AAVE has been the center of controversy about the education of African American youths, the role AAVE should play in public schools and education, and its place in broader society. Educators have held that attempts should be made to eliminate AAVE usage through the public education system. Criticisms from social commentators and educators have ranged from asserting that AAVE is an intrinsically deficient form of speech to arguments that its use, by being considered unacceptable in most cultural contexts, is socially limiting.^[53] It is often argued that incorporating AAVE in schools would only impede the academic progress of young African American children.^{[citation needed]} The harshest criticisms of AAVE have come from other African Americans.^[54] Most notably, Bill Cosby, in his Pound Cake speech, criticized members of the African American community for various social behaviors including exclusive use of AAVE.

Changes in formal attitudes regarding the acceptance of AAVE as a dialect correlated with advancements in civil rights. One notable shift in the recognition of AAVE came in the "Ann Arbor Decision" of 1979 (Martin Luther King Junior Elementary School Children et al., v. Ann Arbor School District). In it, a federal judge ruled that a school board, in teaching black children to read, must adjust to the children's dialect, not the children to the school.^[55]

Prior to this, the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), a division of National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), issued a position statement on students' right to their own language.^{[citation needed]} This was adopted by CCCC members in April 1974 and appeared in a special issue of College Composition and Communication in Fall of 1974. The resolution was as follows:^[56]

"We affirm the students' right to their own patterns and varieties of language—the dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their own identity and style. Language scholars long ago denied that the myth of a standard American dialect has any validity. The claim that any one dialect is unacceptable amounts to an attempt of one social group to exert its dominance over another. Such a claim leads to false advice for speakers and writers and immoral advice for humans. A nation proud of its diverse heritage and its cultural and racial variety will preserve its heritage of dialects. We affirm strongly that teachers must have the experiences and training that will enable them to respect diversity and uphold the right of students to their own language."

The formal recognition of AAVE was revisited when a controversial resolution from the Oakland, California school board on December 18, 1997, called on "Ebonics" to be officially recognized as a language of African Americans.^[57] At its last meeting, the outgoing Oakland school board unanimously passed the resolution, before being replaced by the newly elected board. The new board's members held different views; the board modified the resolution then effectively dropped it. Had the measure remained in force, it would have affected funding and education-related issues.^{[citation needed]}

The Oakland resolution declared that AAVE was not English or even an Indo-European language, asserting that the speech of black children belonged to "West and Niger-Congo languages and are not merely dialects of English."^[58] This claim is inconsistent with the current linguistic theory that AAVE is a dialect of English and thus of Indo-European origin. Also, the differences between modern AAVE and Standard English are nowhere near as great as those between French and Haitian Creole, which are considered separate languages. The resolution was widely misunderstood as an intention to teach AAVE and "elevate it to the status of a written language."^[59] The resolution gained national attention and was derided and criticized, most notably by Jesse Jackson and Kweisi Mfume who regarded it as an attempt to teach slang to children.^[60] The statement that "African Language Systems are genetically based" also contributed to widespread hostility because it was popularly misunderstood to mean that African Americans have a biological predisposition to a particular language.^{[citation needed]} In an amended resolution, this phrase was removed and replaced with wording that states African American language systems "have origins in West and Niger-Congo languages and are not merely dialects of English."^[61]

Proponents of AAVE instruction in public education believe that their proposals have been distorted by political debate and misunderstood by the general public.^{[citation needed]} The underlying belief is that black students would perform better in school and more easily learn standard American English if textbooks and teachers incorporated AAVE in teaching black children to speak Standard English rather than dismiss it as substandard.^[62]

For students whose primary dialect was AAVE, the Oakland resolution mandated some instruction in that dialect, both for "maintaining the legitimacy and richness of such language... and to facilitate their acquisition and mastery of English language skills." This also included the proposed increase of salaries of those proficient in both AAVE and Standard English to the level of those teaching LEP (limited English proficiency) students and the use of public funding to help teachers learn AAVE themselves.^[63] Teachers were to recognize that the "errors" in Standard American English that their students made were not the result of lack of intelligence or effort, and indeed were not errors at all but instead were features of a grammatically distinct form of English.^{[citation needed]} Rather than teaching Standard American English by proscribing non-standard usage, the idea was to teach SAE to AAVE-speaking students by showing them how to translate expressions from AAVE to SAE.^{[citation needed]}

Pedagogical techniques similar to those used to teach English to speakers of foreign languages appear to hold promise for speakers of AAVE. William Stewart experimented with the use of dialect readers—sets of text in both AAVE and SAE.^[64] The idea was that children could learn to read in their own dialect and then shift to Standard English with subsequent textbooks.^[65] Simpkins, Holt & Simpkins (1977) developed a comprehensive set of dialect readers, called bridge readers, which included the same content in three different dialects: AAVE, a bridge version that was closer to SAE without being prohibitively formal, and a Standard English version.^[66] Despite studies that showed promise for such dialect reader programs, reaction to them was largely hostile^[67] and both Stewart's research and the Bridge Program were rejected for various political and social reasons, including strong resistance from parents.^[68][69][70] Opinions on AAVE still range from advocacy of official language status in the United States to denigration as "poor English."^{[citation needed]}

In 2002, Lisa Delpit and Joanne Kilgour Dowdy edited and contributed to the book The Skin that We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom. It examines how classrooms deal with the issue in practice and what that can mean for students. While policymakers debate the issue, teachers have to make their own policies.^[71]

Teaching children whose primary dialect is AAVE poses problems beyond those commonly addressed by pedagogical techniques, and the Oakland approach has support among some educational theorists. However, such pedagogical approaches have given rise to educational and political disputes. The American public and policymakers remain divided over whether to even recognize AAVE as a legitimate dialect of English. Though she had no standing in the school district, California State University, San Bernardino sociology professor Mary Texeira suggested in July 2005 that AAVE be included in the San Bernardino City Unified School District.^{[citation needed]} The recommendation was met with a backlash similar to that in Oakland nine years before.

According to Smitherman, the overwhelming controversy and debates concerning AAVE in public schools insinuate the deeper, more implicit deterministic attitudes towards the African-American community as a whole. Smitherman describes this as a reflection of the "power elite's perceived insignificance and hence rejection of Afro-American language and culture".^[72] She also asserts that since African Americans, in order to succeed, are forced to conform to European American society, this ultimately means the "eradication of black language…and the adoption of the linguistic norms of the white middle class." The necessity for a "bi-dialectialism" (AAVE and SAE) has "some blacks contend that being bi-dialectal not only causes a schism in the black personality, but it also implies such dialects are 'good enough' for blacks but not for whites."^[73]

[

See also

• Languages in the United States
• Gullah language
• Ebonics
• Habitual be
• Is-leveling
• Sociolinguistics

[

Notes

[

References

• Baugh, John (2000), written at New York, Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic Pride and Racial Prejudice, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-515289-1
• Cosby, William (10 January), "Elements of Igno-Ebonics Style", Wall Street Journal: P.A11
• Coulmas, Florian (2005), Sociolinguistics: The Study of Speakers' choices, Cambridge
• Crystal, David (2003), written at Cambridge, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. (2nd ed.), Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-82348-X
• Delpit, Lisa & Joanne Kilgour Dowdy (2002), written at New York, The Skin that We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom., New Press, ISBN 1565845447
• Dictionary of American Regional English. 5 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985–.
• Dillard, John L. (1972), Black English: Its History and Usage in the United States, Random House, ISBN 0-394-71872-0
• Downing, John (1978), "Strategies of Bilingual Teaching", International Review of Education 24 (3): 329-346
• Howe, Darin M. & James A. Walker (2000), "Negation and the Creole-Origins Hypothesis: Evidence from Early African American English", in Poplack, Shana, The English History of African American English, 109-139
• Golden, Tim (January 14), "Oakland Scratches plan to teach black English.", New York Times: A10
• Green, Lisa J. (2002), written at Cambridge, African American English: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-89138-8
• Labov, William (1972), written at Philadelphia, Language in the Inner City: Studies in Black English Vernacular, University of Pennsylvania Press
• Labov, William (2001), written at Oxford, Principles of Linguistic Change, II: Social factors, Blackwell, ISBN 0631179151
• Lee, Margaret (1999), "Out of the Hood and into the News: Borrowed Black Verbal Expressions in a Mainstream Newspaper", American Speech: 369-388
• Lippi-Green, Rosina (1997), written at London, English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States, Blackwell, 200
• Morgan, Marcyliena (1999), Davis, Kathryn Anne, ed., Sociopolitical perspectives on language policy and planning in the USA., John Benjamins, ISBN 1556197357
• Pinker, Steven (1994), written at New York, The Language Instinct, Morrow, ISBN 0-688-12141-1
• Quinn, Jim (1992), written at New York, American Tongue and Cheek: A Populist Guide to Our Language, Penguin, ISBN 0-14-006084-7
• Radford, Andrew; Martin Atkinson & David Britain et al. (1999), written at Cambridge, Linguistics: An Introduction, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-47854-5
• Rickford, John (1997), "Suite for Ebony and Phonics", Discover Magazine 18 (2)
• Rickford, John (1999), African American Vernacular English, Blackwell, ISBN 0-631-21245-0
• Rickford, John & Russell Rickford (2000), written at New York, Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English., John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-39957-4
• Sampson, Geoffrey (1997), written at London, Educating Eve: The "Language Instinct" Debate, Cassell, ISBN 0-304-33908-3
• Schilling-Estes, Natalie (2006), "Dialect Variation", written at Cambridge, in Fasold, Ralph & Jeff Connor-Linton, An Introduction to Language and Linguistics ed, Cambridge University Press, 311-42, ISBN 0-521-84768-0
• Simpkins, Gary A.; Grace Holt & Charlesetta Simpkins (1977), Bridge: A Cross-Cultural Reading Program, Houghton-Mifflin
• Smith, Ernie & Karen Crozier (1998), "Ebonics Is Not Black English", The Western Journal of Black Studies 22: 109-116
• Smitherman, Geneva (1977), written at Boston, Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America, Houghton Mifflin
• Smitherman, Geneva (1999), "CCCC's Role in the Struggle for Language Rights", College Composition and Communication 50 (3): 349-376
• Smitherman, Geneva (2000), written at Boston, Black Talk: Words and Phrases from the Hood to the Amen Corner (revised ed.), Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 0-395-96919-0
• Stewart, William (1975), "Teaching Blacks to Read Against Their Will", written at Regensburg, Germany, in Luelsdorff, P.A., Linguistic Perspectives on Black English., Hans Carl
• Wardhaugh, Ronald (2002), An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, Blackwell
• Winford, Donald (1992), "Back to the past: The BEV/creole connection revisited", Language Variation and Change 4 (3): 311-357

[

External links

• Asimov, Nanette. "Opening Pandora's Box". San Francisco Chronicle January 19, 1997. Asimov interviews Toni Cook: "The Oakland school board member principally responsible for the controversial resolution on ebonics reflects on several weeks of turmoil."
• Drake, Dan. "The Notorious Ebonics Resolution of Oakland, California". Critique of the Oakland resolution (with annotated text) and of most of its critics
• Jones, Gayle. "Ebonics essay". The African-Americanist (University of Missouri–Columbia) 7, no. 1. 1998.
• King, Michael. "Ebonics Slang No Substitute for Standard English", Project 21 New Visions Commentary, August 2002.
• Linguistic Society of America. "Resolution on the Oakland "Ebonics" Issue" unanimously adopted at the annual meeting of the LSA, Chicago, January 3, 1997 in support of the Oakland school board's decision.
• Nunberg, Geoffrey, "Double Standards", a linguist's essay on press coverage of the Oakland "Ebonics" resolution.
• Oakland (Calif.) Board of Education. First resolution (18 December 1996), formal title "Resolution of the Board of Education adopting the report and recommendations of the African-American Task Force: A policy statement; and Directing the Superintendent of Schools to devise a program to improve the English language acquisition and application skills of African-American students".
• Oakland (Calif.) Board of Education. Revised resolution (15 January 1997), formal title "Amended resolution of the Board of Education adopting the report and recommendations of the African-American Task Force: A policy statement; and Directing the Superintendent of Schools to devise a program to improve the English language acquisition and application skills of African-American students".
• Oubré, Alondra. "Black English Vernacular (Ebonics) and Educability: A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Language, Cognition, and Schooling". 1997. African American Web Connection.
• Patrick, Peter L. "African American English: A webpage for linguists and other folks". University of Essex.
• Patrick, Peter L. "A bibliography of works on African American English". University of Essex.
• "Phonological Features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE)". Child Phonology Laboratory, University of Alberta. 2001. A large inventory of AAVE phonological features.
• Pullum, Geoff. "Why Ebonics Is No Joke". Lingua Franca transcript, 17 October 1998. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The grammarian Geoff Pullum corrects popular misconceptions about AAVE.
• Rickford, John R. "Ebonics Notes and Discussion". December 1996. On the grammar and phonology of AAVE, and the term "Ebonics".
• Rickford, John R., and Angela E. Rickford. "Dialect Readers Revisited". Linguistics and Education 7 (1995), no. 2, 107–128.
• Sidnell, Jack. "African American Vernacular English". Language Varieties (University of New England).

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