The Evolution, Features, and Social Impact of African American English

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of African American English (AAE), tracing its origins from the 17th century slave trade to its modern usage. It explores the linguistic rules and variations within AAE, comparing it to Standard American English and highlighting unique features such as verb phrase construction, Slavic language influences, and the elimination of redundancy. The essay also addresses criticisms of AAE, particularly regarding its perceived low standard and the influence of Standard English vocabulary. It further discusses the social and cultural significance of AAE, emphasizing its role in cultural affiliation, self-expression, and advocacy, particularly within music and literature. The essay concludes by advocating for an unbiased understanding of AAE, recognizing its rich history and linguistic strengths, and promoting its study as a valuable component of linguistic diversity. Desklib provides further resources and solved assignments for students.

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African American English
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Date: 11th December 2018

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African American English
African American English began in the 17th century before industrialization when men were the
main source of labour, the demand of human labour in the west countries contributed to the rise
of slave trade. British had already settled and settled in North America and there was huge
economical upsurge which led to rise of plantations that required human labour as machinery
was not yet available (Eckert, 2000). Africa being the cheapest source of human labour, there
was mass slave trade and since English was spoken mainly by the British settlers, it resulted in
transformation among the black people which contorted it to their own form rising to different
dialects. One of the most widespread and popular dialect was known as African American
English which is also known Black English in parts of Northern America. The18th and 19th
centuries show massive human trafficking of African into the American soils, most of the
African slaves who mostly originated from Central and West African countries were transported
to North America. It was hard for the master to communicate to his servant because they did not
share a common language, for the two to effectively communicate they had to combine their two
languages and developed phrases which could be understood to both parties, this saw the growth
of African American English (Blodgett, & O'Connor, 2017).
According to (Chang & Leong, 2017), every language, or a dialect, there rules. In African
American English, which is largely identifiable with Black Americans, which has been cultivated
since early years, there are set rules many them are adopted from features of the language. And
like any other language, all these variations arise from regional zones or ethnological point of
view.

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First, verbs have two basic modes. The first mode (subject) or aspect was borrowed from the
European settlers who had settled in North America: the second is the verb phrase mostly
originated from the mix of the American native language mix with the African languages as they
tried to express the action. According to Craig & Washington, (2004), the verb phrase refers to
the how things or activities are being carried out.
According to (Craig, et al 2004), the two languages have clear distinctions in their wording but a
have comparatively similar meaning which make it possible for the two different races to
understand the new language as it mostly employ the same subject and object formation and
have a slight deviation in the action or verb phrase. The American English employs Standard
English, for instance i.e. He is in his office every morning, while the African American English
is majorly characterized by use of relaxed form action phrase: He does be in his office in the
morning, (Blodgett, et al 2017), despite the two sentence having a different word composition of
the sentence in the two languages the subject of and objects in the do not change which make it
possible for it to convey the intended message.
The two languages further greatly varies in their application of the Slavic languages: African
Unlike other English languages, American English greatly vary in how it phrases its simple
complete sentences an example off such can be seen in the following two examples (She done
come = she have come) and (we been sing = we had sang b). Some other specification including
the Irish English also applies similar Slavic languages, however, the African American English
does not apply that kind of language (Trudgill & Hannah, 2017).
Further the African American English employs the rule of elimination of redundancy which
makes it superior over other forms of languages. One of the strongest example of this can be

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found in how verbs are arranged the African American English. For example the -s ending of the
third person singular in the past sentence is eliminated, e.g. while some languages use he likes as
a third singular verb, African American English eliminates the “s” and use he like. The English
further squashes the past tense of regular verbs the -ed ending; i.e in come or gone the context
eliminates any form of confusion that would arise as a result of using the -ed (McArthur, Lam-
McArthur, Fontaine, 2018).
The next rule of African American English is the common negation. Negation can be defined as
the use of two (or more) negative phrases which grammatically agree to emphasis a negation,
e.g. He don’t know nothing, (Fu, Zimet, Latkin & Joseph, 2017).
However despite the grammatical strength of the African American English shown above some
scholars often feel that African American English language is of low standard they give the
following as their supporting reason for their claim.
According to (Fu, et al, 2017), African American English disowns its origin in different ways. In
some way the English tend to develop grammar to the analytic use of one word to assume a
complete sentence. According to grammar experts, the following principle should be applied to
all pidgins (each sentence should not be a single word but a combination of basic lexeme +
inflectional ending).
According to (Blodgett, et al 2017), vocabulary of the language is the other challenge facing
proper formulation of the African American English. The language has borrowed many
expressions from the Standard English. E.g. jazz swing, cool, right on, up tight, among others.
From the above illustration it can be concluded that, African American English language
borrows its lexis from Standard English.

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Poplack, (2000), says that African American English carries different multiple African
languages. This arose from many people held together in same place without any common
language. Hence the evolution of the language over time with some pronunciation being
inherited from native languages and this has led to standardization of the language in modern
day. But we can’t fail to rule out criticism of the language across the globe as people argue that
speaking African American English limits one’s mental and social capacities(Green, 2017).
Those criticizing the language believe it is inferior and it should be eradicated. This is
inappropriate considering the uniqueness the rich history of this great language development.
The criticizers language is never “too good” for them to term another language as being “too
bad” as it also have shortcomings which needs to be worked on and be improved. Actually that
kind of criticism is not based on the actual language but biased against the evaluation of the
language (Wyatt, 1995).
Furthermore, the Standard American English is also influenced by the dialects various foreign
developed English including the African American English makes the language more superior by
creating its unique sense of identity. Scholars who have basic understanding of the rich history
and linguistic strengths surrounding the African American English, believes the rich language is
simply negatively undermined under the racism biasness grounds associated with its origin
(Poplack, 2001).
According to (Rickford, 1999), the view that the language portrays a negative personality
characteristics is another reason why the language faces criticism as a legitimate standard
language. The stereotypic approach of black people being inferior, stupid, greedy, violent,

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disrespectful and power hungry as portrayed in the media had always been set as limiting factor
to gaining mileage on the language recognition.
One the greatest contribution of the African American English is that it have introduced new
expressions and phrases which new speakers can easily learn and switch across their original
language. The simplicity in switching into different languages makes it to be easily adopted
among other speakers outside North America with easy. The easy in understanding and
comprehending makes it achieve the primary objective of any language which is passing
information from one person to the other for effective response and feedback (Wyatt, 1995).
In addition, the African American English today continues to be a strong tool for cultural
affiliation as it is identified with the African American slaves and their masters, it is further used
as a tool for effective self-expression and communication among its users. This class of English
has been widely used in both formal and inform context in writing, literature, art and media, to
convey the intended message to the target audience Hip hop music genre, for instance, greatly
borrow from the African American Language and has been successfully used in advocating for
equal rights by criticizing racial discrimination, political and social injustice race, and advocating
for general equality in human rights just as the slaves used the language to demand for their
rights from their masters (Fu, et al 2017).
In the academic arena, we cannot ignore the fact that African American students make critical
and conscious key decisions and excellent approaches even explaining many of those decisions
in the text of their compositions and this provides considerable evidence of successful rhetorical
awareness associated with different writing situations (Eckert, 2000). According to considerable
evidence from composition scholars students who seek to advance in understanding any given

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language should primarily focus on understanding its linguistic formulation and its origin and not
be biased against the racial origin or composition of those who speak the intended language, this
will enable them to make conscious decisions about the language under study in detailed spoken
contexts and writing skills (Wisker, 2017).
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