Leibniz Universität Hannover, Englisches Seminar
Grammatical variation, WS 2004/2005

African American Vernacular English

by

Inga Walte

Contents

1.) Introduction 3

2.) Who speaks AAVE? 4

2.1) Brief historical outline 5

3.) Grammar 6

3.1) Present Tense 7
3.2) Past Tense and Perfective Constructions 8
3.3) Future 9
3.4) Progressive 9
3.5) Negation 10
3.6) –s suffix 10
3.7) Questions 11
3.8) To be 11

4.) Phonology 12

5.) Frequency in AAVE 14

6.) Aspect in AAVE 15

7.) AAVE: Dialect or self contained system? 16

8.) Examples 17

8.1) Zora Neale Hurston: “Their eyes Were Watching God” 17
8.2) Dr. Dre: “What′s the difference between me and you?” 18

9.) Conclusion 20

1.) Introduction

English is the most spoken language in the world. Wherever you go, you can express yourself via English. But English is not the same anyplace you go. British English and American English, for instance, differ a lot. Not only by means of pronunciation, but also concerning vocabulary, grammar etc. Moreover, the language within each country differs and there exist many dialects. One may say that African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a dialect; others may say it is a separate language system. In this paper I will try to show how AAVE works, who speaks it and how it differs from Standard English. My focus lies on AAVE spoken in the United States. “Significant research on black English in the United states is almost entirely a product of the 1960s” (Dillard1972: 6) and thus not that old. Nevertheless there exist different opinions concerning as well? Its the origin and the status it has.
So, in this essay I am going to deal with Black American English and its specific features and differences to Standard English. Standard means here the achieved official recognition of a language. The standard is spoken by the majority of speakers in the US. The analysis includes an introduction to the grammar of AAVE and its specific vocabulary. At the beginning a short survey will be given on who actually speaks AAVE. At the end of the paper, I will give some examples how AAVE actually works and is used by blacks. Tense, mood, and aspect cannot always be strictly separated, and thus the explanations and examples of each category are sort of melted together. Moreover, I will talk about the question whether AAVE should be looked at as if being a self-governed language system or a dialect of Standard English spoken in the United States.

2.) Who speaks AAVE?

First of all, what is AAVE? It is said to be a dialect of English spoken by Blacks in the United States. Dialect means the collective linguistic pattern of a sub-group of the speakers of a language (Dillard, 1972:1). AAVE was mainly studied in the 60s. In general, we can say that all those speak AAVE (= African American Vernacular English) who consider themselves to be Black. Those are 80% of the Black American population (Dillard, 1972:1). However, also some Puerto Ricans and members of the southern plantation owning class do use this language. In former times AAVE was also used by some Indian tribes and Seminoles. The dialect patterns depend on social factors rather than racial or geographic. Many people are capable of speaking several dialects, and also some Whites do speak those dialects.
The history of the Afro–American languages correlates with a caste system. The use of AAVE indicates for some people a low level of education as well as a low social standard. Here the opinions differ in that some argue that AAVE is a dialect of Standard English and others say that it is a self-contained system. We will talk about this later on. It indicates that the speaker belongs to a social group that has remained unassimilated to the white culture. Rich black families tend to speak Standard English. In the use of Standard English among Blacks age grading plays a great role. First the children adopt the language they learn in their peer group; later on they learn Standard English in school. The age-grading towards Standard English is closely connected with status grading, i.e. children of families with a higher social level tend to the use of Standard English. The higher a Black climbs on the social ladder the more he tends to Standard English. In general, women find it easier to affiliate with the middle-class and to adopt the white culture standards.
But the use of AAVE is also an indicator of racial awareness and identity. And even highly educated Blacks want to express their roots linguistically to show their identification. They do so by the use of ethnic slang which they use, even if they detest the grammar and phonology of AAVE Thus, not all Blacks use AAVE for communication, but the majority is able to. Well-educated people make less use of AAVE and talk more like white speakers. There exist, as mentioned before, regional and age differences. Older speakers use less AAVE than younger ones, probably because of group solidarity. “Invariant be, copula deletion, absence of possessive ‘s and third person –s seem to be spreading among younger speakers of AAVE” (Tottie, 2002:227)

2.1) Brief historical outline Should rather be: origin of AAVE

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