[Introduction to Language, Society and Culture]

1
[Race, Ethnicity and Community]

Module 007 – Race, Ethnicity, and Community

In this module, it will tackle about race, ethnicity and community.

At the end of this module you are expected to:

1. Distinguished the different views about race
2. Define African American English
3. Classify and explain the different terms that can be associate with African
American English
• “People are people, and what human beings care about primarily is other
people. All the higher primates, actually almost all spend most of the day
interacting with each other.”
• “This is the main human concern, and always will be. Any thinking organism
would care. It is what we do with our brains, mostly.”
• “In particular, ethnicity and race are actually important. Are we truly
committed to the ideal that all people have indistinguishable backgrounds, or
at least so indistinguishable that nobody will care about finding ones with
some particular background? Do we think human affairs so mechanical that
background does not matter?”
• “In further particular, with artists of all kinds. Even with others: Nationality,
ethnicity,religion, place of birth and education, schools attended—all are
important in people's background. All are appropriate categories.”
• “There are irrelevant categories: for most professions, physical appearance is
not important. However, for some it will be performers, models, even
politicians.”
• “Usually this will be inappropriate categories, but not always. Politics also
almost any characteristic is related to what politicians do and how they are
elected.”

Different views about Race

“A sociological view of race”

o “Race is used as a means of determining how a person should be
related to or treated, either on a personal level or under some aspect
of the law.”

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 o “Race is a modern idea; ancient societies did not divide people of
physical features, but by language, wealth, status, religion, or class.”

A biological view of race

“The anatomy of a given racial group is used in comparison with that of other
racial groups to investigate how people adapt to environments.”

It is essentially "value free."

Figure 1.1
Source: http://arnoldzwicky.s3.amazonaws.com/ZitsTolstoy.jpg

“People came from different races that are why people sometimes have
a problem on getting along with each other.”

“Race is a social concept, but biologically unstoppable.”

Definition of Ethnicity
Ethnicity –“shared pattern of characteristics such as cultural heritage, nationality,
race, religion, and language. It is full of bias and discrimination all over the world.”

“Ethnicity and school”

o “Educational segregation is still a reality for children of color in the
United States.”
o “School experiences of students of different ethnic groups differ in
other ways. Schools of students from ethnic minority backgrounds
have fewer resources.”
 [Introduction to Language, Society and Culture]
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[Race, Ethnicity and Community]

Definition of Community
“A community is a small or large social unit (a group of living things) that has
something in common, such as norms, religion, values, or identity.”

Figure 1.2
Source: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/ldc/llog/FrazzPlosive.gif

“The figure shows that in a certain community there might be instances that people might
get along understanding each other because of ineffective communication.”

African American English

• “African – American English (AAE), also known as Black English
in North American linguistics, is the set of English dialects primarily spoken
by most black people in North America. Most commonly, it refers to a dialect
continuum ranging from African-American Vernacular English to a
more Standard English.”
• “African-American English shows variation such as in vernacular versus
standard forms, rural versus urban characteristics, features specific to
singular cities or regions only, and other sociolinguistic criteria. There has
also been a significant body of African-American literature and oral
tradition for centuries.”
• “African-American English began as early as the seventeenth century, when
the Atlantic slave trade brought African slaves into the majority-white
culture of British-colonial North America in an area that became
the Southern United States in the late eighteenth century. During the
development of plantation culture in this region, nonstandard dialects of

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 English were widely spoken by British settlers, as well as likely
some creolized varieties, resulting in second-language English varieties
developed by African Americans.”
• “The nineteenth century's evolving cotton-plantation industry greatly
contributed to spread of some of the first of these varieties as native and
stable forms of English, ancestors of modern African-American Vernacular
English.”

“African American English is one of the social dialects in the society”.

Figure 1.3 Source: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qoSC-

caUk58/URLuGRREbjI/AAAAAAAAGjY/CFBpzsJH6AA/s1600/whoslosing_phonics.jpg

“Phonics, Ebonics and Moronics are not bad English. They just have another
interpretation and use of the different English languages.”

Origins of AAE (African American English)

“Historical discrimination: slavery, segregation, social isolation”

Some Features of AAE (African American English)

o “R-deletion (sore/saw, fort/fought, etc.)”
o “Consonant cluster simplification (past/pass, etc.)”
o “Loss of interdental fricatives (both > bof, etc.)”
o “Double negatives (He don’t know nothing.)”
o “be deletion (He tired.)”
o “Habitual ‘be’ (He be tired.)”
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[Race, Ethnicity and Community]

African American Vernacular English

• “African-American Vernacular (AAVE) is the native variety of the vast
majority of working- and middle-class African Americans, particularly
in urban areas, with its own unique accent, grammar, and vocabulary
features.”

• “Typical features of the grammar include a zero copula (e.g., she my

sister instead of she's my sister), simplification of the possessive form
(e.g., my momma friend instead of my mom's friend), and
complexification of verb aspects and tenses beyond those of other
English dialects (e.g., constructions like I'm a-run, I be running, I been
runnin, I done ran, etc.).”

• “Common features of the phonology include non-rhoticity (dropping

the r sound at the end of syllables), the metathesis of aks instead
of ask, simplification of diphthongs (e.g., eye typically sounds like ah),
a raising chain shift of the front vowels, and a wider range of
intonation or melody patterns than most General American accents.”

• “AAVE is used by middle-class African Americans in casual, intimate,

and informal settings as one end of a sociocultural language
continuum, and AAVE shows some slight variations by region or city.”

African – American Standard English

• “African-American Standard English is the prestigious end of the
middle-class African-American language continuum, used for more
formal, careful, or public settings than AAVE.”
• “This variety exhibits Standard English vocabulary and grammar but
often retains certain elements of the unique AAVE accent, with into
national or rhythmic features maintained more than phonological
ones.”
• “Most middle-class African Americans are typically bi-
dialectal between this standard variety and AAVE, learning the former
variety through schooling, so that adults will frequently even code
switch between the two varieties within a single conversation.”
• “The phonological features maintained in this standard dialect, they
tend to be less marked features that, for instance, even appear in
some white standard dialects of English. One such characteristic is the
omission of the final consonant in word – final clusters, so words such
as past or hand may lose their final consonant sound.”

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African – American Appalachian English
• “The small numbers of black Appalachian Americans have been
reported as increasingly accommodating to the Appalachian/Southern
dialect commonly associated with white Appalachians.”
• “These similarities include an accent that is rhotic, the categorical use
of the grammatical construction he works or she goes Appalachian
vocabulary (such as airish for windy).”
• However, “even African-American English in Appalachia is diverse,
with African-American women linguistically divided along socio
cultural lines: culturally conservative and proper church-goers
tending to use more Appalachian regional features, but porch sitters
affiliated with nationwide black youth culture and music tending to
use more AAVE features.”

African – American Outer Banks English

“African-American English in the North Carolina Outer Banks is rapidly
accommodating to urban AAVE through the recent generations, despite
having aligned with local Outer Banks English for centuries.”

Older African – American English

• “Older or earlier African-American English refers to a set of many
heterogeneous varieties studied and reconstructed by linguists
as theoretically spoken by the first African Americans and African
slaves in the United States.”

• “The primary interest is the direct theoretical predecessor to AAVE.

Mainly four types of sources have been used for the historical
reconstruction of older AAVE: written interviews, ex-slave audio
recordings, the modern diaspora dialects of isolated black
communities, and letters written by eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century African Americans.”

• “The use of the zero copula (the absence of is or are, as in she gonna
leave), nonstandard plural forms (the three man, mans, or even mens)
and multiple negatives (as in no one didn't leave me nothing) were
occasional or common variants in these earlier dialects, and the latter
item even the preferred variant in certain grammatical contexts.”

• “Other nonstandard grammatical constructions associated with AAVE

are documented in older dialects too; however, many of them are not,
evidently being recent innovations of twentieth-century urban AAVE.”
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[Race, Ethnicity and Community]

Definition of Gullah
• “Sea Island Creole English, or Gullah, is the distinct language of
some African Americans along the South Carolina and Georgia coast.”
• “Gullah is an English creole: a natural language grammatically
independent from English that uses mostly English vocabulary.”
• “Most Gullah speakers today probably form a continuum with the
English language. A sub-dialect of Gullah is also spoken in Oklahoma
and Texas, known as Afro-Seminole Creole.”

Figure 1.4
Source: https://www.uni-due.de/SVE/VARS_AfricanAmericanEnglish.htm

“The figure shows about the map of Gullah a dialect from Africa where it started.”

African – American English in Education

o “Nonstandard African-American varieties of English have been
stereotypically associated with a lower level of education and low
social status. Since the sixties, however, linguists have demonstrated
that each of these varieties, and namely African-American Vernacular
English, is a legitimate, rule-governed, and fully developed
dialect.”
o “The techniques used to improve the proficiency of African-American
students learning standard written English have sometimes been
similar to that of teaching a second language. Contrastive analysis is
used for teaching topics in African-American Vernacular English.”
o “Both the phonological and syntactic features of a student's speech
can be analyzed and recorded in order to identify points for contrast
with Standard American English.”

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 o “Another way AAE can be taught is based on a strategy,
communicative flexibility that focuses on language used at home and
analyzes speech during dramatic play.”

o “Using this method, children are taught to recognize when SAE is

being used and in which occasions, rather than conforming to the
speech around them in order to sound correct.”

o “Although the stigmatization of AAE has continued, AAE remains

because it has functioned as a social identity marker for many African-
Americans.”

o “The goal with teaching SAE is not to end its use, but to help students
differentiate between settings where its use is and is not appropriate.”

African American English Vocabulary

• “AAVE does not have a vocabulary separate from other varieties of English.
However, AAVE do use some words, which are not found in other varieties
and furthermore use some English words in ways that differ from the
standard dialects.”
“A number of words used in standard English may also have their origin in
AAVE or at least in the West African languages that contributed to AAVE’s
development.”

• These include:
• “banana (Mandingo)”
• “yam (Mandingo)”
• “okra (Akan)”
• “gumbo (Western Bantu)”

• “A discussion of AAVE vocabulary might proceed by noting

that words can be seen to be composed of a form (a sound
signal) and a meaning. In some cases both the form and
the meaning are taken from West African sources.”

• “In other case the forms is from English but the meaning
appears to be derived from West African sources. Some
cases are ambiguous and seem to involve what the late
Fredric Cassidy called a multiple etymology,the form can
be traced to more than one language –e.g cat.”

Loan Translations
• “Another interesting set of vocabulary items are called
loan translations or calques.”
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[Race, Ethnicity and Community]

• “In such cases a complex idea is some West African

language by a combination of two words.”
• “In AAVE these African words appear to have been directly
translated and the same concept is expressed by the
combination of the equivalent English items.”
o bad – eye
o big – eye
• “Any discussion of AAVE vocabulary must take note of the
many recent innovations which occur in this variety and
which tend to spread rapidly to other varieties of English.
Most recent innovations are not enduring.”
• “These lexical items give regionally and generationally
restricted varieties of AAVE their particular texture.”

African American English Sounds

o “AAVE and standard English pronunciation are sometimes quite different.
People frequently attach significance to such differences in pronunciation or
accent and such as the study of phonology (the systematic a patterning of
sounds in language) is an important part of sociolinguistics.”
o “It should note that phonology has nothing to do with spelling. The way
something is spelt is often not a good indication of the way it should be, or
much less is, pronounced.”

Consonants
Clusters at the ends of words.

• “When two consonants appear at the end of a word (for instance

the st in test), they are often reduced: the final t is deleted. This happens, to
some extent, in every variety of English including standard ones.”
• “In AAVE the consonant cluster is reduced variably (i.e. it does not happen
every time) and systematically.”
• “Sociolinguists have shown that the frequency of reduction can be expressed
by a rule which takes account of a number of interacting facts. Crucially, the
frequency of reduction depends on the environment in which the sound
occurs.”
• “The following two factors, among others, have been found to affect the
frequency of reduction in consonant clusters.”
• “If the next word starts with a consonant, it is more likely to reduce than if
the next word starts with a vowel. For example, reduction is more likely to
occur in west side (becoming wes side) than in west end.”
• “A final t or d is more likely to be deleted if it is not part of the past tense -
ed than if it is. (The past tense -ed suffix is pronounced as t or d or Id in
English depending on the preceding sound.).”
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 • “For example, reduction is more likely to occur in John ran
fast (becoming John ran fas) than in John passed the teacher in his car.”

The th sounds:

• “The written symbol th can represent two different sounds in English: both
an unvoiced sound as in thought, thin and think, and a voiced sound as
in the, they and that.”
• “In AAVE the pronunciation of this sound depends on where in a word it is
found.”
• “At the beginning of a word, the voiced sound (e.g. in that) is regularly
pronounced as d so the, they' and 'that' are pronounced as de, dey and dat.
AAVE shares this feature with many other nonstandard dialects, including
those of the East Coast of United States and Canada.
• Less common in AAVE is the pronunciation of the unvoiced sound as t. Thus
'thin' can become tin but rarely does. This however is a very common feature
of Caribbean creoles in which think is regularly pronounced as tink, etc.
• When the th sound is followed by r, it is possible in AAVE to pronounce
the th as f as in froat for throat.
• Within a word, the unvoiced sound as in nothing, author or ether is often
pronounced as f. Thus AAVE speakers will sometimes say nufn 'nothing'
and ahfuh 'author'. The voiced sound, within a word, may be pronounced v.
So 'brother' becomes bruvah, etc.
• At the end of a word, th is often pronounced f in AAVE. For instance Ruth is
pronounced Ruf; 'south' is pronounced souf. When the preceding sound is a
nasal (e.g. n or m) the th is often pronounced as t as in tent for
tent; mont for month.

The sounds l and r:

• When they do not occur at the beginning of a word l and r often undergo a
process known as vocalization and are pronounced as uh. This is most
apparent in a post-vocalic position (after a vowel). For instance steal, siste,
nickel become steauh, sistuh, nickuh.
• In some varieties of AAVE (e.g. in the Southern US), r is not pronounced after
the vowels o and u. The words door and doe, four and foe,
and sure and show can be pronounced alike.

Vowels

“Nasalized vowels”:

o “When a nasal (n or m) follows a vowel, AAVE speakers sometimes delete the

nasal consonant and nasalize the vowel. This nasalization is written with a
tilde ( ~ ) above the vowel. So 'man' becomes mã.”
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[Race, Ethnicity and Community]

“Nasals consonants and front vowels”:

o “In many varieties of English, including standard varieties, the

vowels i in pin and e in pen sound different in all words. In AAVE, these
sounds are merged before a nasal (like nor m).”
o “So in AAVE pin and pen are pronounced with the same vowel. Most
Southern US varieties of English merge these vowels too, so this is only a
distinctive feature of AAVE in the northern United States.”

Diphthongs:

o “Some vowels like those in night and my or about and cow are called
diphthongs. This means that when the vowel is pronounced, the tongue
starts at one place in the mouth and moves as the vowel is being pronounced.
In AAVE the vowel in night or in my is often not a diphthong.”
o “So when pronouncing the words with this diphthong, AAVE speakers (and
speakers of Southern varieties as well) do not move the tongue to the front
top position. So 'my' is pronounced ma as in he's over at ma sister's
house.”

Stress:

o “AAVE s from some other varieties in the placement of stress in a word. So,
where words like police, hotel and July are pronounced with stress on the
last syllable in standard English, in AAVE they may have stress placed on the
first syllable so that you get po-lice, ho-tel and Ju-ly.”

References and Supplementary Materials

Books and Journals

Wolfram, Walt, and Erik R. Thomas. 2002. The development of African American
English. Malden, MA, and Oxford, UK: Blackwell

Green, Lisa. 2002. African American English: A linguistic introduction. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Rickford, John R. , and Russell J. Rickford. 2000. Spoken Soul: The story of Black
English. New York: John Wiley

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Online Supplementary Reading Materials
Teaching about race and ethnicity: A message of despair, or a message of hope?;
http://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/savvy/images/members/docs/pdf/teac
hing/REIntro.pdf; Date of access: NA

Online Instructional Videos

The Linguistic of AAVE; This video is all about the study of the African – American
Language; https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pkzVOXKXFQk; Aug. 12, 2015

Demographic structure of society – are and ethnicity; Race and ethnicity are socially
defined categories that have an impact on cultural and social interactions;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WIiConeatM; April 26, 2014