From African American Vernacular English to African American Language: Rethinking the Study of Race and Language in African Americans’ Speech

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 285-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharese King
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Linguistic Anthropology ◽  
African American Vernacular English ◽  
Language Variation And Change ◽  
Vernacular English ◽  
African American Language ◽  
American Vernacular ◽  
Advance Theory ◽  
The Relationship

African American Vernacular English (AAVE), one of the most studied dialects in American English, has undergone several changes in its label across the years. Its most recent designation, African American Language (AAL), reflects a change in approaches to studying race and language in the field. Drawing on observations from related fields like linguistic anthropology and critical race theory, I discuss different conceptualizations of the relationship between race and language and argue in favor of an approach that both recognizes and prioritizes the study of variation within the dialect. This approach will enable researchers to advance theory in language variation and change while also contributing to larger sociopolitical objectives to diversify narratives of blackness.

Defining the envelope of linguistic variation: The case of “don't count” forms in the copula analysis of African American Vernacular English

1997 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renée Blake
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African American Vernacular English ◽  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Vernacular English ◽  
Quantitative Analyses ◽  
American Vernacular ◽  
Variable Analysis

ABSTRACTEver since Labov, Cohen, Robbins, and Lewis's (1968) pioneering study, it has been commonplace to set aside certain tokens in analyzing variability in the English copula as “don't count” (DC) forms. These cases are most often occurrences of the copula that exhibit categorical behavior (as with the full copula in clause-final position), as well as those that are ambiguous or indeterminate. In this article, I propose a set of copula forms that should be set aside from variable analysis as instances of DC forms to allow for systematic comparisons among studies. I review the major alternative descriptions of DC copula cases in the literature and analyze the behavior of the traditional DC categories. New data are presented to support the exclusion of particular DC cases from analyses of copula variability. Among the conclusions are that [was], [thas], and [is] should be excluded from quantitative analyses of variation in the copula because of their invariant status, and that a number of tokens commonly included (e.g., questions) should be excluded on various grounds.

African American Vernacular English and Reading

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Bloomquist ◽  
Lisa J. Green ◽  
Sonja L. Lanehart ◽  
William Labov ◽  
Bettina Baker
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African American Vernacular English ◽  
Vernacular English ◽  
American Vernacular

Another piece for the verbal -s story: Evidence from Devon in southwest England

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Godfrey ◽  
Sali Tagliamonte
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
North America ◽  
English Language ◽  
African American Vernacular English ◽  
Linguistic Feature ◽  
Vernacular English ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Vernacular ◽  
And Function ◽  
Detailed Nature

This article aims to contribute (1) new data on verbal -s by systematically examining its behavior in Devon English (DE), a variety spoken in southwest England, and (2) a broader historical and cross-dialectal perspective for understanding the origin and function of verbal -s in nonstandard varieties of English in North America. We focus on the linguistic contexts of its occurrence from the diachronic and synchronic literature. The results show that verbal -s is conditioned by phonological, syntactic, semantic, and lexical factors. These include the few variable constraints on verbal -s attested throughout the evolution of verbal -s in the history of the English language. Moreover, DE exhibits patterns of verbal -s variability that have previously been associated with African American Vernacular English (AAVE). The detailed nature of these linguistic correspondences—not only in frequency of the features examined, but most importantly in the details of an entire set of internal linguistic factors conditioning them—reveal that verbal -s is a linguistic feature of AAVE that originated in British dialects.

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