Bergische Universität Wuppertal

Seminar: African American Culture as Resistance
Studiengang: Lehramt GYM Englisch / Sozialwissenschaften
Vorgelegt von: Timm Gehrmann
Fachsemester: 4. Semester

African American English and White Southern American English

- Segregational factors in the development of a dialect -

Content

Content 2

I Preface 3

II AAVE and AWSE develop in parallel 4

III African American Vernacular language as a distinct minority feature 6

IV Conclusion 9

V Bibliography 10

VI Online Sources 11

I Preface

In 1619 the first Black People were violently taken to Virginia, United States. Many more Blacks were to follow and hence had to work as slaves on the plantations in the south, fueling the trade of an emerging economic power. Families and friends were separated and people from different regions who spoke different African dialects were grouped together. This was to make sure that no communication in their respective native languages would take place in order to prevent mutinies. Thus the Africans had to learn the language of their new surroundings, namely English. Today the English of the Blacks in America is distinguishable as African American Vernacular English (AAVE). AAVE and American White Southern English (AWSE) were very similar in colonial times, and according to Feagin¹ AWSE still has features of AAVE, such as the non-rhoticism and falsetto pitch², which is supposed to add to the apparent musicality of both AAVE and AWSE today. Many commonalities can be attributed to the coexistence of the two cultures for almost 200 years, while many differences are claimed to be due to segregation. Crystal claims that first forms of Pidgin English spoken by Africans already emerged during the journey on the slave ships, where communication was also made difficult due to the grouping of different dialects in order to prevent mutiny. The slave traders who often spoken English had already shaped the new pidgin languages on the ships and helped shape a creole that was to be established in the Carribean colonies as well southern US colonies in the 17th century³.

It is still often believed that Black English or African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a faulty and deviant form of Standard English. African American English was even attributed to inferior intelligence and cultural deprivation of African Americans⁴. The American scholar Krapp and many of his followers believed that the African dialects had no influence on American English and were totally lost as “Krapp’s law” states that “[…] whenever two languages come into contact where one was representative of a high level of culture and sophistication and the other of a low level, the latter yielded and adapted to the speech patterns of the former. Little or nothing happened in the reverse direction.”⁵ According to this myth AAVE could just be called a faulty and deviant form of English due to bad imitation. Some linguists even argued that the language of the black community was deviant due to isolation and that the Blacks sticked to their archaic form of English due to social backwardness⁶.

[...]

¹ Feagin, Crawford 1998. „The African contribution to southern States English : pitfall and solutions” in Bronstein (ed.) pp. 78-95 “

²"[…] The frequency of vibrations in falsetto phonation is noticeably higher than in modal voice. The vocal folds are stretched longitudinally, thus becoming relatively thin. Consequently, the vibrating mass is smaller and the generated tone higher.The adduction of the folds is high and the medial compression is also strong[…]
(http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/phonetik/EGG/page10.htm), visited 20-05-2004

³ Crystal 2003, “The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language”, 2nd Edition, p. 96

⁴ Fromkin / Rodman / Hyams 2003, „An Introduction to Language“ pp. 459 - 460

⁵ Krapp, G.P. 1924 ,“The English of the negro” as quoted in Harrison / Trabasso 1976, “Black English – A seminar” p. 106

⁶ Dunn “The Black-Southern White Dialect Controversy – Who Did What to Whom ?” in Harrison / Trabasso 1976, “Black English – A seminar” p.107