...3 AFRICAN AMERICAN ENGLISH The dialect of English spoken by members of the African diaspora and descendents from the slave trade in North America has many names: African American English, African American Vernacular English, Black English, Ebonics (Baugh, 2000: 2), Spoken Soul (Rickford and Rickford, 2000), New World Black English (Rickford, 1999: 175), African American Standard English when discussing middle class Black English (Spears, 2009: 3), and many others. For the remainder of this dissertation, I will refer to the dialect as African American English (AAE) for simplification. AAE is used both by descendents of slaves brought to North America during the slave trade and immigrants to the United States from the larger African diaspora....
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...ohio.edu/lrcmedia/Streaming/lingCALL/ling270/myth20.pdf | Study questions – Yule, Chapter 4 | 6 2/18 | Morphology Grammar | * Yule, Chapter 6 & 7 * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y8aLt4kLcI | Yule Chapter 6 & 7 | 7 2/21 | Word formation | * Yule, Chapter 5 * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca0xFvMfcqo&feature=related | Classroom questions | 8 2/25 | Semantics | * Yule, Chapter 9 * Hooten, “Fighting words: The war over language.” http://professorverspoor.pbworks.com/w/file/45295489/Hooten%2B-%2BFighting%2BWords.pdf | Yule study questions -- Chapter 9 | 9 2/28 | Grammar (prescriptive vs. descriptive) | * Simon, “Why good English is good for you” http://wolfweb.unr.edu/homepage/calabj/pdf/Simon.pdf Video: Do You Speak American (prescriptivism vs. prescriptivism) | Classroom...
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...The world we live in is very diverse in all aspects. For any given subject it is likely there are many variations to just that one thing, the original plus variations of the originals with a slightly different twist. English is one of those subjects. Not only are there hundreds of languages in the world, there are also multiple variations of English alone. African American Vernacular English, better known as AAVE, is a black version of American English. It is sometimes called Ebonics, Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular, or Black Vernacular English. The pronunciation of the words is along the same lines as the other variations of English, but it is spoken in different areas of the world. This is not the only thing to know about the language, but where can you go to find the information? The Internet is always a convenient tool to use, but not every website is trustworthy. My least favorite websites to use are Wiki websites. No one website is perfect. There may be some flaws but there are also some good aspects. Wikipedia is filled with information for virtually every topic one could possibly think of. Various people keep the information updated throughout the week. When I typed AAVE into Wikipedia tons of information came up. I like the idea that wiki websites generally have all the information one needs to know about a subject. The information on wiki websites are generally up to date because there are people constantly uploading their findings...
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...children that grow up in different countries or places where the dialect, or the way they speak is different than the customary school English have more difficulty with reading acquisition. These children have been taught dialects such as African American Vernacular English (AAVE). The dialect of African American Vernacular English is very similar to that of school English except for a few differences. Some of these differences include the reduction of final consonants. For example, /mos/ vs /most/ for the word most. Another example is the use of stops or labiodental fricatives where school English has interdental fricatives such as (/dis/ vs. /ðis/ for this, /bof/ or /bot/ vs. /boθ/ for both) are acceptable in AAVE but are not acceptable in school English. To test this hypothesis, sentence imitation and reading skills of 217 urban African American boys and girls in kindergarten through second grade from the ages of 5 to 8 were selected from low-performing schools in low-income communities in three U.S. cities. The cities consisted of, Cleveland, Ohio; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Washington, D.C. The children that were chosen in each grade were scattered and random pertaining to their imitations of school English sentences which included phonological and grammatical forms that are used in African American Vernacular English but not in school English. The experiment consisted of several different tools that helped the researchers test there hypothesis. One of the tools used was the...
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...Assessing Curriculum Theory Educational theories attempt to distinguish, understand and propose educational practices. The theories encompass many different types of instruction, curriculum methods and techniques to teach as well as policy, organization and leadership (Ornstein& Hunkins, 2014). People have different understandings of learning theories and different beliefs and opinions about how people process information and learn new material. Their beliefs may derive from personal knowledge, self-reflection, performance of others, research, and from trying to educate or convince others to adopt their way of thinking (Wang, 2012). According to Shuell (2013) the various theories are pertinent to different kinds of learning and may be similar. Nonetheless, they provide different viewpoints on the difficult aspects of learning and go hand in hand in their capacity to clarify different kinds of learning conditions. Consequently, completely different theories are pertinent to the classroom by speaking to several elements of classroom learning. Theories of learning are attempts to describe how people learn. Various theories center on different traditions and are suitable for clarifying certain educational conditions but not others. Theories of learning may be able to advise instruction and suggest different educational resources to include new forms of technology. At the end of the day, the instructional activities in which the student undertakes will determine what the...
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...to discuss the current bill that would like to ban using the method of “code-switching” from the “home language” of AAE (African American Vernacular English) speakers. I have read a study conducted by a Umass professor regarding this issue, and I have read the bill thoroughly. My recommendation to you is to vote against the bill, and I have some very good reasons for it. Banning the AAE instruction will do more harm then good. Although the bill proposes some good reasons for needing to speak mainstream English, it misses a few key points. They claim that linguistic skills like writing and reading are necessary to an individuals success. They don’t realize however, that AAE is a structured language following rules and patterns. The “code-switching” can actually be a useful technique in teaching AAE speakers how to communicate “properly” in mainstream English. Proponents of the bill state that the primary purpose of the education system is to prepare students for success in their careers and to participate equally in society. I think that by banning the teaching of AAE to mainstream English will actually prevent children who speak AAE at home from having an equal opportunity in the first place. It is not separate but equal, since these children are starting from a different version of a language altogether. Their foundation in AAE would make normal English instruction worthless. Since AAE follows rules, “code-switching” is a totally viable option. The proponents are saying that...
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...high school she always wrote and strived to be an author. In her own words, she literally came up from the bottom and fought. Lisa attended Rutgers University, and earned a degree in American History and African Studies. She attended Cornell University Advanced Placement Studies, She also studied abroad in Europe at the University of Salamanca. While studying abroad Lisa got first hand experience with a lot of things. She built medical centers, worked with refugee children, and was a high active member of the international student anti-aparthied movement. She made a name for herself and was putting herself out there in the world to let her purpose in life be known. As her reputation was growing so was her lust to write and to tell her stories to the world . She started in the field of entertainment and has been on many platforms, such as radio, television, and political rights. Williamson is a very successful woman and has 3 national bestsellers back to back to back. She is the CEO of numerous companies, the chairman of a number of charitable orginizations, the director of many nationwide movements. Sistah Souljah has contributed and committed so much to the African American culture. Looked up to, and counted upon Lisa Williamson, or Sistah Souljah has definatley made a difference in African American Literature for many generations to come and...
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...Christopher Barrett 05/30/2014 Who’s English Is Better? In technical writing circles, it was once held that there is one precise and correct means of expressing a given idea (truth) such that no misinterpretation is possible. Although not every user of English is destined to be linguistic, I wonder whether we should teach students about the variety of brushes available. Giving students the ability to write in their own way opens the gates for self expression, as well as giving students a way to write comfortably, following an easier understanding for some readers. Young writers automatically link to colloquial writing also known as Black American English simply because it is more convenient. Black American English also known as Black Vernacular, the dialect of English often spoken by African Americans in urban and southern regions, is also known an "African American Vernacular English. A lot of young people first come to creative writing because they have a burning desire to express themselves. Emotions are running high, ideas are flying, and opinions are in full supply. In the moment of writing the student will most likely write just as they speak. African-American dialects tend to drop the [t] from words like rest and soft. They likewise tend to drop the [r] sound in words like bird, four, door, and father. With this being so the writing, to scholars and educated readers, is perceived as improper and incorrect. Black American English often uses the emphatic done to stress...
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...2/14/12 AFAS 160D1 Dr. Yuxuf Abana Essay # 1 The value of language The Norton anthology of African American literature book, does a great job in describing the uniqueness of the early African American language, as the roots for the spiritual and the secular forms of the African American vernacular. But for one to understand the African American vernacular, one must understand how the language was created. The language of the early Africans that occupied north America was unique to only this ethical group, because they where the only forms of Africans in that time that spoke a kind of language that was broken English or formally called “Pidgin” which is known as the language of the slaves. Lets take a look at the active definition for pidgin, so we can come to a clear understanding of the word before we progress further in the paper: “A simplified form of speech that is usually a mixture of two or more languages, has a rudimentary grammar and vocabulary, is used for communication between groups speaking different languages, and is not spoken as a first or native language. Also called contact language.”(pidgin online) so contact language is the language first spoken or developed when the Africans where first In America. The language was created due to the direct result of the times being that Africans by law where not allowed to be educated or to be treated like anything other then a slave, no social interactions...
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...Evaluating Reading Programs African-American (AA) and English Language Learners (ELL) students are groups that traditionally suffer in standard reading and English classrooms. A 1965 Harlem study cited by William Labov (Labov, Can reading failure be reversed pg. 40, laay ) contrasts two groups of students: one group that is not affiliated with street culture and one group that is. The findings are startling. AA students that did not associate with “street” groups on average read two grade-levels below students. This figure is alarming but nonetheless, two grade-levels can be remediated with the right intervention. However, the group that associated with “street” groups persisted to stall at an average plateau of a 4.9 grade reading level. A plateau indicates a systemic failure to address the underlying issue of instruction. The times have changed but the fact that AA and ELL youth are not being served has remained constant. One would (like to) believe that non-responsive students are wholly neglected, however, often times it is not a negligence in intervention, but a lack of appropriate reading curriculum/tools that creates the dire situation that underperforming students are in. AA and ELL students pose an educational challenge because they already possess language structures that vary from standard academic English in grammar, phonics, and cultural experience. The Ann Arbor decision reaffirms that although different, African American Vernacular (AAVE), is not mangled or fragmented...
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...Jaclyn Karpiak English 101 12 April 2012 Short Story Analysis: “The Lesson” Toni Cade Bambara, a Harlem-born author, embraces culture, community, and background through her short story “The Lesson”. She has the main character Miss Moore discuss the struggles African Americans have with Caucasians involving social class, poverty, and equality. For many years after the abolition of slavery, African Americans were still looked down upon and considered a lower social class in certain societies. Bambara uses language as a powerful tool for describing America during the 1960s through the eyes of a young girl named Sylvia, a proud, sensitive, tough girl who is far too smart to ignore the realities around her. Bambara uses language to establish a cultural setting and Miss Moore to teach her students how to be successful, no matter their race. This story reflects Bambara’s ethnic background and pride by using the same dialect that she used growing up in Harlem, New York. According to Bambara, she spoke African American Vernacular English (AAVE), a trait that imparts to Sylvia. African American Vernacular English adds realism and humor to Sylvia's narrative because it describes her ethnicity without directly expressing what it is. It is common for African-American writers to use AAVE to emphasize their political and social commentary, so it is appropriate for Sylvia to be speaking the dialect because the story takes place in the ghetto of New York where Sylvia spends her childhood...
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...who use the same language. By studying written records, sociolinguists also examine how language and society have interacted in the past. For example, they have tabulated the frequency of the singular pronoun thou and its replacement you in dated hand-written or printed documents and correlated changes in frequency with changes in class structure in 16th and 17th century England. This is historical sociolinguistics: the study of relationship between changes in society and changes in language over a period of time. What is dialect? Sociolinguists also study dialect — any regional, social or ethnic variety of a language. By that definition, the English taught in school as correct and used in non-personal writing is only one dialect of contemporary American English. Usually called Standard American English or Edited American English, it is the dialect used in this essay. Scholars are currently using a sociolinguistic perspective to answer some intriguing questions about language in the United States, including these: * Which speakers in urban areas of the North are changing the pronunciation of vowels in a systematic way? For...
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...Farah Habib Eng. 101/A2A 3/10/16 Mid Term Exam Essay Using Different English’s As an African American woman I face multiple barriers every day. Language has always been one of them. People often expect me to speak a certain way based on stereotypes they have grown up with or have been taught. I find that I use multiple forms of the language on a regular basis to relate to the different groups of people that I am around. Although I do speak “Ebonics”, too often people assume that is all I can speak. However, I can also converse quite fluently in proper English over many domains. I always enjoy seeing the surprise on people’s faces when my articulation is not what they anticipated, or when they see me switch seamlessly between them. The common misconception is that all African Americans speak, “Ebonics.” So people automatically expect that I will speak Ebonics. According to the Linguistics Society of America, Ebonics means “black speech.” They also state that this term was created in 1973 by a group of black scholars who disliked the negative connotations of terms like 'Nonstandard Negro English' that had been coined in the 1960s when the first modern large-scale linguistic studies of African American speech-communities began. Well, I grew up in the late 60s and with both my parents being educators, and from the south. Education and proper diction was a thing in our house, primarily...
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...Linguistic discrimination is just a piece of the overall issue with racism and it can actually happen without anyone actually seeing an African American’s skin. You Hear was created to start a dialogue about over the phone discrimination and policy that aligned with it. People use the phone for a variety of reasons like to make doctor's appointments, call companies about product malfunction, and to ask if a business was hiring. Can you imagine living a life where you alter your voice to get treated fairly when calling about open housing? Such a simple task that shouldn’t be a hassle is often a process of assimilation and cultural erasure for Black people because they have to put on a “white voice.” This piece holds several elements of symbolism....
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...Huck Finn: Comparing and Contrasting the Controversies Surrounding Banning Books The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, deemed one of the great American novels, was published by Mark Twain in 1884. From the start, this novel has sparked a lot of negative criticism. There were heated debates among critics, and in schools debating whether or not to ban this controversial piece of literature. In today's society, this book still offends sensitive readers, because it was written in a time when people were not sensitive to the plight of African Americans. Just a month after it was published, The Concord, library in Massachusetts banned all copies stating that it was “Not suitable for trash.” (Ruta1) It was believed, that racism was at the heart of this book, and the content was, and still viewed as being harsh. Louisa May Alcott was a popular author who served on the very first library committee in Massachusetts, where The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was banned. She voted against this book from being sold, read or viewed. Criticizing Mark Twain saying that "Huck should not sweat. He should perspire." (Ruta1) Other libraries began removing their copies stating that it is inappropriate for children to read. The number of concerned citizens continue to debate on this subject today. Derogatory words are seen throughout this story in reference to showcase the difference between the two classes, white verses black. This book not only celebrates an unlikely friendship between...
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