doctoral candidate in rhetoric and scientific and technical communication
Archive for May, 2004
Monday May 3, 2004
0The variant “be” and the “aks” of a certain dialect are actually the correct way to speak in African American Vernacular English (AAVE). While it is called African American Vernacular English, it is, by no means, limited to African Americans (as areyoustoler showed when she talked about Hawaiian Creole English (HCE) – often called Pidgin).
It is not an informal variant of what most people would call “standard” American English. In fact, most linguists don’t believe there is a “standard” American English. There are many dialects and there are some that are more common than others. Just because the broadcast media tend to speak in one certain dialect does NOT make it a standard.
Getting back to AAVE –
I asked all of you your opinions on those specific areas of speech because there are common misconceptions about how our fellow Americans speak. We tend to think of people as well-educated if they speak what we consider standard or they write in what we consider standard. If they have a different mode of speech or writing from those, our assessment (as a whole society) of them changes.
What is most interesting is that there are people who are absolutely brilliant who speak in AAVE. They are intelligent by all standards. It is the dialect they learned as children and one that they speak most comfortably.
As cathelin said, many people code-shift. What this means is that we can move in and out of our dialect to others to communicate more effectively in arenas that require us to speak differently. We all have a certain degree in which we can code shift. Some people can do it easily in many different dialects. Others are hard-pressed to do it well in one other dialect.
What I urge is that when you hear AAVE (or any other dialect, for that matter), that you consider it is like a different language. It is English but it is a different English. We wouldn’t look at the British as less intelligent because they speak words differently than we do. We shouldn’t look at speakers of AAVE any differently, either.
–
On another note, I have finished my paper. It is on the languages of the internet and how I believe synchronous commuinication centers on the internet do, in fact, have a dialect all their own. It is not spoken English nor is it written English but it is a dialect of Internet English.
You can find my paper here if you’re interested. It is in Word format. Let me know what you think after you’ve read it. I’m always interested in new points of view.
variants
0The variant “be” and the “aks” of a certain dialect are actually the correct way to speak in African American Vernacular English (AAVE). While it is called African American Vernacular English, it is, by no means, limited to African Americans (as areyoustoler showed when she talked about Hawaiian Creole English (HCE) – often called Pidgin).
It is not an informal variant of what most people would call “standard” American English. In fact, most linguists don’t believe there is a “standard” American English. There are many dialects and there are some that are more common than others. Just because the broadcast media tend to speak in one certain dialect does NOT make it a standard.
Getting back to AAVE -
I asked all of you your opinions on those specific areas of speech because there are common misconceptions about how our fellow Americans speak. We tend to think of people as well-educated if they speak what we consider standard or they write in what we consider standard. If they have a different mode of speech or writing from those, our assessment (as a whole society) of them changes.
What is most interesting is that there are people who are absolutely brilliant who speak in AAVE. They are intelligent by all standards. It is the dialect they learned as children and one
that they speak most comfortably.
As cathelin said, many people code-shift. What this means is that we can move in and out of our dialect to others to communicate more effectively in arenas that require us to speak differently. We all have a certain degree in which we can code shift. Some people can do it easily in many different dialects. Others are hard-pressed to do it well in one other dialect.
What I urge is that when you hear AAVE (or any other dialect, for that matter), that you consider it is like a different language. It is English but it is a different English. We wouldn’t look at the British as less intelligent because they speak words differently than we do. We shouldn’t look at speakers of AAVE any differently, either.
–
On another note, I have finished my paper. It is on the languages of the internet and how I believe synchronous communication centers on the internet do, in fact, have a dialect all their own. It is not spoken English nor is it written English but it is a dialect of Internet English.
You can find my paper here if you’re interested. It is in Word format. Let me know what you think after you’ve read it. I’m always interested in new points of view.