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African-American Vernacular English (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. [1]
By definition, as a vernacular dialect of English, AAVE has not received the social prestige of a standard dialect, leading to widespread and long-standing misconceptions that it is a grammatically inferior form of English, which linguistics research of the twentieth century has refuted. However, educators and social commentators traditionally have advocated for eliminating AAVE usage through the public-education system for a variety of reasons, ranging from a continued belief that AAVE is intrinsically deficient to arguments that its use, by being stigmatized in certain social contexts, is socially limiting. [2] Some of the harshest criticism of AAVE or its use has come from African Americans themselves. [3] [4] [5] 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: [6]
We affirm the students' right to their own patterns and varieties of language—the 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 readers—sets of text in both AAVE and standard English. [7] The idea was that children could learn to read in their own dialect and then shift to "Standard English" with subsequent textbooks. [8] 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. [9] Despite studies that showed promise for such "Standard English as a Second Dialect" (SESD) programs, reaction to them was largely hostile [10] and both Stewart's research and the Bridge Program were rejected for various political and social reasons, including strong resistance from parents. [8] [11] [12]
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 of the Eastern District of Michigan ruled that in teaching Black children to read, a school board must adjust to the children's dialect, not the children to the school, [8] 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. [13]
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 for "Ebonics" to be recognized as a language of African Americans. [14] In fact, ebonics would be classified as a "second language". [15] [16] 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. [17]
Like other similar programs, [18] the Oakland resolution was widely misunderstood as intended to teach AAVE and "elevate it to the status of a written language." [19] 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. [20] 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. [21] 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 ..." [22]
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 [23] [24] 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. [25] According to the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 55% of White students were below the "basic" levels while 83% of African American fourth graders were under "basic" reading. The school environment is one larger factor hindering African American students' success in literacy.
More recently, research has been conducted on the over-representation of African Americans in special education [26] [27] 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. [28] The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) of 2004 may be one cause of this discrepancy (PL 108-446). IDEA was intended to guarantee that all students with disabilities in U.S. schools have the chance to receive a free and appropriate public education in the setting with the fewest restrictions. It was enacted in 1975 and has since undergone numerous revisions. IDEA stipulates requirements for pupils to meet in order to be eligible for special education services at school. help specifically for learning difficulties, where environmental, cultural, economic adversities are not accounted for. Due to many African American students being of lower income, schools being of lower quality with less well prepared teachers and overall less instructional and academic resources, it increases their likelihood to be eligible in special education services leading to the potential misdiagnosis of a disorder in part of their academic difficulties. Misidentification causes African American children to receive insufficient reading assistance.
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". [29] 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." [30]
The case of Martin Luther King Junior Elementary School Children et al. v. Ann Arbor School District, known as the Ann Arbor Decision, is considered to have established an important precedent in the education of poor African American students who are Black English speakers.
The case was decided on July 12, 1979, by Judge Charles W. Joiner on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. The suit was brought on behalf of poor Black students at the school. Gabe Kaimowitz, lead counsel for the Plaintiffs, alleged that the students were denied equal protection of the laws, because applicable Michigan regulations did not recognize social, economic and cultural factors differing those pupils from others. Black middle class students at the school were not represented among the plaintiffs. Judge Joiner in 1977 and 1978 rejected five of the six claims. The sixth claim asserted that the Ann Arbor School District violated federal statutory law because it failed to take into account the home language of the children in the provision of education instruction. The court agreed. The judge ordered the school district to find a way to identify Black English speakers in the schools and to "use that knowledge in teaching such students how to read standard English". [31]
In 1954, most of the United States had racially segregated schools, which was made legal by the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896. [32] In the case it held that segregated public schools were constitutional as long as the Black and White children in the schools were equal. Throughout the middle of the twentieth century many civil rights groups and leaders challenged the school board's racial segregation through legal and political action. One of the actions, Brown v. Board of Education was filed, and is an important and significant case, which ultimately led up to the Ann Arbor Decision. The Brown v. Board of Education case was filed against Topeka and it went over how it violated the 14th amendment. [33] The case paved the way for integration in many public schools across the United States, but Black students still faced many problems as stated in the Ann Arbor Decision.
On December 18, 1996, the Oakland Unified School District in California passed a controversial resolution recognizing the legitimacy of Ebonics –what mainstream linguists more commonly term African American English (AAE) –as an African language. The resolution set off a firestorm of media criticism and ignited a national debate.
For students whose primary language was Ebonics, the Oakland resolution mandated some instruction in this, both for "maintaining the legitimacy and richness of such language ... and to facilitate their acquisition and mastery of English language skills." This also included the proposed increase of salaries of those proficient in both Ebonics and Standard English to the level of those teaching limited English proficiency (LEP) students and the use of public funding to help teachers learn AAE themselves. [34]
Some interpretations of the controversial issues in the resolution include the idea that Ebonics is not a vernacular or dialect of English, that it is a separate language; a member of an African language family; that speakers of Ebonics should qualify for federally funded programs traditionally restricted to bilingual populations; and that students would be taught American Standard English via Ebonics. [35] The Rev. Jesse Jackson criticized the resolution, saying "I understand the attempt to reach out to these children, but this is an unacceptable surrender, borderlining on disgrace." His comments were seconded by former Secretary of Education William Bennett, former New York governor Mario Cuomo, and Senator Joe Lieberman. [36] Jackson would later reverse his position, attributing his initial opposition to a misunderstanding of the school district's proposal. He said, "They're not trying to teach Black English as a standard language. They're looking for tools to teach children standard English so they might be competitive." [37]
The original resolution caused a great deal of consternation and anger, which fueled the controversy. On January 15, 1997, Oakland's school board passed an amended resolution. The original resolution used the phrase "genetically based" which was commonly understood to mean that African Americans have a biological predisposition to a particular language, while the authors of the resolution insisted that it was referring to linguistic genetics. This phrase was removed in the amended resolution and replaced with the assertion that African American language systems "have origins in West and Niger-Congo languages and are not merely dialects of English." [38]
Some linguists and associated organizations issued statements in support of recognizing the legitimacy of African American English as a language system:
The systematic and expressive nature of the grammar and pronunciation patterns of the African American vernacular has been established by numerous scientific studies over the past thirty years. Characterizations of Ebonics as "slang," "mutant," "lazy," "defective," "ungrammatical," or "broken English" are incorrect and demeaning. ...There is evidence from Sweden, the US, and other countries that speakers of other varieties can be aided in their learning of the standard variety by pedagogical approaches which recognize the legitimacy of the other varieties of a language. From this perspective, the Oakland School Board's decision to recognize the vernacular of African American students in teaching them Standard English is linguistically and pedagogically sound. [39]
Research and experience have shown that children learn best if teachers respect the home language and use it as a bridge in teaching the language of the school and wider society.
Walt Wolfram, a linguist at North Carolina State University, wrote that this controversy exposed the intensity of people's beliefs and opinions about language and language diversity, the persistent and widespread level of public misinformation about the issues of language variation and education, and the need for informed knowledge about language diversity and its role in education and in public life. [41]
However, in response to the amended resolution claiming that African American language systems "are not merely dialects of English", [38] there have been some statements in opposition from linguists, since linguists do primarily regard African-American English as a dialect or variety of English. [42] [43] [44] [45] [46]
The ranging conversations around Ebonics or African American Vernacular English sparked linguists to reevaluate and even newly research Ebonics and understand the legitimacy of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) as a distinct dialect of English. "At its most literal level, Ebonics simply means 'black speech' ( a blend of the word ebony 'Black' and phonics 'sounds'). [47] The term was created in 1973 by a group of scholars that did not like the term that was currently being used and the negative connotations that surrounded it 'Nonstandard Negro English' had been made popular after the large-scale linguistic studies of African American speech communities began in the 1960s. However it was not until after the Oakland Ebonics Resolution of December 1996 did the term 'Ebonics' catch on among linguists and the general public.
The Oakland Ebonics Resolution brought AAVE to the forefront of linguistic discussions and prompted increased attention to the study of AAVE by linguists. As Rickford and King (2016) note, " the resolution drew national attention to AAVE and to the issues surrounding its use in education and beyond '' (p. 1) [48] This increase of contributions to the conversations challenged the misconceptions and stereotypes associated with AAVE. For example, many people viewed AAVE as a "broken" or "incorrect" version of Standard English. However, linguists have shown that AAVE has a complex and systematic grammar, just like any other language variety. In fact, some researchers argue that AAVE should be viewed as a separate language rather than a dialect of English. [48] Rickford and King write that AAVE "differs systematically from the English spoken by whites in the United States" [48] and that "its structural and functional differences are as great as those between English and the Romance languages." [48] They also note that AAVE has a rich linguistic history that is rooted in African languages and culture.
Another important contribution of linguists to the Ebonics conversation has been their work in the field of education. After the Oakland Resolution, there was a debate over whether AAVE should be recognized in the classroom and how it should be taught. This debate has many different views. Modern scholars question the concept of standardized English and AAVE. Scholars concluded that it is harmful to refer to AAVE in a negative connotation. Within a study conducted by Dr. Amanda Godley, she encouraged students to question standard English. The goal of the study was to assist students to recognize that many of the language rules are socially constructed. [49] Another study conducted by Dr. Vershawn A. Young demonstrated that there is a misconception around the belief that there is one set of dominant rules that stem from the dominant discourse. Dr. Young believed that the negative views on the use of AAVE are due to ideas on dominant language ideology. He found that there is the belief that there is one set of dominant rules that stem from the dominant discourse. In Dr. Young's opinion, using terms such as “standard “or “dialect” are more harmful than helpful. [50] This is because these terms reinforce the idea that the dominantly used language is inherently superior. Which can harm the self-esteem of students who use AAVE or other non-dominant languages.
Many modern scholars wanted to discover the impacts of AAVE on students within the classroom. Modern scholars conducted studies that focused on the relationship between success in grade level reading and writing and use of AAVE. Dr. Anne H Charity conducted a study on the relationship between children’s familiarity with standard English and reading scores. The group of students that were more familiar with AAVE were found to have lower reading scores compared to the other students with higher familiarity with SE (standard ). Dr. Charity concluded that children whose home dialects differ from SE face a greater academic barrier when reading and writing. [51] With the negative impacts within school faced by students who favor AAVE, researchers searched for a way to both uplift AAVE users while also creating a better understanding of SE. Some argued that AAVE should be used as a bridge to Standard English, while others argued that AAVE should be recognized as a legitimate language variety in its own right. Linguists have conducted research on this topic to better understand the best ways to teach AAVE speakers in the classroom. In a 2018 article, Walt Wolfram and Erik Thomas argue that educators should "recognize and build on the strengths that students bring to the classroom from their home language and dialect." [52] They note that by recognizing the linguistic diversity of students, educators can create a more inclusive and effective learning environment. Similarly, in a 2020 article, Rebecca Wheeler and Rachel Swords argue that teachers should "acknowledge and validate" [53] the language and culture of their students. They suggest using "culturally sustaining pedagogies" [53] that incorporate students' home language and culture into the curriculum. Some researchers looked for specific methods within classrooms that can help bridge gaps while also valuing AAVE. In an article written about promoting awareness for speakers that use AAVE within their writing. Dr. Shenika Hankerson wrote about using a concept called critical language awareness. Critical language awareness is an educational approach that allows students to be aware of the cultural, political, and social aspects of language. Dr. Shenika Hankerson found that critical language awareness is an effective tool in writing courses to enhance the skills students who predominantly use AAVE student speakers. [54] Another researcher named Dr. Amanda Godley conducted a study with three predominantly African American, 10th-grade English classes. Within her classes she used the concept of critical language pedagogy. Critical language pedagogy guides students to question standard English. She suggest that teachers "use to refer to instructional approaches that guide students to critical examinations of the ideologies surrounding language and dialects, the power relations such ideologies uphold, and ways to change these ideologies". [49] Researchers are still continuing to discover different theories and approaches towards bridging this gap.
Ebonics is a term that was originally intended to refer to the language of all people descended from African slaves, particularly in West Africa, the Caribbean, and North America. The term Ebonics was created in 1973 by a group of black scholars who disapproved of the negative terms being used to describe this type of language. Since the 1996 controversy over its use by the Oakland School Board, the term Ebonics has primarily been used to refer to the sociolect African-American English, a dialect distinctively different from Standard American English.
African-American English is the set of English sociolects spoken by most Black people in the United States and many in Canada; most commonly, it refers to a dialect continuum ranging from African-American Vernacular English to a more standard American English. Like all widely spoken language varieties, African-American English shows variation stylistically, generationally, geographically, in rural versus urban characteristics, in vernacular versus standard registers, etc. There has been a significant body of African-American literature and oral tradition for centuries.
African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban communities, by most working- and middle-class African Americans and some Black Canadians. 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. 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.
In sociolinguistics, a sociolect is a form of language or a set of lexical items used by a socioeconomic class, profession, age group, or other social group.
The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: Language, the open access journal Semantics and Pragmatics, and the open access journal Phonological Data & Analysis. Its annual meetings, held every winter, foster discussion amongst its members through the presentation of peer-reviewed research, as well as conducting official business of the society. Since 1928, the LSA has offered training to linguists through courses held at its biennial Linguistic Institutes held in the summer. The LSA and its 3,600 members work to raise awareness of linguistic issues with the public and contribute to policy debates on issues including bilingual education and the preservation of endangered languages.
In sociolinguistics, prestige is the level of regard normally accorded a specific language or dialect within a speech community, relative to other languages or dialects. Prestige varieties are language or dialect families which are generally considered by a society to be the most "correct" or otherwise superior. In many cases, they are the standard form of the language, though there are exceptions, particularly in situations of covert prestige. In addition to dialects and languages, prestige is also applied to smaller linguistic features, such as the pronunciation or usage of words or grammatical constructs, which may not be distinctive enough to constitute a separate dialect. The concept of prestige provides one explanation for the phenomenon of variation in form among speakers of a language or languages.
John Russell Rickford is a Guyanese–American academic and author. Rickford is the J. E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Linguistics and the Humanities at Stanford University's Department of Linguistics and the Stanford Graduate School of Education, where he has taught since 1980. His book Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English, which he wrote together with his son, Russell J. Rickford, won the American Book Award in 2000.
A post-creole continuum is a dialect continuum of varieties of a creole language between those most and least similar to the superstrate language. Due to social, political, and economic factors, a creole language can decreolize towards one of the languages from which it is descended, aligning its morphology, phonology, and syntax to the local standard of the dominant language but to different degrees depending on a speaker's status.
Linguistic insecurity comprises feelings of anxiety, self-consciousness, or lack of confidence in the mind of a speaker surrounding their use of language. Often, this anxiety comes from speakers' belief that their speech does not conform to the perceived standard and/or the style of language expected by the speakers' interlocutor(s). Linguistic insecurity is situationally induced and is often based on a feeling of inadequacy regarding personal performance in certain contexts, rather than a fixed attribute of an individual. This insecurity can lead to stylistic, and phonetic shifts away from an affected speaker's default speech variety; these shifts may be performed consciously on the part of the speaker, or may be reflective of an unconscious effort to conform to a more prestigious or context-appropriate variety or style of speech. Linguistic insecurity is linked to the perception of speech varieties in any community, and so may vary based on socioeconomic class and gender. It is also especially pertinent in multilingual societies.
Variation is a characteristic of language: there is more than one way of saying the same thing in a given language. Variation can exist in domains such as pronunciation, lexicon, grammar, and other features. Different communities or individuals speaking the same language may differ from each other in their choices of which of the available linguistic features to use, and the same speaker may make different choices on different occasions.
The history of linguistics in the United States began to discover a greater understanding of humans and language. By trying to find a greater ‘parent language’ through similarities in different languages, a number of connections were discovered. Many contributors and new ideas helped shape the study of linguistics in the United States into what we know it as today. In the 1920s, linguistics focused on grammatical analysis and grammatical structure, especially of languages indigenous to North America, such as Chippewa, Apache, and more. In addition to scholars who have paved the way for linguistics in the United States, the Linguistic Society of America is a group that has contributed to the research of linguistics in America. The United States has long been known for its diverse collection of linguistic features and dialects that are spread across the country. In recent years, the study of linguistics in the United States has broadened to include nonstandard varieties of English speaking, such as Chicano English and African American English, as well as the question if language perpetuates inequalities.
Linguistic discrimination is unfair treatment of people which is based on their use of language and the characteristics of their speech, including their first language, their accent, the perceived size of their vocabulary, their modality, and their syntax. For example, an Occitan speaker in France will probably be treated differently from a French speaker. Based on a difference in use of language, a person may automatically form judgments about another person's wealth, education, social status, character or other traits, which may lead to discrimination.
Walt Wolfram is an American sociolinguist specializing in social and ethnic dialects of American English. He was one of the early pioneers in the study of urban African American English through his work in Detroit in 1969. He is the William C. Friday Distinguished University Professor at North Carolina State University.
Linguistic profiling is the practice of identifying the social characteristics of an individual based on auditory cues, in particular dialect and accent. The theory was first developed by Professor John Baugh to explain discriminatory practices in the housing market based on the auditory redlining of prospective clientele by housing administrators. Linguistic profiling extends to issues of legal proceedings, employment opportunities, and education. The theory is frequently described as the auditory equivalent of racial profiling. The bulk of the research and evidence in support of the theory pertain to racial and ethnic distinctions, though its applicability holds within racial or ethnic groups, perceived gender and sexual orientation, and in distinguishing location of geographic origin.
Raciolinguistics examines how language is used to construct race and how ideas of race influence language and language use. Although sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists have previously studied the intersections of language, race, and culture, raciolinguistics is a relatively new focus for scholars trying to theorize race throughout language studies. Geneva Smitherman credits H. Samy Alim for the coinage of the new term, discussed at length in the 2016 book by Alim, John R. Rickford and Arnetha F. Ball which compiled raciolinguistic research. In their work, raciolinguists incorporate intersectionality in theorizing how various identities within a group and/or an individual influence lived experiences of race. Nelson Flores and Jonathan Rosa also used the term in their discussion of "appropriateness" in American language and education.
In sociolinguistics, covert prestige is a type of scenario in which nonstandard languages or dialects are regarded to be of high linguistic prestige by members of a speech community. This is in contrast to the typical case of linguistic prestige, wherein only the standard varieties of a speech community are considered prestigious.
John Gordon Baugh V is an American academic and linguist. His main areas of study are sociolinguistics, forensic linguistics, education, and African American language studies. He is currently the Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, and President of the Linguistic Society of America. In 2020 Baugh was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in the section on Linguistics and Language Sciences, and in 2021 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Sonja L. Lanehart is an American linguist and professor of linguistics in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona who has advanced the study of language use in the African American community. Her work as a researcher, author, and editor includes African American English, education, literacy, identity, language variation, women's languages, intersectionality, and inclusivity within the African American community. Lanehart's sociolinguistic orientation prioritizes language as a phenomenon influenced by sociocultural and historical factors. She also utilizes the perspectives of Critical Race Theory and Black feminism in her work. Lanehart was the Brackenridge Endowed Chair in Literature and Humanities at the University of Texas at San Antonio from 2006 to 2019, and was selected by the Linguistic Society of America as a 2021 Fellow.
In the terminology of linguistic anthropology, linguistic racism, both spoken and written, is a mechanism that perpetuates discrimination, marginalization, and prejudice customarily based on an individual or community's linguistic background. The most evident manifestation of this kind of racism is racial slurs; however there are covert forms of it. Linguistic racism also relates to the concept of "racializing discourses," which is defined as the ways race is discussed without being explicit but still manages to represent and reproduce race. This form of racism acts to classify people, places, and cultures into social categories while simultaneously maintaining this social inequality under a veneer of indirectness and deniability.
