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<title> Ebonics </title>
1 Introduction and aim

I have chosen to study the language differences between African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and General American (GA). The name of this variant of English implies that it is the way African American citizens speak, but the use of what is referred to as African American Vernacular English, is limited to certain social groups of the African American population. It can be found mainly in the poorer groups in the urban areas. It is difficult to know what the most appropriate term for this kind of English is since there are several. In the following part of my essay I am going to use the term Ebonics or AAVE. The word Ebonics is a blend of ebony and phonics meaning "black sounds". AAVE is as earlier shown an acronym African American Vernacular English. The meaning of Vernacular is "the language spoken in a country or area, especially when it is not the official language" (Longman, 1995). Other terms for this variant of English are African American English and Black English. 

My research consists of two main parts. The first one is a study of primary sources, namely of seven episodes of the television programme "the Ricki Lake Show", that were broadcast in September. My aim of the investigation is to get a current documentation of AAVE and show how it differs from GA. I will focus on the phonological and grammatical differences. I am aware of that the forum I have chosen to study is not representative of the US as a whole, since the people who participate in the show tend to be mostly from is from a quite uneducated, poor social class. However, that is the place in society where is AAVE most common and the show is one of the few programs on TV where it is possible to hear AAVE spoken. 

In my second main part I will give account for some previous linguistic research of AAVE to, for one, find theories of the origins of it, and also to be able to give a more accurate description of this variant of English than my own, not so comprehensive research, can give. The secondary material I have used and will refer to consists mostly of essays (which I have found on the internet), by John R Rickford, professor of linguistics at Stanford University. I will also include some important resent events that show why the Ebonics issue is an important one and how this type of English is looked upon by linguists and society as a whole, today.

2 Presentation and discussion

2:1 Pronunciation - a study of the pronunciation of the guests on the Ricki Lake Show.

*shortened words: **various words with differing pronunciation:
		 
<table with phonetic symbols removed>
			 
*Here I do not use phonetic script since the only sound difference is that a sound has been left out. I illustrate the change by using an apostrophe.

** In this part of my essay, dealing with phonetics, the pronunciation of words are described as they sound used in a sentence and I have transcribed them in phonetic script as I perceived them. The words on the left are the Ebonics pronunciations, the word referred to comes after and then there is a description of the sound difference in phonetic script.

What the study suggests is that the GA s-k sound combination is not pronounced (as in ask and explain). This is something I have also noticed when I have heard AAVE earlier. I also found when studying pronunciation that clipping and shortening of words is very common, but my material is much to limited for me to make any more general statements. I have mainly shown some examples of Ebonics' "black sounds". 

2:2 Grammatical differences

One of the most typical trades of Black English is the use of double negations. I found in my study that they were used very frequently.

Here are some sentences spoken by guests on the Ricki Lake Show that exemplify the use of double negations:

"I wouldn't do nothing like that." 
"I don't call myself nothing but (name(."
"She don't need to be seeing nothing like that."
"We can't go nowhere."

Here follows sentences or parts of sentences that I heard on the Ricki Lake show, which had grammatical differences from GA:

BEV					GA

"You been..." (loss of aux)		 	You have been...
"...she be gone." (loss of modal aux)	 	...she would be gone.
"She live in my house." (person)			She lives in my house.
"I thought y'all was my sisters." (tense)		I thought you were my 					sisters.
"You should have came out and told me." (tense)	You should have come out 					and told me.
	 
"I ain't really..."				I haven't really...
"I know they were..." (tense)			I knew they were...(The 					context showed 
"I have been still doing..." (adv in middle)	I still have been 						doing...
"He done cheating." (other aux, tense)		He has cheated.
"It's a lot hard." (adv that isn't norm. in middle)	It is very hard.
"I seen her." (loss of aux)			I have seen her.
"We was talking" (tense)			We were talking.
"Why don't he..." (person)			Why doesn't he...
"What does she call herself as?" (extra conj) 	What does she call herself?

Explanation of abbreviations: aux stands for auxiliary verb, adv stands for adverb and conj for conjunction.

Where I have written person or tense, that is an indication of which way a verb does not have agreement in the sentence.

The conclusion I can draw from these sentences is that in AAVE, agreement in person, number and tense is used completely different manner according to standard and that auxiliary verbs are often left out where they are used in GA. Double negations that I treated separately is otherwise one of the most striking features of AAVE.

2:3 Background

A lot of people would just call the sentences of my study ungrammatical and the reason why others say that they are not, but acknowledges this speech as a dialect of English, is firs of all that it has rules and patterns that it follows and that these patterns have origins that go back a long time. There is not one theory of the origin and development of Ebonics that is generally accepted. However there are sources of AAVE that linguist have studied which support the theory that AAVE have Creole roots (Rickson 1996)and these are mainly: Historical attestations; literary texts, slave narratives and recordings, Diaspora recordings (of Liberian settlers for example), similarities between AAVE and Caribbean Creoles varieties and comparisons between age groups of AAVE speakers. Typical features of AAVE that have been documented in connection to these studies are (Rlickford 1996); use of habitual be and completive done, and the most striking feature, absence of the present tense of copula be.

A piece of more resent background information that I find relevant to my essay, that show that BEV has gained respect, is fact that the Oakland School Board made a resolution on the 18th of December in 1996, which recognises BEV to be the second language of their black students.(Original Oakland Resolution on Ebonics 1996) The linguists of the US were supportive to this resolution since they thought that it would have pedagogical benefits for African American children. This resolution was followed by a lot of negative reactions by the general public,(Rickford 1996) which showed that there still are a lot of people who consider AAVE "...simply the product of laziness or cussedness... or that it was a loose collection of slang words in which you could do or say pretty much what you please." (Rickford 1996)

3 Conclusion

The conclusion of my own investigation is that there are distinct sound differences between AAVE and GA, but I could not find any rules of these difference since my material was to limited. What I could see was that shortening of words was very common and that the k-s sound combination was not pronounced. The typical grammatical differences I found were use of double negation, absence of auxiliary verb and lack of agreement in person and tense.

I found that the Ebonics issue is a burning one since while authorities want to accept Ebonics as a language of its own, while the general public is not willing doing so. 

4 References

Printed sources:

Crystal, David. 1998. Rediscover Grammar. Singapore: Longman.

Longman dictionary of contemporary English. 1995. Barcelona: Cayfosa.

Yule, George. 1996. The study of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 

Rönnerdal, Göran and Johansson, Stig. Introducing English Pronunciation. Lund: Studentlitteratur

Internet sources:

Abu-Jamal, Mumia,1997: Mother Tong: Black English Revisited
1999-09-14. http:// www.xs4all.ul/~tank/spg-1/Susan1218-Mumia-Abu-Jamal-article.html 

Oubré, Alondra,1997: Black English Vernacular (Ebonics) and Eductibility
1999-0914. http://www.phaelos.com/obrel.htm

Rickford, John R., 1996:Ebonics in My Back Yard
1999-09-14. http://www.stanford.edu/~rickford/EbonicsInMyBackYard.html 

Rickford, John r., 1996: Suite For Ebony And Phonics
1999-09-14. http://www.stanford.edu/~rickford/SuiteForEbonyAndPhonics.html

Rickford, John r., 1996: Creole Origins of AAVE
1999-09-14.http:www.stanford.edu/~rickfors/papers/CreoleOriginsOfAAVE.html

1997: The Ebonics Problem
1999-09-14. http://princeton.edu:80/~timlee/ME/Ebonics.htm 

Black English?
1999-09-14. http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/Articles/Black -English.html

Original Oakland Resolution on Ebonics
 http://linguist.emich.edu/topics/ebonics/ebonics-res1.html

Online discussion on Salon Table Talk. Topic: Social issues( "The Race Project" ( "Black English... A Second Language"
1999-09-14. http://tabletalk.salon1999.com/webex 

Seven episodes of The "Ricki Lake Show" broadcast on the 4ht to18th of September
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