African American English: Rules And Standards

ENG4U English Language Linguistics

The History and Origins of African American English

African American English began in the 17^th century before industrialization when men were the main source of labour, the demand of human labour in the west countries contributed to the rise of slave trade. British had already settled and settled in North America and there was huge economical upsurge which led to rise of plantations that required human labour as machinery was not yet available (Eckert, 2000). Africa being the cheapest source of human labour, there was mass slave trade and since English was spoken mainly by the British settlers, it resulted in transformation among the black people which contorted it to their own form rising to different dialects. One of the most widespread and popular dialect was known as African American English which is also known Black English in parts of Northern America. The18^th and 19^th centuries show massive human trafficking of African into the American soils, most of the African slaves who mostly originated from Central and West African countries were transported to North America. It was hard for the master to communicate to his servant because they did not share a common language, for the two to effectively communicate they had to combine their two languages and developed phrases which could be understood to both parties, this saw the growth of African American English (Blodgett, & O’Connor, 2017).

According to (Chang & Leong, 2017), every language, or a dialect, there rules. In African American English, which is largely identifiable with Black Americans, which has been cultivated since early years, there are set rules many them are adopted from features of the language. And like any other language, all these variations arise from regional zones or ethnological point of view.

First, verbs have two basic modes. The first mode (subject) or aspect was borrowed from the European settlers who had settled in North America: the second is the verb phrase mostly originated from the mix of the American native language mix with the African languages as they tried to express the action. According to Craig & Washington, (2004), the verb phrase refers to the how things or activities are being carried out.

According to (Craig, et al 2004), the two languages have clear distinctions in their wording but a have comparatively similar meaning which make it possible for the two different races to understand the new language as it mostly employ the same subject and object formation and have a slight deviation in the action or verb phrase. The American English employs Standard English, for instance i.e. He is in his office every morning, while the African American English is majorly characterized by use of relaxed form action phrase: He does be in his office in the morning, (Blodgett, et al 2017), despite the two sentence having a different word composition of the sentence in the two languages the subject of and objects in the do not change which make it possible for it to convey the intended message.

The two languages further greatly varies in their application of the Slavic languages: African Unlike other English languages, American English greatly vary in how it phrases its simple complete sentences an example off such can be seen in the following two examples (She done come = she have come) and (we been sing = we had sang b). Some other specification including the Irish English also applies similar Slavic languages, however, the African American English does not apply that kind of language (Trudgill & Hannah, 2017).

The Unique Grammar Rules of African American English

Further the African American English employs the rule of elimination of redundancy which makes it superior over other forms of languages. One of the strongest example of this can be found in how verbs are arranged the African American English. For example the -s ending of the third person singular in the past sentence is eliminated, e.g. while some languages use he likes as a third singular verb, African American English eliminates the “s” and use he like. The English further squashes the past tense of regular verbs the -ed ending; i.e in come or gone the context eliminates any form of confusion that would arise as a result of using the -ed (McArthur, Lam-McArthur, Fontaine, 2018).

The next rule of African American English is the common negation. Negation can be defined as the use of two (or more) negative phrases which grammatically agree to emphasis a negation, e.g. He don’t know nothing, (Fu, Zimet, Latkin & Joseph, 2017).

However despite the grammatical strength of the African American English shown above some scholars often feel that African American English language is of low standard they give the following as their supporting reason for their claim.

According to (Fu, et al, 2017), African American English disowns its origin in different ways. In some way the English tend to develop grammar to the analytic use of one word to assume a complete sentence. According to grammar experts, the following principle should be applied to all pidgins (each sentence should not be a single word but a combination of basic lexeme + inflectional ending).

According to (Blodgett, et al 2017), vocabulary of the language is the other challenge facing proper formulation of the African American English. The language has borrowed many expressions from the Standard English. E.g. jazz swing, cool, right on, up tight, among others. From the above illustration it can be concluded that, African American English language borrows its lexis from Standard English.

Poplack, (2000), says that African American English carries different multiple African languages. This arose from many people held together in same place without any common language. Hence the evolution of the language over time with some pronunciation being inherited from native languages and this has led to standardization of the language in modern day. But we can’t fail to rule out criticism of the language across the globe as people argue that speaking African American English limits one’s mental and social capacities(Green, 2017). Those criticizing the language believe it is inferior and it should be eradicated.  This is inappropriate considering the uniqueness the rich history of this great language development. The criticizers language is never “too good” for them to term another language as being “too bad” as it also have shortcomings which needs to be worked on and be improved. Actually that kind of criticism is not based on the actual language but biased against the evaluation of the language (Wyatt, 1995).

Furthermore, the Standard American English is also influenced by the dialects various foreign developed English including the African American English makes the language more superior by creating its unique sense of identity. Scholars who have basic understanding of the rich history and linguistic strengths surrounding the African American English, believes the rich language is simply negatively undermined under the racism biasness grounds associated with its origin (Poplack, 2001).

Why African American English is Considered Low Status

According to (Rickford, 1999), the view that the language portrays a negative personality characteristics is another reason why the language faces criticism as a legitimate standard language. The stereotypic approach of black people being inferior, stupid, greedy, violent, disrespectful and power hungry as portrayed in the media had always been set as limiting factor to gaining mileage on the language recognition.

One the greatest contribution of the  African American English is that it have introduced new expressions and phrases which new speakers can easily learn and switch across their original language. The simplicity in switching into different languages makes it to be easily adopted among other speakers outside North America with easy. The easy in understanding and comprehending makes it achieve the primary objective of any language which is passing information from one person to the other for effective response and feedback (Wyatt, 1995).

In addition, the African American English today continues to be a strong tool for cultural affiliation as it is identified with the African American slaves and their masters, it is further used as a tool for effective self-expression and communication among its users. This class of English has been widely used in both formal and inform context in writing, literature, art and media, to convey the intended message to the target audience Hip hop music genre, for instance, greatly borrow from the African American Language and has been successfully used in advocating for equal rights by criticizing racial discrimination, political and social injustice race, and advocating for general equality in human rights just as the slaves used the language to demand for their rights from their masters (Fu, et al 2017).

In the academic arena, we cannot ignore the fact that   African American students make critical and conscious key decisions and excellent approaches even explaining many of those decisions in the text of their compositions and this provides considerable evidence of successful rhetorical awareness associated with different writing situations (Eckert, 2000). According to considerable evidence from composition scholars students who seek to advance in understanding any given language should primarily focus on understanding its linguistic formulation and its origin and not be biased against the racial origin or composition of those who speak the intended language, this will enable them to make conscious decisions about the language under study in detailed spoken contexts and writing skills (Wisker, 2017).

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