AAVE: The “Other” American English Variety
It is too often that non-standardized language varieties are not given the same accreditation as their standard counterparts. Speakers of AAVE tend to experience discrimination, stereotyping, inequality, and sometimes even racism.
It is too often that non-standard language varieties are not given the same accreditation as their standard counterparts. They often are not granted official status, and usually must bear the negative associations that come with not being “standard enough” to function in all domains of society. These issues are all too familiar for many varieties of American English, but specifically African-American Vernacular English, or, AAVE for short. Speakers of the variety tend to experience discrimination, stereotyping, inequality, and sometimes even racism. This complex language is spoken by many and has become a popular topic of conversation over the past few decades. With its complex history and modern day developments, AAVE has found itself popularized amongst many English speakers, while still continuing the ongoing struggle to achieve language equality.
It is impossible to ignore the fact that speakers of AAVE are mainly black. Racial stereotyping and discrimination tends to be a burden when speakers of AAVE engage publicly with their language.
What is AAVE?
AAVE is a variety of English that is rooted in black grammatical, morphological, phonological, and lexical features. In academic settings, AAVE can be referred to as Black Vernacular and Vernacular Black English. In more colloquial settings, AAVE takes on the identity of black language or Ebonics. The term “ebonics” actually derived from the need to dismantle some of the negative connotations associated with Black English. Soon after its creation in 1973 by black scholars, the meaning of the term quickly became associated with stereotypical language tropes about black speakers. Today, many linguists attempt to avoid referring to Black English as Ebonics, and in turn, coining AAVE as the more favorable term.
The origins of AAVE continue to cause controversy because many linguists cannot agree on one theory of creation. The Creolist Hypothesis states that AAVE developed from a Creole language. When African slaves were brought to the American plantations, they created a pidgin language, a language that developed for trading purposes that combined features from the African languages and European English varieties. The pidgin later developed into a Creole after the next generation of African slaves grew up speaking it. The Creole language, unlike the pidgin, has even more structured grammatical patterns. Creole theorists believe that the Creole spread throughout the plantations in the southern United States and derived from contact between slaves and Europeans. This is one reason why AAVE has traces of English varieties like old Great Britain English and Smoky Mountain English.
The second theory, the Anglicist Hypothesis, believes that after the slaves were brought over from Africa, they began to learn English through constant exposure. When these slaves had children, they learned English, and because of this, their parents native language became less preserved. Throughout generations, that native language nearly disappeared. These theorists suggest that AAVE is actually just English that developed different features from what we know today as Standard English. Also, the unique features found in AAVE actually derive from the British English variety spoken by the colonists during that period. This theory is usually discredited, but linguists who support it claim that the reason why you see copula absence as a distinct feature of AAVE is because it was also prominent in the older British English variety of the colonists.
Those who don’t agree with The Anglicist Hypothesis argue that it promotes a form of cultural bias. It perpetuates the idea that the dominant group maintains dominance over the minority group by claiming that Black English derives from British English. Although it is natural that languages develop through contact, to assume that the dominant, white culture at the time completely influenced AAVE until its modern day usage is pretentious, to say the least. This is one of the reasons why linguists tend to lean more towards the Creolist Hypothesis, since there is less cultural controversy surrounding it.
Another theory, the Neo-Anglicist Hypothesis, somewhat maintains the ideas found in the Anglicist hypothesis. Neo-Anglicist theorists support the claim that early AAVE originated from British dialects, however, modern day AAVE diverged from those origins. This hypothesis asserts that AAVE eventually became more diverse through the African-American community, resulting in the unique features we see today. This hypothesis is less controversial and, in my opinion, seems more accurate. It emphasizes that although early AAVE may have originated from a British English variety spoken by the Europeans in the colonies, the language eventually developed into its own unique language because of the diversity of its black speakers. Therefore, dominant, white culture had little influence over what we consider to be Black English today.
Along with these three main hypotheses, other theories also try to pinpoint the exact origin of AAVE. Many linguists argue that AAVE features are similar to those of Caribbean dialects and languages. Although there is no common story of origin, many linguists can agree that AAVE originated from some type of contact, as well as acquisition from both English and languages of the Caribbean.
Although often heavily associated with black people, AAVE is not only spoken in black communities. In the United States, AAVE is spoken across the country, and transcends regional speech communities. There is no definite statistic on how many people actually speak the variety because it is challenging to define what that means. Some people may use some of the lexical features and not the phonological features. Or, it is possible to only use the grammatical features of the language. Some speakers even use all aspects of the language, and due to this exact variation, linguists have difficulty accurately providing a definite figure.
Modern Day Development of AAVE
Speakers of AAVE often speak with regional dialects, making it easier to distinguish between a speaker from one city to another. Some historical linguists believe that after The Great Migration, speakers of different regional dialects of AAVE took their dialect and certain features with them when they migrated throughout the United States. During this Migration, about 1 million blacks fled the south to escape harsh racial laws and discrimination, causing them to move to northern cities like Baltimore, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Chicago (to name a few). This form of language sharing is common after large migrations. Linguists have noticed that language contact is one of the many ways that languages change over time. Language contact also promotes language sharing because an exchange between speakers of different varieties and languages are intermingled in every aspect of life. Blacks from southern states brought their regional dialects up north, and when the groups mixed, it caused a sharing of certain features that are commonly found today in AAVE.
Regional differences heavily influence vocabulary, as well as accent, but all AAVE speakers belong to a larger speech community that shares certain grammatical and morphological rules. One of the most common grammatical rules found in the language is the “absent copula.” In linguistics, copula absence refers to the verb “to be” being absent/missing in places where you would normally find it in Standardized American English. There are many instances where this is allowed in AAVE, including before progressive verbs. In this situation, the copula is not necessary to add to make a sentence grammatical.
For example, in Standardized American English, the sentence He is running would be considered grammatically correct and he running would not. However, in AAVE, he running is grammatically correct and often used. Another common grammatical rule found in AAVE is negative inversion. This implies that it is grammatical to use the negative auxiliary before the subject nobody. An example of this would be can’t nobody say nothing right. Here, you find an inversion not allowed in Standardized American English, showing how AAVE speakers follow different grammar rules.
Other features that distinguish AAVE from more standard varieties are lexical items. Some of these include finna, which means “going to do something”, hip, which can translate to “well-informed” or “already know”, and bad, which in certain contexts, means “really good.” It is very common to find that lexical items and their meanings vary by region, while also keeping in mind that many translations are not definite. For example, an AAVE speaker from Chicago and an AAVE speaker from Raleigh may both be familiar with the same word but use it in completely different contexts to denote a different meaning. Other features of AAVE that differ tend to be phonological and morphological.
Although identified by most linguists as an official variety of American English, AAVE still faces many struggles when it comes to language equality. For starters, it is impossible to ignore the fact that speakers of AAVE are mainly black. Racial stereotyping and discrimination tends to be a burden when speakers of AAVE engage publicly with their language. This is likely credited to a term known in linguistics as “diglossia.” This refers to two linguistic varieties coexisting within the same speech community. Within that speech community, the high variety is accepted in more formal domains, while the low variety is only accepted in informal settings. These informal settings include but are not limited to friends, family, sports, and other in-group contexts. Not only is the lower variety not accepted in formal domains, but, the speakers who choose to or whose native language is the lower variety, often experience forms of inequality for not speaking the standardized variety.
Within this diglossic perspective, AAVE would be the low variety, and Standardized American English the high. Many linguists and scholars are attempting to dismantle this diglossic perspective of language, and believe that all language varieties should exist equally within a speech community. Despite these efforts, many speakers of AAVE have not seen this change.
Black speakers of AAVE experience more systematic obstacles than their white counterparts. As of 2019, the unemployment rate for middle-age black Americans was 5.2% compared to the 2.8% for white Americans. These figures can be attributed to many reasons, with language definitely being one of them. When black people enter a job interview speaking AAVE, they are automatically stereotyped as uneducated and less credible. The same problem occurs in legal settings. According to the Journal of Psychology, Crime & Law, researchers have found that black speakers of AAVE are likely to be found less credible by jurors compared to white speakers of a more standard variety. Also, negative evaluations of the speaker of AAVE produced more guilty verdicts, insinuating that in legal proceedings, speakers of AAVE are targets to unjust criminalization because of their race and physically black attributes. For simply speaking AAVE can automatically make you seem more guilty whether or not you actually are.
These two issues alone can help explain why many black speakers code switch when in more public domains. Code switching, a term heavily talked about in linguistics, refers to switching from your native or commonly used lower variety to the high variety while in public, formal domains in order to achieve something, be accepted, or to escape negative evaluations. This common behavior is seen cross-linguistically. Black speakers of AAVE who code switch usually attempt to eliminate some of the bias they experience while simply being black in America. Many black speakers already deal with racial prejudices caused by a history of racism, oppression and discrimination, so, being able to code switch in order to sound “proper” or “white” works as an advantage. However, code switching is not always considered a good thing because some black speakers of AAVE who code switch regularly or speak with a more standard variety of English often get labeled as “white-washed”, “Uncle Tom”, or “non-authentic.” This goes to show some of the obstacles many black speakers of AAVE must endure on a daily basis in order to exist.
Racial and negative evaluations associated with AAVE are in no way disappearing anytime soon. However, some work is being done to combat these issues. In the coming installments, we’ll continue to look at AAVE, its influence on society, and the people and organizations fighting to combat the systematic obstacles surrounding it. The fight continues to dismantle the racist and discriminatory connotations associated with AAVE, in hopes that this will gain the language equality it deserves. One day, AAVE will finally call itself the other Standardized American English.
In the next installment, we will explore AAVE and its influence on popular culture.
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