| African-American Vernacular English | |
|---|---|
| Black Vernacular English | |
| Region | United States |
| Ethnicity | African Americans |
Indo-European
| |
Early forms | |
| Latin (English alphabet) American Braille | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | afri1276 |
| Part of a series on |
| African Americans |
|---|
African-American Vernacular English[a] (AAVE)[b] is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban communities, by most working- and middle-class African Americans and some Black Canadians.[4] Having its own unique grammatical, vocabulary and accent features, AAVE is employed by middle-class Black Americans as the more informal and casual end of a sociolinguistic continuum. However, in formal speaking contexts, speakers tend to switch to more standard English grammar and vocabulary, usually while retaining elements of the non-standard accent.[5][6] AAVE is widespread throughout the United States, but is not the native dialect of all African Americans, nor are all of its speakers African American.[7][8][9]
As with most English varieties spoken by African Americans, African-American Vernacular English shares a large portion of its grammar and phonology with the regional dialects of the Southern United States,[10] and especially older Southern American English,[11] due to the historical enslavement of African Americans primarily in that region.
Mainstream linguists see only minor parallels between AAVE, West African languages, and English-based creole languages,[12][13][14][15] instead most directly tracing back AAVE to diverse non-standard dialects of English[16][17] as spoken by the English-speaking settlers in the Southern Colonies and later the Southern United States.[18] However, a minority of linguists argue that the vernacular shares so many characteristics with African creole languages spoken around the world that it could have originated as a creole or semi-creole language, distinct from the English language, before undergoing decreolization.[19][20][21]
- ^ For the reasons that linguists avoid using the term Ebonics, see for example Green (2002:7–8).
- ^ Tamasi, Susan; Antieau, Lamont (2015). Language and Linguistic Diversity in the US: An Introduction. Routledge. p. 146. ISBN 978-0-415-80667-1.
- ^ Gordon, Matthew J. (2013). Labov: A Guide for the Perplexed. Bloomsbury. p. 215. ISBN 978-1-4411-5852-9.
- ^ Edwards (2004), p. 383.
- ^ Rickford (2015), pp. 302, 310.
- ^ Spears (2015).
- ^ Wheeler (1999), p. 55.
- ^ "Do you speak American?: African American English". PBS.
- ^ Benor, Sarah Bunin (April 19, 2010). "Ethnolinguistic repertoire: Shifting the analytic focus in language and ethnicity". Journal of Sociolinguistics. 14 (2): 159–183. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9841.2010.00440.x.
- ^ McWhorter (2001), p. 179.
- ^ Thomas (2006), pp. 16, 19–20.
- ^ Wardhaugh (2002), p. 341.
- ^ Poplack (2000), p. ?.
- ^ Poplack & Tagliamonte (2001), p. ?.
- ^ See Howe & Walker (2000) for more information
- ^ The Oakland school board's resolution "was about a perfectly ordinary variety of English spoken by a large and diverse population of Americans of African descent. . . . [E]ssentially all linguists agree that what the Oakland board was dealing with is a dialect of English."Pullum (1997)
- ^ McWhorter (2001), pp. 162, 185.
- ^ McWhorter (2001), pp. 162, 182.
- ^ Mufwene (2001:29) and Bailey (2001:55), both citing Stewart (1964), Stewart (1969), Dillard (1972), and Rickford (1997a).
- ^ Smith & Crozier (1998), pp. 113–114.
- ^ Those in favor of the "creole hypothesis" of African-American Vernacular English include creolists William Stewart, John Dillard and John Rickford.
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