Ebonics
LEARN ABOUT LITERACY AND THE DIALECT SPEAKER
ARTICLES
AAVE, Ebonics, African American Black Venacular, Dialect, Creole, Patois, Linguistics
Rosina Lippi-Green ~ "English With an Accent" testifies to the salience of ethnic differences in American life. To quote her, "The Real Trouble with Black English is that "AAVE is tangible and irrefutable evidence that there is a distinct, healthy, functioning African American culture which is not white, and which does not want to be white."
Justice Department Seeks Ebonics Experts - The translators, being hired in the agency's Southeast Region — which includes Atlanta, Georgia; Washington; New Orleans, Louisiana; Miami, Florida; and the Caribbean — would listen to wiretaps, translate what was said and be able to testify in court if necessary, DEA wants Black English linguists to decipher bugged calls. Ebonics is among the 114 languages--categorized as either “common” or “exotic”— for which the DEA's Regional Linguist Services is presently seeking contract translators. John Rickford, a Stanford University linguistics professor. "And it's not — it's a big vocabulary. You'll have some significant differences" from English. 2010
John R. Rickford is the Martin Luther King Centennial Professor of Linguistics and
African and Afro-American Studies at Stanford University. Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English by
John R. Rickford, Russell J. Rickford
American Book Award for 2000 from the Before Columbus Foundation.
"That mainstream English is essential to our
self-preservation is indisputable . . . but it is not necessary to abandon Spoken Soul to master Standard
English, any more than it is necessary to abandon English to learn French or to deprecate jazz to
appreciate
classical music."
What is claimed to be the initial mention of "Ebonics" was made by the psychologist [1] Robert Williams in a discussion with linguist Ernie Smith (as well as other language scholars and researchers) that took place in a conference on "Cognitive and Language Development of the Black Child", held in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1973.[2][3] In 1975, the term appeared within the title and text of a book edited and co-written by Williams, Ebonics: The True Language of Black Folks. Williams there explains it: A two-year-old term created by a group of black scholars, Ebonics may be defined as "the linguistic and paralinguistic features which on a concentric continuum represent the communicative competence of the West African, Caribbean, and United States slave descendant of African origin. It includes the various idioms, patois, argots, idiolects, and social dialects of black people" especially those who have adapted to colonial circumstances. Ebonics derives its form from ebony (black) and phonics (sound, the study of sound) and refers to the study of the language of black people in all its cultural uniqueness.[4] ~ Dr. Tempii Champion
Compiled Bibliography for nonstandard English Speakers - PDF
About American English Creole Dialect Speakers and Examples of Creole Literature
Full Text - California Board of Education passed an Ebonics Resolution 12/18/96
- Ebonics Discussion Links: Linganth List Archives from 1997
- BLACK ENGLISH--All Things Considered, December 20, 1996:
- EBONICS--Talk of the Nation, December 26, 1996
- ELAINE KORRY REPORTS THAT THE REVEREND JESSE JACKSON HAS REVERSED HIS STACE--Morning Edition, December 31, 1996:
- ELAINE KORRY REPORTS FROM OAKLAND Morning Edition, January 16, 1997:
- BROOKE GLADSTONE REPORTS ON HOW THE NEWS MEDIA HAS COVERED -- Morning Edition, January 20, 1997:
- EBONICS--Talk of the Nation, January 21, 1997:
- NEW PLAN FOR "EBONICS"--Morning Edition, May 7, 1997:
- Linguist John McWhorter--Fresh Air,March 11, 2002
- Charles Barron
[...Many linguist trace "Ebonics" back to about 1619. When a Dutch vessel landed with a cargo of twenty Africans in Jamestown Virginia. The slave master forced the Africans, who spoke different West African languages i.e., (Ibo, Yoruba, Hausa) to learn English in order to communicate with the master. The Africans merely substituted English vocabulary for African vocalublary, but maintained the West African phonics, grammar and sentence structure, i.e., ...] - Black English Copula by David Sutcliffe
- Stigmatized and Standardized Varieties in the Classroom: Interference or Separation? PDF by Jeff Siegel
- Pan-African Language
Patterns Revisited
Editorial: Pan-African Language Patterns Revisited by Dr. Gloria Emeagwali, Chief Editor
Dr. Katherine Harris, Central Connecticut State University African Languages and Ebonics - Houston Independent School District (HISD) police officer circulated the Ghetto Handbook: Ebonics 101which was filled with racist stereotypes, in 2007
- Lost in Translation New cognitive research suggests that language profoundly influences the way people see the world; a different sense of blame in Japanese and Spanish
Ebonics Suggested For District
Incorporating Ebonics into a new school policy that targets black students, the lowest-achieving group in
the
San Bernardino City Unified School District, may provide students a more well-rounded curriculum, said a
local
sociologist.
The goal of the district's policy is to improve black students' academic performance by keeping them
interested in school. Compared with other racial groups in the district, black students go to college the
least and have the most dropouts and suspensions. Blacks make up the second largest racial group in the
district, trailing Latinos. A pilot of the policy, known as the Students Accumulating New Knowledge
Optimizing Future Accomplishment Initiative, has been implemented at two city schools.
Mary Texeira, a sociology professor at Cal State San Bernardino, commended the San Bernardino Board of
Education for approving the policy in June.
Texeira suggested that including Ebonics in the program would be beneficial for students. Ebonics, a dialect
of American English that is spoken by many blacks throughout the country, was recognized as a separate
language in 1996 by the Oakland school board.
"Ebonics is a different language, it's not slang as many believe,' Texeira said. "For many
of these students Ebonics is their language, and it should be considered a foreign language. These students
should be taught like other students who speak a foreign language.' Texeira said research has shown that
students learn better when they fully comprehend the language they are being taught in. "There are
African Americans who do not agree with me. They say that (black students) are lazy and that they need to
learn to talk,' Texeira said.
Len Cooper, who is coordinating the pilot program at the two city schools, said San Bernardino district
officials do not plan to incorporate Ebonics into the program.
"Because Ebonics can have a negative stigma, we're not focusing on that,' Cooper said. "We
are affirming and recognizing Ebonics through supplemental reading books (for students).'
Beginning in the 2005-06 school year, teachers will receive training on black culture and customs. District
curriculum will now include information on the historical, cultural and social impact of blacks in society.
Although the program is aimed at black students, other students can choose to participate.
The pilot program at Rio Vista Elementary and King Middle schools focuses on second-, fourth- and
seventh-grade classes. District officials hope to train teachers from other schools using the
program as a model. Board member Danny Tillman, who pushed for the policy, said that full implementation of
the program at all schools may take years, but the pilot program is a beginning."At every step we will
see positive results,' Tillman said.Tillman hoped the new policy would increase the number of black
students going to college and participating in advanced courses. Teresa Parra, board vice president, said
she
worried the new program would have an adverse effect. "I'm afraid that now that we have this the
Hispanic community, our largest population, will say, 'We want something for us.' Next we'll
have
the Asian community and the Jewish community (asking for their own programs). When will it end?' Parra
said the district should focus on helping all students who are at risk. "I've always thought that
we
should provide students support based on their needs and not on their race,' Parra said. Tillman
disagreed
with Parra, saying programs that help Latinos already exist in the district. He cited the district's
English- as-a-second-language program. Texeira urged people not be quick to judge the new program as
socially
exclusive. She said people need to be open to the program.
"Everybody has prejudices, but we must all learn to control that behavior,' Texeira said. She said
a
child's self confidence is tied to his or her cultural identity. She compared the low performance of
black
students to starvation. "How can you be angry when you feed a family of starving children?' Ratibu
Jacocks, a member of the Westside Action Group, a coalition of black activists, said they are working with
the
district to ensure the policy is
implemented appropriately. "This isn't a feel-good policy. This is the real thing,' Jacocks
said.
Jacocks said he didn't believe the new policy would create animosity. He said he welcomed the idea of
other ethnic groups pushing for their own programs.
"When you are doing what's right, others will follow,' Jacocks said. "We have led the way
before the civil-rights movement opened the door for women's rights and other movements.'
DIALECT SPEAKER RESOURCES
The Dialectizer takes text or other web pages and instantly creates parodies of them! Try it out by selecting a dialect, then entering a URL or English text below. This is only kidding - a joke.
Ebonics ERIC/CLL Minibib, December 1998North American Venacular English Links to AAVE material
African American Vernacular English
Taken from Sutcliffe 1998 African American Vernacular English: Origins and
Issues (pages 68-95 slightly abridged). Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Reading, England.
The Voices of Living History: A review of accounts given by 12 former slaves and one white woman - of the
antebellum plantations, the Civil War and the post-war period.
The
Narratives Southern blacks were interviews about their experiences in slavery for the WPA slave
narrative project, online anthology are transcribed verbatim from the interview transcripts
collected by writers of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the late 1930s. The narratives can be
quite
challenging to read. The dialect can be difficult to understand; the interviewers usually made an effort to
transcribe what they heard the narrators saying, but there is little consistency from interview to
interview.
The interviewers were assigned to ask a series of questions about labor, diet, marriage, punishment, and
relations with masters. Some interviewers followed this list of questions more faithfully than others. Most
of
those interviewed were in their eighties and nineties; their recollection of childhood is often remarkably
detailed, but readers will detect the difficulty of remembering exact chronologies over a period of seventy
or
eighty years.
Index of Narratives These narratives
were
conducted years ago in the Jim Crow South; just as these former slaves had survived into the twentieth
century, so had the ideology of white supremacy that underpinned the slave society of the American South.