African American Vernacular English Language Analysis
Dear Mr. Cosby, I have heard your speech regarding African American Vernacular English, how it influences the youth and how the blame must be places on the parents for not teaching or encouraging their kids to learn “proper English” for the Brown v. Board of Education, and I don’t fully agree with the arguments you made that night. Firstly, I don’t think African American Vernacular English is the cause of the high dropout rates or the reason the African American kids are going to prison, or failing school. And with all due respect, I don’t think you are the person to complain about dropout rates, since you yourself have dropped out of high school after failing 10th grade. The point which was emphasized the most in your speech, was that the overall bad reputation that the African American teenagers have in school is due to the type of English they speak, however, I think that African American Vernacular English (AAVE) does not necessarily “cripple” someone, as proven by the works of American professor of linguistics William Labov. Labov’s research concluded that teenager speakers of AAVE can think logically and abstractly. William Labov, at one point in his …show more content…
And then there are the problems of the poor working people. The people who wake up early in the morning of every day and work tens of hours a week, and still, they can barely make above the poverty level. We should recognize the struggle of both the poor African American single mothers and poor African American fathers, and the lack of social support they have to struggle with. I imagine it must be unimaginably difficult to spend as much time with their children as the working-class African American parents would like to, considering they are demonized if they do not provide for their children’s basic
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650 Words | 3 PagesAfrican-American Vernacular is a language spoken in the African-American community on a daily basis. It is a part of history and it continues to grow and become way of life for most African-American to understand the meaning of certain things. It’s easy to lean about new things or explain complicated things with the use of African-American vernacular. African-American vernacular is a simple version of standard American English. I am not one hundred percent sure whether or not AAE should be treated as a separate language, I am more of 50/50.
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African American Vernacular English Essay
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Analysis Of 'If Black English Isn T A Language Then Tell Me What Is'
983 Words | 4 Pages“If Black English Isn’t a Language Then Tell Me What Is” In the essay “If Black Isn’t a Language Then Tell Me What Is” (The New York Times, 1979) written by James Baldwin, the author asserts that the African American community has altered the English language into a new language during the last five centuries to accommodate the black experience in American history despite the white’s attempt to submerge it. To begin the essay he makes his argument clear by referencing the alterations the French made to their native language to describe how people will eventually “...evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances…”; furthermore he continues to analyze how the caucasian people of America have only accepted the black language when it came out of a white mouth; he ends the essay by reinforcing his position, elaborating on the racism black’s have faced when they were denied the right to an education unless it was for the white benefit. His liberal purpose is to bring light to the subtle racism that African Americans experience even after the Civil Rights movement and to acknowledge the cultural influence they have in America. His writing appears very personal and intimate like he’s voluntarily opening up to his audience by letting them know of his own struggles as an African American, targeting mostly minorities and people who feel oppressed by white America.
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775 Words | 4 PagesAlthough this sort of language is not limited to the characteristics of AAE, it situates the African American childhood in their socially disadvantaged environment, where the inhibition level of using taboo vocabulary is at a minimum and the language is, in fact, that which is considered inappropriate in other social
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