I was doing a report for school on the psychological effects of racism on African- Americans and I stumbled across this information.
African American Vernacular English (AAVE), the dialect of English used by most African Americans in the United States in familiar and informal settings. Vernacular refers to the first form of language that a person learns to speak, one that is used among family and friends. Although the vernacular of most English speakers differs from classroom English, the grammar of AAVE diverges more from that standard than any other dialect spoken in the continental United States, and AAVE is remarkably uniform throughout the country. Like other native languages and dialects, it has a well-formed grammar that allows its speakers to express any logical statement or complex chain of reasoning.
African Americans who grow up in personal contact with speakers of other dialects use forms of grammar and pronunciation that lie somewhere between AAVE and those other dialects. The term African American English (AAE) encompasses the entire range of speech forms used by African Americans, including African American Standard English. In the 1970s and 1980s, people generally used the term Black English Vernacular for AAVE, and in the 1960s, the term Nonstandard Negro English was used.
The special features of AAVE grammar are of three types: characteristic word order or syntax, the use of suffixes or inflections, and the use of grammatical markers such as be and been. Linguists consider only a few features of word order to be unique to AAVE. In indirect questions, AAVE preserves the order of a main question, as in I asked him did he know. Modal auxiliaries such as may, can, and might often come in pairs, as they do in other Southern dialects: He might could do that. Double negatives occur more often in AAVE than in other dialects, often with inversion, as in Can’t nobody tell, Don’t nobody care.
The English suffix -s shows different patterns in AAVE. The possessive ’s is generally absent between two nouns, as in my brother house, although it always occurs with a single noun, as in John’s. The absence of an -s on verbs in the third-person singular—as in He walk home—is one of the most characteristic features of AAVE, although speakers often pronounce the -s in formal speech. AAVE often lacks contracted forms of the verb to be, as in He tired, but all speakers of AAVE occasionally use the full and contracted forms as well.
AAVE is unique among American dialects in the use of aspectual particles placed before the verb. Aspectual particles express various ways of viewing the events described. For example, the be in He be doin’ that conveys the meaning that he habitually or usually does this, a meaning not present in He doin’ that. When been occurs before the verb, it indicates that the situation described has gone on for some time and still continues, as in I been had that coat or It been busted. Similarly, done intensifies the verb it precedes, as in You done done it now. Be done before the verb can express the inevitability of a future result: If you listen to them, you be done went batty.
Many scholars have sought to trace the influence of African languages in the grammar of AAVE, but its special features cannot be identified with any particular language. In fact, there is good evidence that aspectual particles were absent in the language spoken by slaves in the 19th century and only developed in the last half of the 20th century, following the great migration of rural African Americans to large cities. At the same time, these recent trends follow a type of grammatical structure common throughout West African languages.
Some of the most important features that differentiate AAVE from mainstream English concern larger patterns of style, rhetoric, and the use of language, rather than the sentence grammar. The AAVE community recognizes and values intricate patterns of ritual insults—known as busting, woofing, sounding, chopping, or snapping—which are not intended to be taken as true. For example, one person might put down another by saying, Your mother plays dice with the midnight mice. The AAVE community also uses indirect ways of offering criticism, called signifying. For example, a pregnant woman who swore she was not going to have more children, and now claimed to be just putting on a little weight, was told by her sister, Now look here, we both be standing here soaking wet and you still trying to tell me it ain’t raining. Another form of mocking, sometimes called marking, involves the precise imitation of another person’s way of speaking.
The AAVE community has also developed elaborate patterns of excuse and pretense, known as shucking or jiving. Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver in his autobiography, Soul on Ice (1968), describes how he dealt with a police officer after he ran a red light: Putting on a big smile, Cleaver explained that he thought he could make it but his old car was just too slow.
Some observers have noted that when African Americans are most interested in what a speaker is saying, they frequently begin speaking themselves, rather than following the mainstream pattern of becoming silent. Such differences in the use of language have profound effects upon teachers’ perception of students’ abilities and interests, and may contribute to the tendency to predict lower achievement for speakers of AAVE.
African Americans generally do not use AAVE in public or in formal situations. Early writers who wished to evoke African American dialect used stereotyped forms of nonstandard pronunciation that rarely reflected the actual grammar of AAVE. Such poets as Paul Laurence Dunbar captured the spirit of AAVE at the end of the 19th century through colloquial vocabulary and spellings. Contemporary writers such as Alex Haley and Alice Walker incorporate a few features of AAVE to give readers the impression that the speakers belong to the African American community. However, even authors who are native and fluent speakers of this dialect do not reproduce in their literary compositions the forms actually used in everyday life.
The mass media depart even farther from the language of daily life in their presentation of African American speech. Although actors in many situation comedies use an intonation, pronunciation, and rhetorical style that appear to be genuinely African American, they rarely use specific unique features of AAVE in these performances. It seems that even actors who speak AAVE at home recognize on some level that the grammar of the vernacular would not be understood by the general public. In general, the mass media transmit new phrases and popular expressions effectively, but lag behind in conveying the structure of the spoken language. Thus, the uniformity of AAVE grammar across the United States must have another source and seems to result from a pattern of travel and personal contact not yet fully understood.
this was actually an interesting read...and ****@ your name....BAP...
yeah it's pretty cool...i learned something about that AAVE....that's what i'll call it from now on...
although i don't use it often...only when i'm around black people who aren;t my family that's "nick"...otherwise, "nicholas" comes out to play...yeah that's the white me who likes to listen to techno andrush ****...
it's very hard being a balck man like me...people are always questioning your "balckness" and whatnot...i used to care...but now i'm just like "dude, screw this pancake!" i used to hide my CD collection and whatnot, but now i don't care...i don't care what you think about me listeing to the strokes, the police, and the cars...i don't care if you don't like me listening to techno...
if you love "nick", you have to accept "nicholas" too...or we could both move on... 8-)
this was actually an interesting read...and ****@ your name....BAP...
yeah it's pretty cool...i learned something about that AAVE....that's what i'll call it from now on...
although i don't use it often...only when i'm around black people who aren;t my family that's "nick"...otherwise, "nicholas" comes out to play...yeah that's the white me who likes to listen to techno andrush ****...
it's very hard being a balck man like me...people are always questioning your "balckness" and whatnot...i used to care...but now i'm just like "dude, screw this pancake!" i used to hide my CD collection and whatnot, but now i don't care...i don't care what you think about me listeing to the strokes, the police, and the cars...i don't care if you don't like me listening to techno...
if you love "nick", you have to accept "nicholas" too...or we could both move on... 8-)
Hey, there's nothing wrong with listening to The Police. I mean, artists sample Sting's music all the time...
listeing to thier CD right now...her friends are....so jealous....to hurt they try and try... 8-) (eve)
