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English Composition II

22 June 2023

A Deep Dive into AAVE: The History and Nuance Behind a Scorned Tongue

Introduction

African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a dialect utilized by a substantial

percentage of the Black community in the United States. Separate from Standard American

English (SAE), the dialect is “systematic and rule-governed in its [own distinct] syntax

(grammar), phonology (sound system), and semantics (system of meaning),” and as a result,

“most researchers consider [it] to be a full-fledged linguistic system” (Koch et. al 30). Some

notable syntactic and phonetic rules within the dialect include the habitual-be (for example, one

might say “She be doin’ that all the time” instead of saying “She does that all the time”), and the

use of the “d” sound in place of the “th” sound (for example one may say “I did dat” instead of

saying “I did that”). AAVE also has its own set of unique lexes, such as the words “finna”, which

is an abbreviation of the words “fixing to” (“I’m finna head to the store” means “I’m fixing to go

to the store” or “I plan to go to the store”) and “cap”, which means “to lie” (“She was cappin’

about seeing that guy” means “She was lying about seeing that guy”). Much of the linguistic

elements that distinguish AAVE from SAE come from the various West African languages

spoken by the African slaves who would become the originators of the dialect.

Although those elements would foster the growth of a new community formed by the

shared trauma and history of said African slaves, they would also prove to be some of the biggest

targets that White Americans have continually used to maintain their status over Black

Americans in America’s social hierarchy. Over the years, Black Americans realized that leaving
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behind those cultural markers present in their language was necessary for societal prestige and

advancement, and as such, they began code-switching, shifting their use of AAVE to SAE in

conversation with non-Black individuals, in order to climb the social ladder. Though this practice

allows many Black individuals to distance themselves from the negative attitudes associated with

the dialect, ultimately, building respect for AAVE would provide greater benefits for the Black

community in America, as AAVE connects Black individuals to their community, culture, and

identity, its stigmatization comes from a place of racism and continues to push racial

discrimination in the United States, and the lasting effects of racism and linguistic bias present in

its stigmatization have harmful effects on the mental health of Black individuals in the United

States today.

Origins of AAVE

When we look at AAVE, other dialects and creoles common amongst English-speaking

Black individuals in the Western world such as Caribbean English, and Jamaican Patois, and

many West African languages, we see that the language structures present in these languages and

dialects are incredibly similar (O’Quinn 4:18 – 4:26). This is because, as mentioned before,

AAVE and said other dialects and creoles share similar roots: the various languages spoken by

West African slaves and, of course, SAE. The birth of AAVE, in particular, came about when

“[African slaves] took what they knew about language [and] superimposed it onto Southern

American English” (O’Quinn 4:40 – 4:51).

There is still an ongoing debate about the interactions between African language

structures and SAE language structures that led to the creation of AAVE, however. Linguists,
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although they understand that continuation and evolution happened between the aforementioned

language systems, still theorize about the exact method of progression from West African

languages and SAE to AAVE. As such, a few prominent theories detailing the origins and

historical development of the dialect have emerged: the Creolist theory, the Transformationalist

theory, and the Ethnolinguistic theory (Smith 49).

The Creolist theory asserts that since there are observable similarities between the

features of African languages and dialects within West Africa, the Caribbean, and the

United States, one can deduce a genetic kinship and linguistic continuity between the

dialects due to the union of English and African languages. Conversely,

Transformationalists argue that the deep structure, which is the structure that dictates how

abstract concepts interact with one another in language, in SAE and AAVE are essentially

the same; only the surface structure, which is the external structure of a phrase or

sentence, changes between the two dialects. The Ethnolinguistic theory, then, similarly to

the Creolist theory, emphasizes the continuity between African American, Caribbean, and

West African English. In contrast to the Creolist theory, however, it asserts that there has

not been a discontinuity within the deep structures of African languages and modern

AAVE (Smith 50 – 52).

Culture was amongst the most integral belongings taken from African slaves once they

were trafficked to the Americas. By forcefully stripping one of their identity, you make them

malleable, that is, you gain the power to force them into any position in society you deem most

beneficial. Though seemingly inadvertent, the imposition of African grammatical rules and

structures upon AAVE allowed African slaves to hold onto a sliver of the various cultures and
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identities they possessed before being taken to America. The continued use of AAVE, then,

preserves those identities and deserves to be appreciated for the cultural significance it holds.

Community

As mentioned before, the process of trafficking African slaves to the Western world

stripped them of the various cultural identities they previously held back in Africa. The creation

of AAVE not only allowed Black individuals in America to hold onto small portions of the

cultures stripped from them upon being taken to the Western World, it allowed for the growth of

a new community of individuals who faced similar traumas and struggles to one another.

Elizabeth Peterson, in “Making Sense of ‘Bad English’: An Introduction to Language Attitudes

and Ideologies”, notes that “for speakers of so-called ‘small’ or ‘minority’ languages, the

language is often the single most enduring symbol of their uniqueness and the bond within the

community” (63). We see this bond within the community put into action by the linguistic

practices within AAVE passed down from one generation to the next.

One such linguistic practice is the use of signifyin’, which is “a catch-all term for various

Black American oral traditions such as woofing, marking, playing the dozens, sounding, loud

talking, and others” (Florini para. 12). These practices are notable for their utilization of

wordplay, misdirection, and multiple levels of meaning, which allowed Black Americans to

encode messages and foster resistance and solidarity within a highly oppressive environment

(para. 4, 13). In creating practices such as these and passing them down from one generation to

the next, Black Americans have effectively created an encoded tongue, much like pig Latin used

by schoolkids on the playground, that draws upon the cultural knowledge and context the

speaker is expected to know to participate fully in the practice. By signifyin’, a Black individual
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discreetly announces that they are privy to the knowledge and experiences necessary for them to

be part of the in-group.

Speaking of which, the continued use of dialects and linguistic variants such as AAVE not

only act as signifiers of one’s position within a certain group, they also create notions of prestige

and status within said group. Covert prestige, which “[refers] to local or in-group prestige, rather

than prestige which is widespread, or the ‘norm’ across a population at large” (Peterson 71), is

widely sought after within marginalized groups such as Black communities within America.

Utilizing a dialect common amongst a specific in-group but separate from the wider society at

large affirms one’s affiliation to that group, not only providing the individual a sense of

belonging, but indicating to others that said individual is one of them.

In this regard, Black individuals are not the only ones who utilize AAVE to signify their

affiliation with one another, non-Black individuals also make use of the dialect in order to unify

themselves with the in-group formed by Black Americans. Camille Byrd O’Quin, in her Ted Talk

“The Impact of Linguistic Bias in Education” notes that “not all AAVE speakers are Black and

not all Black people speak AAVE… you talk like who [you are] around” (5:28 – 5:51). Many

non-Black individuals who were raised in predominantly Black neighborhoods and went to

predominantly Black schools end up employing AAVE in their speech because the dialect was

taught to them by those around them and acts as a signifier of some of the experiences that they

share with their Black counterparts within said community. Non-Black speakers, however, are

able to completely distance themselves from the negative connotations that come with Blackness

and the use of AAVE by ceasing their use of the dialect which is so intrinsically tied to Blackness

as a race.

Oppression
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As noted previously, AAVE has a large number of negative connotations tied to it.

Though they may not be negative for other languages, most if not all languages also have

associations intrinsically attached to them.

In the 1950s, Canadian linguist Wallace Lambert and his associates studied the effects of

these associations by creating the matched guise test, which deduced “feelings or

attitudes about certain speech or language styles by asking listeners to evaluate a

speaker’s personal traits based on the way they talk.” At the time (Quebec in the 1950s

and 60s), French speakers were marginalized whilst English speakers attained social

prestige, and the results of the experiment portrayed those sentiments, with English

speakers viewed as being “taller, more attractive, more intelligent, more dependable, and

more ambitious, among other qualities” (Peterson 46).

Due to its ties with Blackness as a race, AAVE has a plethora of negative views and

connotations thrust upon it. It has “customarily been viewed by the dominant culture as an

inferior language, with [AAVE] speakers being regarded as ignorant or lazy” (Koch et. al 30 –

31). Coupling that idea with the fact that “listeners are much more likely to tune into a person’s

ethnicity than they are to a person’s home region” meaning that “people who speak a perceived

non-White variety of English are much more likely to be judged negatively than someone who

has a discernible US Southern or New York accent” (Peterson 48), we see clearly how the

continued linguistic discrimination shown towards AAVE originates from a place of racism and

continues to uphold the racist ideologies tied to said discrimination’s creation. As stated by Sara

Trechter and Mary Bucholtz in “White Noise: Bringing Language into Whiteness Studies”, “it is

in its unmarked status that the power of whiteness lies” (5). By making Whiteness the standard in
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language, it becomes much easier to pinpoint and subsequently discriminate against anyone who

falls outside that category.

The process by which linguistic discrimination like what we see with AAVE occurs is

slow and methodological. Peterson, in “Making Sense of ‘Bad English’: An Introduction to

Language Attitudes and Ideologies”, also illustrates this process, stating that:

First, a community of individuals produces a standardized language which is based on

written form and relates to the notion of a nation state. That language then becomes tied

to status and prestige, with ideologies emerging about who uses the standardized

language and why its use is so important. Those ideologies are not only applied to the

language in written form, but also in spoken form as well. Negative perceptions about

people who fall short of the set standard for language begin to emerge, as them not using

the set standard is seen as a conscious choice in need of correction. This shifts the

language from property used by the whole community to something reserved for the elite

of the community. Once this happens, misusers of the language are shut out from “social

and public functions” and linguistic discrimination takes hold. Because the elite view

their way of using language as the only right way of using language, this discrimination is

overlooked (49).

A notable feature of the creation of linguistic discrimination is the isolation of those who

“misuse” the language within the community. Because of this isolation, not only are those who

are discriminated against unable to defend the use of their variety of language, they are unable to

learn the accepted variety of language spoken by the elite group, and thus they remain shut out

alongside their denounced tongue.

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Shawn Smith, in his article “African American Ebonics: Discourse & Discursive Practice

—A Chicago Case Study of Historical Oppression” makes special note of the effects of isolation

on language as well as its users by homing in on the experiences of Black individuals within

Chicago, Illinois, a Northern city known for the inequality running rampant within it. He

recounts how racial relations and tensions shifted and worsened over the course of the several

waves of the Great Migration, not only between White and Black people, but between Black

people and one another.

The first wave, which lasted from 1910 to 1940 saw White and Black individuals get

along reasonably well despite the ongoing discrimination present. The latter waves,

however, which spanned from 1940 to 1970 saw many more Black individuals from the

rural South migrate to the North. Not only were Northern White individuals offput by the

influx of “these new ‘lazy,’ ‘ignorant,’ and ‘volatile’” Black individuals, Northern Black

individuals were weary of how these new Black migrants would affect how Northern

Whites viewed them as well. As such, segregation emerged between Northern and

Southern Black individuals in this and other Northern cities. Eventually, after WWII,

when suburban housing became widely accessible to middle class Whites, White people

in the city fled to these newly built suburbs, prompting taxing revenues to go towards the

suburban communities, thus leaving urban communities and schools with little funding

(para. 6 – 7).

This segregation had a notable impact on the language used by the Black individuals

situated in the urban parts of Chicago. Because of the fact that Black and White individuals were

unable to interact, AAVE used in the lower income portions of Chicago became stagnant and was

ingrained into the communication of the Black individuals within those communities. The
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isolation created by linguistic and racial discrimination creates an almost cyclical system wherein

Black individuals remain oppressed for their usage of AAVE, which then denies them the

opportunity to fully learn SAE, thus keeping them marginalized and locked out of the social

conventions and communities that teach them how to utilize SAE. Once we start accepting the

differences present in AAVE instead of criticizing them for working outside of SAE language

conventions, then we can begin to break that cycle of racial discrimination and open up the doors

of opportunity for many marginalized Black individuals in America.

Code-Switching and Mental Health

Within our current cyclical situation, however, Black individuals who gain access to SAE

also gain access to a crucial tool necessary to climb the social ladder in the United States, that

being code-switching. Code-switching is defined as “the ability to switch between languages in a

single conversation” (Click on Detroit 0:00 – 0:04). As it relates to Black individuals within the

United States, however, code-switching not only denotes the changes in language, but also

changes in markers such as tone, pitch, clothing choices and physical communication. By

switching between AAVE in the company of other AAVE users and SAE in the company of non-

AAVE users, Black individuals are essentially able to reap the in-group benefits of speaking

AAVE whilst not receiving as much of the stigma pushed onto the community by the out-group.

As mentioned prior, however, with the ongoing isolation faced by many Black

individuals because of their use of AAVE, it becomes exceedingly difficult for those raised in

communities that primarily speak AAVE to acquire the skill. Even in cases where SAE is

accessible to Black individuals, the mere use of AAVE in the home can be seen as a detriment.

For example, in her Ted Talk, O’Quin also notes that “Black students in America are two and a

half times more likely to receive special education services, mostly for learning disabilities…,
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speech-language services or behavioral disorders” (3:09 – 3:24). Much of what we learn about

language is taught in infancy and early childhood, with “Psycholinguists and language

acquisition experts [establishing] that the basic linguistic syntax of human language is acquired

by children before age three” (53). In classifying children who have learned AAVE from the

home as “disordered” as O’Quin puts it, it becomes clear that many of the proponents of SAE

hope to cut off the use of AAVE in the public sector completely.

Those attitudes towards the dialect make it all the more difficult for those who are unable

to code switch to SAE, such as Rachel Jeantel.

In the 2013 court case State of Florida v. Zimmerman, Florida resident George

Zimmerman was arrested for the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Martin’s friend,

and later key witness Rachel Jeantel was on phone call with him as the boy was pursued

by Zimmerman. Her testimony, though crucial in the court hearing, was ultimately used

against Martin’s case, as her inability to switch from AAVE to SAE turned her into an

unreliable witness. Zimmerman was found not guilty of second-degree murder and later

sold the gun he used to kill Trayvon Martin for $250,000 (Peterson 54 – 55).

In the words of therapist Jelan Agnew, “code-switching is a means of survival. It literally

means getting and keeping the job” (5:22 – 5:28). For many Black individuals in the United

States, “keeping the job” not only refers to the literal maintenance of one’s livelihood, it means

achieving justice, receiving fair treatment, and in extreme cases, keeping one’s very life. Agnew

also notes that “Black people live [their] entire lives in survival mode” (4:04 – 4:09), even

though the body is not meant to be in survival mode long term.

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The continuous stress that Black people find themselves under to conform to the ideals of

the White elite creates exhaustion within many who code-switch regularly. Assistant Psychology

Professor Myles Durkee mentions in “How code-switching impacts the Black community” that

“those who tend to code-switch more frequently also report significantly more workplace fatigue

and burnout from their current positions simply because they have to be a different person and

mask all the cultural assets that they probably value and appreciate internally” (2:27 – 2:41). And

even despite all of the effort and fatigue Black individuals face when consistently code-

switching, in many instances they still face racist remarks and treatment. By tackling the

stigmatization users of AAVE face, not only can we help alleviate the stress felt by Black

individuals in the professional sphere, we can also provide more opportunity for Black

individuals to rise the ranks in the corporate world and change the climate of racism faced by

many in these sectors.

As mentioned before, however, Black individuals are not the only ones who use AAVE.

When AAVE speaking non-Black individuals code-switch from AAVE to SAE, oftentimes they

do not have to confront the racism associated with the dialect and Blackness as a whole. This is

not to say that the same mental toll does not affect non-Black individuals in all cases. In

instances where non-Black individuals raised in predominantly Black neighborhoods utilize

code-switching to distance themselves from AAVE, they may feel as though they are discarding

culturally significant aspects of themselves when code-switching, however, with the rising

popularity of AAVE and other hallmarks of African American culture in media and advertising,

many non-Black individuals code-switch into using AAVE to attain covert prestige then back out

of the dialect when it no longer benefits them. In doing so, oftentimes, non-Black individuals

also lean into the connotations associated with AAVE and those who use it. As stated by Patrick
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Marché in “The misappropriation of African-American English in advertising”, “appreciation

and celebration of ‘cool black people’ still relies on stereotypes, even if benevolent” (para. 5).

Non-Black individuals utilizing AAVE should be mindful of how they are using the dialect, not

only because of the cultural significance intrinsically tied to the dialect, but also because of the

stereotypes perpetuated by its misuse.

Conclusion

AAVE is a dialect rich with historical, cultural, and political significance. From its

emergence, its presence assisted in the birth of a community created through shared trauma and

its continued use upholds the legacy of those marginalized by the institutions upheld in America.

Its stigmatization, then, not only acts as a slap in the face to said legacy, but also upholds the

systems that continue to keep those disadvantaged communities marginalized. The stigmatization

faced by AAVE is rooted not only in linguistic discrimination, but also in the racist systems still

serving a White elite in America. As a result, it is extremely difficult to dismantle those systems,

especially in times like the present, wherein lawmakers hope to push legislation that restricts the

open discussion of topics of race in the academic sphere. Once we start actively listening to

Black and other POC voices, regardless of how the outward structure of said voices appear, then

we can begin to even the playing field and work towards equal opportunity for all in America.

(3494 words)
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Works Cited

Agnew, Jelan. “Black Folk Mental Health: Generational Trauma, Traditions & Truth.” YouTube,

uploaded by TEDx Talks, 17 December 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=B1Bn9OWDqF0.

Byrd O’Quinn, Camille. “The Impact of Linguistic Bias in Education.” YouTube, uploaded by

TEDx Talks, 16 April 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrTFJ5NlM1g&t=292s.

Click on Detroit. “How code-switching impacts the Black community.” YouTube, uploaded by

Click on Detroit | Local 4 | WDIV, 24 February 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=ptn5hxOkZlw.

Florini, Sarah. “Tweets, Tweeps, and Signifyin’.” Television & New Media, vol. 15, no. 3,

2013, pp. 223–237, https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476413480247.

Koch, Lisa M., et al. “Attitudes toward Black English and Code Switching.” Journal of Black

Psychology, vol. 27, no. 1, 2001, pp. 29–42,

https://doi.org/10.1177/0095798401027001002.

Marché, Patrick. “The Misappropriation of African-American English in Advertising.” Medium,

25 June 2020, https://medium.com/@patmarche2/the-misappropriation-of-african-

american-english-in-advertising-3e256cef5d13.

Peterson, Elizabeth. Making Sense of “Bad English” An Introduction to Language Attitudes and

Ideologies. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, New York, NY, 2020, pp. 44–79.
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Smith, Ernie A. “The Historical Development of Ebonics.” Readings in African American

Language: Aspects, Features and Perspectives, vol. 2, Peter Lang AG, 2003, pp. 49–58.

Smith, Shawn. “African American Ebonics: Discourse & Discursive Practice—a Chicago

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Trechter, Sara, and Bucholtz, Mary. “Introduction: White Noise: Bringing Language into

Whiteness Studies.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, vol. 11, no. 1, 2001, pp. 3–21,

https://doi.org/10.1525/jlin.2001.11.1.3.