Ebonics means 'black speech' (a blend of the words ebony 'black' and phonics 'sounds'). The phrase was created in 1973 by a group of black scholars who disliked the negative connotations of terms like 'Nonstandard Negro English' that had been coined in the 1960s when the first modern large-scale linguistic studies of African American speech communities began. However, the term Ebonics never caught on amongst linguists, much less among the general public. That all changed with the 'Ebonics' controversy of December 1996 when the Oakland (CA) School Board recognized it as the 'primary' language of its majority African American students and resolved to take it into account in teaching them standard or academic English.
Clearly there is a problem with these children that may be addressed by looking at language. The role that Ebonics may play in changing the above statistics is a practical question. Only the completion of a program including Ebonics, and time, will reveal the answer. Whatever the basic agenda in Oakland California, it is important to look at the question of Ebonics from the point of view of doing what is best for children. Acknowledging the strength of Ebonics in no way suggests teaching Ebonics in place of Standard English. Acknowledging the strength of Ebonics can and should serve to ease the teaching of Standard English. Many people see Ebonics as "gutter language", and "slang", and are quite outspoken about it. These beliefs are deeply rooted in society. Resistance to the acknowledgment that Blacks who use Ebonics may be speaking a unique language is very strong, but I believe it is important to challenge the belief that Ebonics is "slang". Some people have stated that the movement to recognize Ebonics is Afro-Centrism at its worst. I would argue that the attempts to squelch Ebonics are Euro-Centrism at its worst and most intense. Ebonics includes non-slang words like ashy (referring to the appearance of dry skin, especially in winter), which have been around for a while, and are used by people of all age groups.
These distinctive Ebonics pronunciations are all logical. For example, Ebonics speakers often create sentences without present tense is and are, as in " They allright or "They allright". But they don't leave out present tense am. Instead of the ungrammatical *"Ah walkin", Eboni...
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...uite different and that the conditions necessary for the emergence of a fully-fledged creole language were never met in the US. These scholars have shown on a number of occasions that what look like distinctive features of AAVE today actually have a precedent in various varieties of English spoken in Great Britain and the Southern United States. It seems reasonable to suggest that both views are partially correct and that AAVE developed to some extent through restructuring while it also inherited many of its today distinctive features from older varieties of English, which were once widely spoken.
While the situation in this case is made more extreme by the context of racial and ethnic conflict, inequality and prejudice in the United States, it is not unique. Such undecided attitudes towards abnormal varieties of a language have been documented for many communities around the world and in the United States.
References:
Smitherman, G. (1991). Talking and testifyin: Black English and the Black experience. In Reginald Jones (Ed.) Black Psychology.(3rd ed., pp. 249-268). Berkeley, CA: Cobb & Henry
Spears, A. K. (1984). Towards a new view of Black English. The Journal, 1, 94-103.
and they stuttered, blushed, / and said you know Black English, / applying a term from that/
Richard Wright grew up in a bitterly racist America. In his autobiography Black Boy, he reveals his personal experience with the potency of language. Wright delineates the efficacious role language plays in forming one’s identity and social acceptance through an ingenious use of various rhetorical strategies.
Staples, Brent. “Black Men and Public Space.” Reading Critically, Writing Well. Sixth edition Eds. Rise B. Axelrod and Charles R. Cooper. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002. 134-136. Print.
Throughout history society has created many stereotypes and assumptions based on race and nationality to confine us into categories. The reality is, not every individual fits a specific category because we are unique even within the same ethnic group. In “On Being Told I Don’t Speak Like a Black person” Allison Joseph illustrates some speech stereotypes that come hand in hand with her racial background and how even people from the same racial background and house hold don’t all sound alike. The author portrays that race and linguistic has such a huge impact on our daily life and how society sees her differently to others when they see she does not fit in the stereotype of sounding “like a black person” and feels frustration to being compared
Black Vernacular is “any of the nonstandard varieties of English spoken by African Americans. It is also called Black English, Black English vernacular.” In the “Black Vernacular” article, it states that “African- American dialects tend to drop the [t] from words like rest and soft. They likewise tend to drop the [r] in words like bird, four, door, and father.” In the novel, Janie said, “Ah wants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree” (24).
This marginalization is still prevalent today, as Black English is still overwhelmingly stigmatized and discredited in nearly all academic settings, particularly within American culture. Jordan’s demonstration that Black English is not given respect or afforded validity in academic and social settings still rings true today. Black English-speaking students see little to no representation of their language in the classroom, and are often actively discouraged from speaking the language of their community and of their upbringing. This suppression and delegitimization of a valid method of communication represents colonialist and white supremacist notions of language, social homogeneity, and latent institutional racism, and has negative, even dire, consequences for the students
As a result of many negative stereotypes associated with certain variations of English many students have adapted codeswitching. When this concept came up in the book it made me think about my own language. I realized that I code switch quite often between what is seen as Standard English and African American English or Ebonics. Usually with family or other friends that speak Ebonics I use that Ebonics to communicate, but when I am in school, in a
In the essay if Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What is? by James Baldwin and Mother Tongue by Amy Tan both shows idea of uses of slang and language in different context. In the essay if Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What is? Baldwin states that how language has changed and evolved overtime, Baldwin describes how black English were used as white English, in civil rights movement where blacks were treated as slaves and the used slang language to communicate so that the whites won’t understand. This slang was taken from black language and now everyone uses to make the communication short. In the essay Mother Tongue Tan explains that how language could affect people from different culture. Tan states that how Asian students in America struggle in English. Tan also states that her mother is smart but she couldn’t communicate in English. Tan thinks that’s a big disadvantage for her mother and people coming from different countries cannot show their talent because of their weakness in communication.
Smitherman is certainly qualified to address her colleagues about the treatment of “Black English” in academia, but with such a charged writing style it is possible that her audience would not make it to her conclusion. Smitherman assumes that the general base of her audience are “White English” speakers that can understand “Black English”. She also assumes that all African Americans speak the same way. These assumptions are her first major problem. At the time of this articles publication in 1973, it is conceivable that certain scholars would have ignored the piece because of its hybrid u...
Carter G. Woodson: Negro Orators ansd Their Orations (New York, NY, 1925) and The Mind of the Negro (Washington, DC., 1926).
Ebonics, also known as Black English, is a nonstandard dialect spoken in many homes in the inner cities of America. This nonstandard language is often looked upon as low-class or lazy talk. This is not the case, however. Due to consistencies found in the dialect, there seems to be an order. It has been found that, when learning English, African-Americans adapted the language using some of the structure and rules of their own native tongue. This Black English has carried on through slavery and then freedom for hundreds of years. Although there is a coexistence of more than two dialects in our society, those in power forget the flexibility of our language and see no other way than the use of Standard English.
Wolfe, Andrea Powell. “Double-Voicedness in “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”: “Loud Talking” to a Northern Black Readership.” ATQ 22.3 (2008): 517-525. World History Collection. EBSCO. Web. 24 Sep. 2011.
In Baldwin 's article If Black English Isn 't A Language Then Tell Me What Is? starting off by telling the readers about French speaking people. He is explaining how different dialects doesn 't mean people aren 't speaking the same language. Going deeper about language saying that it ties into the culture. Give an example of Black Culture and how their expression of English is different. Talking about the phrases like jazz me, baby, sock it to me, and funky; being used that way they weren 't meant to. Finally introducing how the African American culture has been disrespected or ignored. Telling
...e, Geneviève, and Armin Schwegler. Creoles, Contact, and Language Change: Linguistics and Social Implications. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub., 2004. Print.
To conclude, the criticisms of the book The New Negro are mostly distributed by the experience of the author who did not get exposed enough to understand his own race even though he seems to show his