Ebonics & Black Culture

William Labov (1972) studied what he called Black English Vernacular (BEV) in the Inner City. This was the language of poverty. "Many leaders of the African-American community believe that there is no distinctive African-American English and that dialect described by linguists is simply the same bad English spoken by uneducated people anywhere"(p. 171). The critic John Simon (1980) wondered "Why should we consider some usually poorly educated, subculture's notion of the relationship between sound and meaning? And how could a grammarùany grammarùpossibly describe that relationship?" (n.p.).

Ebonics has also been called the language of freedom, of the street, of the young. Richard Wright (1997), professor of sociolinguistics at Howard University, contends that

Black people have helped enrich the vernacular of the American cultureà We have to understand that this thing they're calling Ebonics is really nothing but the American vernacular of mass popular cultureà Language is culture

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tendency to drag sounds, even as they drag movement, in order to save energy). Consonant pairs are avoided: "Ah wuz jus leavin wen you come." (Again, natural laziness shuns voice and lip movements that demand an extra effort, whether by Blacks or Whites: "ain't" demands less muscular effort than "isn't"). Prediction with optional copula: a noun followed by an adjective, adverb, verb, noun or prepositional phrase is often found in Ewe macamba or in Kimbundu: "She crazy, man!" "Mah poppa name Jack." (Not an uncommon simplification in many languages, particularly, of course, in grammatically simple ones such as are found in most African tribes.) Given the strong influence of preachers among Southern Blacks, it is not surprising that Ebonics readily appropriates and secularizes Christian lingo: "He testify. "On T." Semantic inversion typical of, say, Mandingo's "a ka nyi ko-jugu", viz. "It's good badly", i.e. "It's so darn good that it's bad." Remote past indicated through structure rather than declension: "He been gon fur tree day now." Habitual actions indicated through verbal structure, particularly with the use of "be" as the verb: "Dey be tellin us a bunch of crap, in spite of de fac dat we sure be doin it all de tahme."
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Black English, West African, Standard English, African American, Justices Stay, Instruction Act, Doc Rioux, Hep Ah'm, Blacks Whites, David Crystal, black english, standard english, 1997 january, west african, english language, african american, african american students, american students, african language, board education, 1996 december, african language systems, oakland board education, january 20 e1, 1996 december 18,
Approximate Word count = 6041
Approximate Pages = 24 (250 words per page)

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