Friday, October 23, 2009
ebonix nucca
When one looks into language a bit further, it’s interesting to note different accents. When you go to Alabama, Texas, Wisconsin, New York, and even particular places within New York you can hear variations within pronunciation and syntax. In every one of those places though, a particular form of variation is found among African American people. Despite age, gender, Religious views, and education, African Americans have their own form of English. It was coined “Ebonics” by an African American Doctor named Robert Williams in a conference called ‘the Cognitive and Language Development of Black Children.’ “One reason linguists don't use the term "Ebonics" very happily is that it is very vague, and so such questions are hard to answer. We generally use the term ‘African American Vernacular English’, or AAVE, instead to mean the kinds of speech characteristically spoken by working-class U.S. African Americans, within their community, at occasions calling for intimacy or informality,” says Professor Peter L. Patrick of Essex University in the UK. For this blog, I will use the words ‘Ebonics,’ ‘AAVE,’ and ‘African American Vernacular English’ synonymously. African American Vernacular English can be defined as its own dialect of English. So is this an African American language exclusively? Why is it particular to that race? Does race have anything to do with it? How is it transferred? Does being with or without it mean anything about your acceptability within African American subculture? These are some of the questions that this blog will be looking into. Various tangents and ideas may lead to other questions, but we will retain focus on Ebonics.
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I think it is interesting that all across the United States, different forms of english are spoken. For example people on the west coast use different words and sentence structure than people on the east coast as well as the south differs from the north etc. However, you're saying that African Americans no matter the location speak the same "form" of english? I wonder why this is and how it came about? Obviously they didn't all just join together and decide to speak a certain way, so where and how did it start? Does it relate back to slavery...or before then? It's a pretty interesting idea.
ReplyDeleteI lived in Kentucky for a year and a half and in South Carolina off and on for a total of six months and everything you said is correct. Without corrugating to any racial stereotypes, African Americans in that area are completely different than they are on the West Coast. Where as in places like Southern California the African American male is likely to be almost preppy, in Kentucky a lot of the males would live in poor houses and eat cheaply but save their money for expensive gangsteresque clothing. They also had a hard time understanding what I was saying. When I was working at a movie theatre in Bowling Green, Kentucky, an African American lady in her late thirties to early forties said about me to her friend, "Mmmm, he talk so proper!"
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting topic. I guess the best way to tackle this, in my opinion, is to look at it regionally. Like you stated people have different lingo’s and even words depending on where they live. I have traveled extensively and when I’m in say a large city people seem to talk completely different then country folk. This could also be in a large part to deal with education levels. People that live in large urban areas tend to have a lower education level, especially when you are talking about ghettos. This has to affect the way that people are speaking as well. Not just that but maybe look into gang culture and codes that people use to hide what they are saying. Things like a chopper for an ak 47 comes to mind then.
ReplyDeleteHey Lanee, I looked into your questions, as well as back into my research a bit. It turns out that the language has evolved a bit (as could be expected) but had several orgins, one of which was slavery. But another thing that I learned is that there are variations in accent of AAVE, but usually the syntax stays constant.
ReplyDeleteDavid, I was thinking about what you said and was wondering if you'v ever lived (or been through) southern California...? are they like that there to? My last experience in California (alalbeit Northern) in June/09 was similar to what you described in kentucky. The only difference was that these people all lived in within about the same economic framework as most other citizens. Have you ever had any black friends that could understand what you were saying very easily but had a hard time communicating thoughts to you?
ReplyDeleteheeeey WIGGY!! Like ya brain boi! I can see how you would want to look at it regionally, but how about racially? what kind of different data you think i'd get? Im thinkin about lookin at it from both those, and some other perspectives, but it's gonna center around the connection of appearance and the language.
ReplyDelete