African American Vernacular English

By the term African American Vernacular English (AAVE), we mean the dialect spoken by those people of black American ethnic group from the United States. Before we talk about the African American Vernacular English, we must know who are the African American for a better understanding in the development of African American Vernacular English.

 Background

      African American are citizens from the United State of America who had a partial or total ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub- Saharan Africa. Most African American people are descendents from African who were taken to English colonies as slaves to work in the New World.

    Originally, African American  were settled in the South  (from Texas in the West to the Carolinas in the East), where they provided a labour force for the plantaions of the whites in this region.

With the arrival of the industry in the United States, there were a migration from the south to the north producing a notable increase of African Americancs who were settling in the north and north east, industrial centres.

African Americans suffered decades of slavery, inequality and injustice. These circumstances were changed by Reconstruction, development of the black community, participation in the great military conflicts of the United States, racial segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement.

Let's go to start

We can use different terms to refer to the African American Vernacular English. For example African American Language, African American English, Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular (BEV) and Ebonic.

 There are two main views on the origin of African American English:

1) Creole Hypothesis: According to linguistic Derek Bickerton, it's considered that creole languages develop when language learners do not have sufficient contact with native speakers of Standar American English. These people are forced to create a language based on their native languages in combination with language that they don't know. 

2) Dialect Hypothesis: According to Cleanth Brooks '' The slaves  learned their own new language

by ear and oral tradition and thus preserved what they had heard.

To be more clear, in the first theory the African Americans  develop their own language, in other words, a pidgin language which consists of using English and some West African vocabulary and it is applied  to the grammar rules of their native tongue. And in the second one, the African Americans develop the language with an exclusion of African influence.

Source: 

http://www.uni-due.de/SVE/VARS_AfricanAmericanEnglish.htm

http://dooku.miun.se/engelska/englishB/languageprof/Student%20work/VT07/First%20final%20drafts/Toini%20Rydgren.htm

http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/AAVE/creole/

By Sandra Romero Ferrández