Ebonics: Perhaps Not African American, but European American Ignorance

When the Oakland School board adopted Ebonics as a separate dialect from English and proposed to include it in their teachers' educations, the reaction from the general public was one of outrage and disgust. In fact, the policy created so much adversity that it was eventually dropped. Had the community possessed even a basic knowledge of linguistics or the historical origins of African American English, they may have given Oakland's brave new policy a chance. Linguists have proved, contrary to what many Americans believe, that African American English (AAE), or Ebonics, is not a grouping of random deviations from Standard American English (SAE) or an attempt to break down the language into a more barbaric form. Instead, it is both systematic and rule-governed, just like all other language varieties. If teachers had a better understanding of AAE varieties, it would likely help them better teach native AAE speakers SAE.

It is a common assumption that AAE is a dialect of English. The term dialect is a variety of a language defined by both geographical factors and social factors, like class, religion, and ethnicity (Stewart 2001:492). In English, the word dialect often has a negative connotation associated with unusual or nonstandard types of language. However, dialect simply refers to any variety of any language that is characterized by systematic differences from other varieties of the same language. These varieties can be structural or lexical. Clearly, everyone speaks a dialect of his/her native language (Steward 2001:301). The word dialect is often misused by laypeople to refer strictly to differences in pronunciation, which explains why the majority of the public mistakes AAE for a dialect of SAE. However, the correct term for systematic phonological variation is accent, not dialect. A group of people who speak the same dialect is called a speech community. These communities are also defined in terms of extralinguistic factors, like religion, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity.

One way to distinguish dialects from languages is mutual intelligibility: if those who speak one language variety can understand those who speak another language variety, then the varieties (which differ only systematically) are dialects of the same language. These varieties can be intelligible in either written form, spoken form, or both. For example: In China, Mandarin is spoken in the northern provinces of Kwang Tung, but Cantonese is spoken in the southern province. Even though these languages are not mutually intelligible in the spoken form, they share the same writing system, which makes them mutually intelligible in a different way. However, a complication of this mutual intelligibility theory arises in situations like that of the American Southwest: Papago and Pima are two different Native American languages. Their language varieties are more mutually intelligible in spoken form than Standard American English vs. Standard British English. However, because the two tribes consider themselves politically and culturally dissimilar, they consider their languages to be distinct from each other. Another complication of the mutual intelligibility theory is the dialect continuum. This occurs when, in a large number of contiguous dialects, each dialect is closely related to the next, but the dialects at opposite ends of the scale are mutually unintelligible (Stewart 2001:302). AAE refers to a continuum of varieties whose features can be very similar to or very different from SAE, depending on which end of the continuum one looks at. This is another cause for the general confusion about whether Ebonics is a dialect of English or a dialect of African languages.

As aforementioned, when the Oakland school board made its proposal, it was met with outrage and cynicism for many reasons. Among the most prominent were ill feelings about what people viewed as legitimizing broken-English and adopting certain features of AAE into the standard English language for fear they would penetrate SAE (Stewart 2001:318). Other popular labels awarded to Ebonics at that time were deviant, incorrect, sloppy, and handicapped English (Johnson 2000:115). Whether or not you agree with these assertions likely depends on to which of the two major theories of AAE origination you subscribe.

The first theory of AAE origination is the Dialectologist View. This theory asserts that AAE originated as a southern variety of English, which spread north in the 1920s due to a widespread migration of African Americans from the south to the north. This migration was a result of the decline of the cotton industry and the growing job opportunities in the north. According to this theory, AAE is a dialect of English (Stewart 2001:320). Unfortunately, most white supporters of the Dialectologist View who were unfamiliar with either African languages or Gullah made large generalizations that supported their preconceived notions about black speech habits. For example, in the "American Mercury" in 1924, George Krapp said, "it is reasonably safe to say that not a single detail of Negro pronunciation or Negro syntax can be proved to have other than English origins (Holloway 1990:20).

The second theory of AAE origination is the creolist View. This theory asserts that AAE is derived from West African origins as a result of the slave trade. As slaves were gathered from various parts of Africa, they were placed on ships to America. Often, slaves on these ships were isolated from other speakers of their native languages in order to prevent rebellion or trouble during their travels. Because of this isolation, the slaves were forced to create a pidgin, or system of communication devised for people who have no common language (Stewart 2001:321). When a pidgin becomes the principal language of a speech community, it is called a creole. As a pidgin changes into a creole, the variety expands in complexity and becomes the native language of a second generation of speakers. Like pidgin, creole does not have a written form (Johnson 2000:138). When a creolized variety moves closer to the dominant variety of the superordinate language variety, but still retains some of its previous features, it is called decreolization. Creolists have found features in AAE that are very similar to English-based Creoles of the Caribbean (Johnson 2000:140). The only English-based Creole left in the U.S. is Gullah; many creolists consider Gullah to be in direct relation to the origins of AAE. Today, Gullah is spoken by African Americans living on the sea islands off of the Georgia and South Carolina coasts. Because of the barrier conditions of the island's geography, the language has survived extremely well there (Johnson 2000:135).

Englishization of Ebonics

West African Languages
Niger-Congo

Acquisition of foreign vocabulary
Maintains original morphology, phonology, grammar

More words and some grammar
Pidginization
Maintains original morphology and grammar

Creolization
Maintains morphology

Englishization- Ebonics
Maintains original communication style
Maintains some lexical items
Ability to switch
(Holloway 1990:23)

Despite the discovery that AAE might well be a result of pidgin and, later, Creole among early Africans in America, little investigation of the possibility was ever conducted. "Considered a corruption of English or the babbling of children, the language used by African "Americans was dismissed as unworthy of investigation (Holloway 1990:19)." Fortunately, a 1968 study by Labov, Cohen, Robins, and Lewis proved to be of major importance in altering many traditional views of AAE as an imperfect copy of standard English, flawed by ignorant and careless errors (Goodwin 1990:2:1). Ebonics, editor Joseph E. Holloway agrees, has systematic rules that are very different from English. The grammatical similarities between English and Ebonics that do exist are probably a result of the fact that Ebonics contains structural remnants of certain African languages, even though the vocabulary is overwhelmingly English. Since the language a person speaks is determined by the language to which he/she is exposed, it is sensible that not all African Americans speak AAE, and not only African Americans speak AAE. There are many cases of white southerners who grew up with black nurses who now speak using African tones and pitches. Similarly, many African Americans speak with a precise European intonation pattern because of young exposure to white American speech patterns (Holloway1990: 22). Marjorie Goodwin, who conducted an extensive study of the behavioral speech patterns of a group of Southwest Pennsylvania black children found their Black English Vernacular to be nearly identical to that of black speakers in Harlem (Goodwin1990: 3:1).
Many structural features of AAE distinguish it from SAE. These features include monophthongization (ex: now = [na]), word-final consonant cluster reduction (ex: cold cuts= [khol khΛts]), absence of third singular 's' (ex: He need to get a book from the shelf), multiple negation (ex: I ain't never got no lunch), and habitual 'b' (ex: The coffee always be cold.) (Stewart 2001:323). Furthermore, there are several similarities between the languages of the Niger-Congo (including Bantu) and Ebonics. For instance, both use aspect rather than tense in some verbal constructions:

Present he go
Near past he gone
Remote past he been gone
Future he going to go
Aspect of progress he going
Aspect of completion he done gone
Pasts aspect of repetition he been going (Holloway 1990:24)

Samples of Bantu language origins in Black English

kala-rice cala- Creole rice cakes
mbubu- stupid blundering boo-boo- blunder
nguba- peanut goober- peanut
nyambi- sweet potato yam- sweet potato
tota- to carry, pick up tote- carry, pick up
tshipi- in a short time, just a moment jiffy- in a moment
(Johnson 2000:137)

Another aspect of Ebonics that connects it to West-African Niger-Congo languages is serialization, or strings of short clauses put together without indirect objects, benefactives, or instrumental phrases. Ex: Instead of "He gave me money," one might hear "He take money gave me." Yet another indication that Ebonics is a derivation of African Languages is its tonal semantics. Many African languages are tonal languages, meaning that vocal pitch and intonation can completely change the meaning of a word. A bit of those tonal semantics may have been retained by modern African Americans, as many African Americans still use vocal inflection and voice rhythm in everyday speech. For this reason, many African Americans find the speech of whites to be bland and monotone, and many white find the speech of African Americans to be overly emotional and loud (Johnson 2000: 151).

Clearly, AAE is not a dialect of English, but a derivation of West-African languages. Ebonics is merely the result of African Americans maintaining their fundamental sense of culture, despite the onslaught of European behavior and speech patterns (Holloway 1990: 31). John Baugh, a linguist who studied African American street culture and language, asserts that, even with daily practice to gain proficiency in institutional language, African Americans can never simply "switch codes" and drop their inherent linguistic patterns (Cushman 1998: 123). This is exactly the reason that the Oakland School District had exactly the right idea; educating the educators about AAE is the only way to learn to properly teach its native speakers SAE. Interestingly enough, a certain precedent case that took place in Ann Arbor, Michigan was never acknowledged during the battle with the Oakland school district. In MI, a U.S. District Court judge ordered an Ann Arbor school board to train its teachers in "Black English Vernacular" as a result of a class action lawsuit in which black parents complained about their children's lack of progress in school. This landmark case was conspicuously absent in most accounts of the Oakland case (Johnson 2000: 321).

In conclusion, if the general public was educated about the origins of AAE and basic linguistics, it might become apparent to said public that the Oakland school system took the correct action. AAE is not a dialect of English, but a dialect of an entirely separate language altogether, and should not be judged according to the standards of modern American English.