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Yvonne Boeskool
May 7, 2018
Linguistically Aware Teaching

The growing controversy over what is commonly referred to as “Black English” came to

a peak in 1979 in the case of Martin Luther King Junior Elementary School in Ann Arbor,

Michigan and then again in the debate over Oakland (California) Unified School District’s

resolution to the debate. While these two instances were huge turning points in North

America’s views of the vernacular dialect, the attitude toward Black English in American culture

is still, and always, changing. There are constantly new studies being conducted on it and books

being written about it. Scholars have become much more familiar with its patterns in recent

decades and school officials have become much more equipped and educated on how to

address it. But it is still a controversy, especially in schools. As a future teacher myself, I set out

to find materials on the educational context of Black English and the best classroom practices

addressing it.

Black English has many other names it is known by. Scholarly articles and books can be

found also referring to it as Ebonics, African American English (AAE), and African American

Vernacular English (AAVE), which I will most often refer to it as in this paper. However, it does

seem that different terminology in reference to the dialect can have different connotations.

John Baugh is especially intentional about differentiating between “Black English” and

“Ebonics.” He points out that the term “Black English” implies that the dialect has emerged

from, or even deviated from, Standard English when that is not the case. It is instead its own

form of English as stated more obviously in the term “Ebonics.” But there are problems with

this term as well because it is not specific as to what origin of the language “Ebonics” is
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referring to. Baugh compares this confusion to the misunderstood concept of sign language.

He states, “Linguists are quick to note that American sign language and British sign language are

separate and distinctive languages. Whereas American English and British English constitute

different but more or less mutually intelligible English dialects, American sign language and

British sign language are not mutually intelligible, especially not in ways that are comparable to

their spoken English counterparts” (21). Baugh then applies this idea to Ebonics, claiming that

it may be more accurate, especially in issues like the Oakland debate, to call the dialect “North

American Ebonics” (Baugh, 21).

AAVE’s origins can be traced back to the African slave trade era. The evolution of the

dialect has been devalued in American culture and greatly misunderstood ever since. The

systematic racism evident in the United States, even after slavery was outlawed, set back

literacy education for African Americans. In fact, when discussing the origins of AAVE, or

Ebonics, John Baugh says this:

Ebonics is the linguistic and paralinguistic consequence of the African slave

trade. It developed in West Africa, as well as throughout the former European
colonies of North and South America wherever slaves were sold into bondage.
Ebonics, under this earliest definition, was never intended to apply narrowly to
the United States – and therein lies part of the confusion that has resulted from
the Ebonics controversy. (Baugh, 16)
From this, one can not only conclude that AAVE is not a dialect unique to the U.S. or even North

America, but also that AAVE has a complex, deep, and global history behind it, which is what

makes Baugh’s argument over naming it valid.

John W. Chambers, Jr. wrote in Black English: Educational Equity and the Law that,

“[p]ublic education is one of the most influential Western institutions; it has historically shaped
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Black children’s potential by destroying or underutilizing innate ability and creativity” (x). The

history of AAVE in the educational context in the United States make this evident.

Two major events have shaped our nation’s view on AAVE. The first national

recognition of the controversy was in 1979, when Judge Charles W. Joiner ruled that the Martin

Luther King Jr. Elementary School board of Ann Arbor, MI must make sure that literacy

education is accessible to all students in their own dialect, rather than expect the students to

easily switch into a dialect that is not their own. He declared that the school’s move of not

taking the student’s language into consideration was a factor in their failure in reading and

using Standard English. This is now referred to as the “Ann Arbor Decision” (Chambers, x-xiv).

The second was in 1996 when California’s Oakland Unified School District passed a

resolution that recognized AAVE as an African language which necessitated the maintenance of

AAVE in the classroom and the use of public funds to educate teachers on the language in order

to teach those students as they would teach students who are non-native speakers of English.

While the district strived to uphold and recognize the richness of AAVE and the students who

speak it, the district also faced much criticism from linguists and the general public. The main

criticism was that Oakland was overlooking the idea that AAVE is a vernacular dialect of English

rather than a separate language and that it is somewhat socially derived rather than purely

genetic (Baugh, x-xiii).

In his book, Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic Pride and Racial Prejudice, John Baugh discusses

how racial stereotypes and feelings of superiority can degrade a language dialect and a whole

group of people. He shares how easy it was for him, as a child, to make fun of English varieties

because of his upbringing and mainstream culture. He describes a story in which he recalls
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getting into an argument while playing ball with Carlos, a non-native speaker of English. In

order to gain the acceptance of the other boys in his new school, Baugh gave his best rendition

of Carlos’ “vulgar urban vernacular” in order to assert dominance over him. Baugh discusses

the extreme feelings of linguistic superiority that he felt and the ease in which he mimicked

Carlos’ vernacular. He then connects this to the debate of Ebonics in school by stating, “In a

real sense my uninformed negative response to learners of English as a second language was

similar in nature to many of those who chastise African American vernacular speech norms”

(10). This is not uncommon. In Understanding English Language Variation, Anne H. Charity

Hudley and Christine Mallinson write that, “Language varieties hold inherent value as markers

of culture and identity. As a result, some speakers of African American English, including

students, may feel shame, insecurity, and embarrassment when they operate within a society

that expects them to speak standardized English” (Hudley and Mallinson, 73). This is why it is

so important for educators and powers within the educational system to do the best they can

to create a linguistic environment that makes students comfortable and eager to learn.

Even back in 1983, scholars recognized this: “Black English is therefore not synonymous

with ‘broken English,’ ‘ungrammatical language,’ ‘slang,’ or ‘street talk.’ Like all languages, it is

systematic and rule-governed in its syntax (grammar), phonology (sound system) and semantics

(system of meaning)” (Chambers, x). The grammar of AAVE has a few simple contrasts from

Standard English. AAVE speakers are known to use multiple negatives, helping/linking forms of

be, habitual/invariant forms of be, and the existential it to name a few (89-95). The sound

system of AAVE seems to be the most problematic element in schools. Pronunciation of certain

letter patterns in Standard English are different in AAVE. For example, sounds like the r sound
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and th sound are changed, final consonants are often left off words, and vowel sounds and

diphthongs sound differently (Hudley and Mallinson, 79-84). AAVE’s patterns in semantics

include variations in storytelling, direct versus indirect commands, verbal play, and hyperbole

(101-109). AAVE also has distinctive patterns in pitch, tone, rhythm, and volume (97-101).

Clearly, AAVE is a very structured and patterned dialect. Why, then, is it socially considered to

be the lesser of English dialects? Are there effects of AAVE on the development of Standard

English? How has the dialect shaped students’ learning nationwide?

Since many studies in the past have simply tested African American children’s ability to

repeat sentences constructed in AAVE versus Standard English as compared to white children’s

ability to repeat the same sentences in both dialects, researchers have found that black

children perform better repeating AAVE and white children perform better repeating Standard

English. This has led people to conclude that black children who speak AAVE cannot

understand or speak Standard English as well as white children. Therefore, a study at Cornell

University in 1974 set out to test not only whether or not a message in Standard English is

understood by African American children, but also how quickly and easily it is understood, if

particular features of either dialect affect this process more than others, and if these factors

change depending on the child’s developmental stage. Ninety-six 5- and 7-year-old AAVE

speakers from low income African American families in Murfreesboro, Tennessee were tested.

Researchers found that although these children were much faster in responding to passive

sentences, there were no dialect differences that seemed to prohibit the AAVE speakers from

understanding Standard English. In fact, the group performed better when responding to

sentences in Standard than in AAVE (Copple and Suci).

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Assuming then that AAVE is therefore not detrimental to students’ development of

standard English, there are many ways in which a teacher can use knowledge of AAVE to help

African American students reach their full potential in a country that has failed to give them the

resources they need and an attitude toward AAVE they deserve. What is known as the

“Linguistically Informed Approach” to teaching reading recognizes the idea that mistakes in

reading aren’t always mistakes but rather, differences in pronunciation. An example of this is if

a student were to read “I missed him” as “I miss him.” Under this approach, the teacher should

not assume that the student misread the sentence and misunderstood the meaning, but

instead, the teacher should consider the possibility that the student fully understood the

statement and reproduced it in their own dialect (Ramirez et al. 27). This is a reasonable

possibility because one of the patterns of AAVE is the reduction of consonant clusters (Hudley

and Mallinson, 82). Guided instruction in this framework would also include presenting words

like these followed by a vowel sound to encourage the full production of the consonant.

Teachers should also avoid having speakers of AAVE read contractions, because another feature

of the dialect is that once a phrase has reached the contraction stage, it is likely that the

contraction be deleted or changed (Ramirez et al. 27-28).

Another approach to using AAVE to teach Standard English, and perhaps the most like

Oakland’s efforts, is known as “Contrastive Analysis.” Under this approach, the teacher draws

students’ attention specifically to the differences between their dialect and the standard. A

1989 study at Aurora University showed that students taught by traditional, Standard English

techniques showed very little progress in using the third person –s as in “He walks,” instead of

“He walk,” while students taught by contrastive analysis showed a large decrease in this AAVE
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feature. This method is considered to be very effective not only in teaching standard English,

but also in fostering a greater metalinguistic awareness in students (Ramirez et al. 28-30).

The final of the three main approaches to using AAVE in the classroom is known by,

“Introducing Reading in the Vernacular, Then Switching to the Standard.” This method is just as

the title suggests – teaching and presenting materials in AAVE, then transitioning into Standard

English. This method is inspired by foreign language teaching pedagogy all over the world, and

also has parallels to Oakland’s efforts. Of the three approaches presented here, this one has

had the most significant amount of pushback because of its positive connotation and extensive

use of AAVE. That being said, this method has proved effective in many different settings

(Ramirez et al. 30-32).

As presented in this paper, African American Vernacular English has many social

implications in the educational context that affect the academic success of speakers of the

dialect. AAVE is evidently not a detriment to the attainment of Standard English, and its

patterns can even be used to teach Standard English. There is a wide variety of pedagogical

materials and information on AAVE for teachers and it is important that we use them for the

success of student speakers of AAVE.

Works Cited
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Baugh, John. Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic Pride and Racial Prejudice. Oxford University Press,

2002.

Chambers, John W. Black English: Educational Equity and the Law. Karoma, 1983.

Copple, Carol E., and George J. Suci. “The Comparative Ease of Processing Standard English and

Black Nonstandard English by Lower-Class Black Children.” Child Development, vol. 45,

no. 4, Dec. 1974, pp. 1048–1053. JSTOR, doi:10.2307/1128093.

Hudley, Anne H. Charity, and Christine Mallinson. Understanding English Language Variation in

U.S. Schools. Teachers College Press, 2011.

Ramirez, J. David, et al., editors. Ebonics: The Urban Education Debate. 2nd ed., Cromwell Press

Ltd., 2005.