods from the SESD programs mentioned above. [128]
Like other similar programs,[129] the Oakland resolution was widely
misunderstood as intended to teach AAVE and "elevate it to the status of
a written language."[130] It gained national attention and was derided and
criticized, most notably by Jesse Jackson and Kweisi Mfume who
regarded it as an attempt to teach slang to children.[131] The statement
that "African Language Systems are genetically based" also contributed
to the negative reaction because "genetically" was popularly
misunderstood to imply that African Americans had a biological
predisposition to a particular language.[132] In an amended resolution, this
phrase was removed and replaced with wording that states African
American language systems "have origins in West [sic] and Niger
Congo languages and are not merely dialects of English. . . ."[133]
The Oakland proposal was explained as follows: that black students
would perform better in school and more easily learn standard American
English if textbooks and teachers incorporated AAVE in teaching black
children to speak Standard English rather than mistakenly [28][134] equating
nonstandard with substandard and dismissing AAVE as the latter.Baratz
& Shuy (1969:93) point to these linguistic barriers, and common
reactions by teachers, as a primary cause of reading difficulties and poor
school performance.[135]
More recently, research has been conducted on the overrepresentation
of African Americans in special education[136] Van Keulen, Weddington &

DeBose (1998:112113) argue that this is because AAVE speech

characteristics are often erroneously considered to be signs of speech
development problems, prompting teachers to refer children to speech
pathologists.[137]
According to Smitherman, the controversy and debates concerning
AAVE in public schools imply deeper deterministic attitudes towards the
African-American community as a whole. Smitherman describes this as
a reflection of the "power elite's perceived insignificance and hence
rejection of Afro-American language and culture".[138] She also asserts
that African Americans are forced to conform to European American
society in order to succeed, and that conformity ultimately means the
"eradication of black language . . . and the adoption of the linguistic
norms of the white middle class." The necessity for "bi-dialectialism"
(AAVE and General American) means "some blacks contend that being
bi-dialectal not only causes a schism in the black personality, but it also
implies such dialects are 'good enough' for blacks but not for whites." [139]

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