The idea that African American English Vernacular is not a dialect, but it purely
“uneducated” mainstream English is something that linguists have been combating
for decades. Mary Zeigler and Viktor Osinubi allude in their article to the fact that
America is a postcolonial country and that the effects of slavery are clear
throughout the country’s array of dialects. Furthermore, they suggest that the
legitimacy of languages is determined by the elite class/race, which makes
sense as to why many of us believe that AAVE is purely “uneducated” and
“grammatically incorrect” –it has been drilled into our heads, by many white
elitists, that any other different variation of mainstream English is wrong and
must be “fixed.”
One point that Andrew Billings makes is
that in a study of dialectical perceptions, AAVE scored lowest out of many
different dialects in one’s perception of competence. This means that people of
all races rated those who speak AAVE as the least competent of the bunch
without any knowledge of the person who spoke, i.e. this was his/her perception
of those who spoke in AAVE.
Unfortunately, it seems as though our mainstream culture
would agree with the (ironically) uneducated idea that AAVE is just an excuse to being unable to
speak mainstream English. On a popular site perused frequently by young people
everywhere, Urban Dictionary, the “top definition” of Ebonics, or AAVE, was “A
poor excuse for a failure to grasp the basics of English. When in doubt, throw
an ‘izzle’ sound in the middle of any word of just string random thoughts
together and insinuate that they actually mean something.” While this is not
the immediate definition that viewers see, it is the “top” chosen definition,
which implies that most Urban Dictionary viewers agree with this definition
most out of others given. This definition belittles the dialect, which lends to
its perception of being less competent, and makes it into a painfully accurate
joke of what the perception of AAVE is today.
Another article that contributes to the idea that AAVE is
construed as being incorrect mainstream English is an article by Reuben Johnson
called “Stop Talking White, You’re Black.” In this article Johnson, while
holding good intentions, reinforced the fact that many Americans hold the idea
that AAVE is improper English. In the aforementioned article by Billings, those
involved in the study rating the competency perceptions of each of the
different dialects were descendants of all different races. Therefore, African
American subjects rated AAVE as lowest in competency as well as the other races
involved in the study. This shows that this issue is not merely dichotomous,
but the judgment lies within the African American race as well. In his article,
Johnson says that another person of color told him not to “talk white,” which
he interpreted as talking “properly,” but what is really meant is that the man
who said this to him recognized Johnson’s dialect as being mainstream English
as opposed to AAVE. Unfortunately, Johnson continues then to reinforce this
idea that mainstream English is the only “proper” way of speaking.
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| "Talking white" or "talking black" (aka talking in AAVE) have become terms that are understood in very different connotations- one being "proper" and the other being "uneducated." [Source] |
The evidence in a small selection of the scholarly sources I
have found, such as Billing’s article, support the idea that mainstream culture
thinks negatively of AAVE. Furthermore, Zeigler and Osinubi’s article gives
evidence as to why people today may think this way about AAVE.
