OBJECTIVE.
The meaning of this investigation is to illustrate how African American culture had created a new form of communication, based on the English language that their ancestors had to learn and decode in the matter of express their culture, behavior, and ideas that were commonly and unjustified repressed during decades of North American history.
This research is going to explore this topic in different maters:
- History.
- Inclusion and apropiation.
- Linguistical changes in English.
- Famous Celebrities and References to the African American Community
- Conclusion.
History.
First of all, to understand what AAVE is about, we must look at its origins and how racial concepts and cultures began to modify the English language. According to Donald Windford, Autor from "The Oxford Handbook of African American Language", he has stated:
"It is now widely accepted that most of the grammar of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) derives from English dialectal sources—particularly the settler dialects introduced into the American South during the 17th and 18th centuries. The roots of AAVE were established during the first century of the British colonization of America, in the Chesapeake Bay area (Virginia and Maryland), and later, in the Carolinas and Georgia. The socio-historical evidence suggests that conditions in most of the South were favorable for Blacks to acquire relatively close approximations of the dialects spoken by White settlers, particularly indentured servants. Since Blacks were exposed to a variety of British English dialects and shaped by influence from African languages and possibly also from creole varieties introduced by slaves brought from the Caribbean, AAVE evolved against a background of continuing language contact."
Taking into account Donald Winford Statement, it is clear how ebonics started to appear in the south part of the United States, due to the high population of black slaves. These slaves were constantly exposed to horrible living conditions and repressed by they ""owners"" not being allowed to communicate in their native languages or express their cultures. Because of this, most of the people who were slaved were forced to learn English in a primitive and purely auditory way without any kind of education, allowing them to fuse words and meanings thus resulting in a bunch of new linguistic modifications to the language, these new cultural appropriations of English began to be commonly used and easier to understand between black communities, giving in this way a little advantage to slave minorities over the white English speaker. Several language experts agree in the fact that this historical event was executed because of the human necessity of communication and socialization and even more impulsed by the mere necessity of giving more romance, rhythm, and a real feeling to the basic tonality of English.
Appropriation of English as the main language.
Now that we know the origin and roots of this type of dialect coming from the racial culture of those people who were enslaved for so many years and having to adapt to this new oppressive language, we can take into account the cultural impact of these ebonics in our times. current. For this, I have taken as a reference a short investigation from the blog “Feminuity” that teaches in a very simple way many of the current words that have become very popular not only among African American communities but also among many teenagers around the world.
"Black Vernacular English, also commonly known as African American Vernacular English (AAVE), is rooted in African dialects and Caribbean Creole English varieties. These linguistic patterns are a part of a cultural legacy that continues on even after transatlantic slavery... Words such as “lit,” “woke,” “bae,” “ratchet,” “sis,” “slay, “hella, “ or “basic,” and phrases such as “straight up,” “on fleek,” “I feel you,” or “turn up,” have become common sayings that are often misused or overly emphasized ...
These words are visible online through reaction GIFs, social media posts, and journalism to name a few. BVE (AAVE) is used by companies on social media, and in advertising and marketing as an attempt to appeal to the “younger audience.” If any of these words or phrases simply sound like internet or social media lingo, it demonstrates the extent to which the appropriation of BVE (AAVE) by non-Black communities has accelerated exponentially in the age of the internet. "
Thanks to this little research, we can assure that the current era has been something very close to a kind of revolution for the globalization of this Afro-American culture because if attention is paid to the current most listened to artists of the moment and their musical genres, the majority of They try to adopt this type of Afro urban culture, which shows the interest of the new generations in this culture and this aphrodisiac way of changing certain English words making the language more relaxed, fresh and youthful. In this way, we can deduce that the implementation of this variation of the language has been better accepted over the years and the acceptance and inclusion of African American communities in a country such as the United States and its long history of social and racial problems.
Linguistical Changes.
There are many ways in which AAVE changes the pronunciation, writing, and linguistics of certain words in the English language. One of the most outstanding examples of these changes is the HABITUAL BE.
The Habitual Be, according to Wikipedia, Is the use of an uninflected be in African American Vernacular English (AAVE), Caribbean English and Certain dialects of Hiberno-English to mark habitual or extended actions, in place of the Standard English inflected forms of be, such as is and are. In AAVE, the use of BE indicates that a subject repeatedly does an action or embodies a trait. In Standard English, the use of (an inflection of) be merely conveys that an individual has done action in a particular tense, such as in the statement "She was singing" (the habitual being "she sings").
This Habitual be is often used in order to express different time tenses and just to say in a very colloquial way that a subject o object is committing an action in its simpler way.
Other examples of AAVE linguistical changes can be:
In this way we can appreciate the large number of linguistic changes that are experienced in the use of AAVE, certainly, something very interesting to show how throughout history, this ethnic group has appropriated a language that enslaved them for centuries and overcame all limits to create a new form of dialect in favor of its community, generating, in turn, new theories and times in the English language.
Famous Celebrities and References to the African American Community
Currently, there are many artistic references to these communities and their dialects within the United States. Characters like Kanye West (1), Tyler Okonm (2), Donald Glover (3), and many more are great representatives of the triumph of Afro communities in the modern world. We can constantly find many references to the AAVE dialect in his artistic works.
However, we must emphasize that without the historical figures who fought for decades against the strong social oppression, the diversification and social empathy from the new generations would not have been as easy to achieve or witness as it is nowadays. Yes, great progress has yet to be made in this regard, but in a greater part, the sense of humanity has been increasingly coupled by many communities in the United States and the entire world. Some of those historical figures are:
MATHER LUTHER KING:
American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the American civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968.
NELSON MANDELA:
South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, statesman and philanthropist who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid by tackling institutionalized racism and fostering racial reconciliation
ROSA PARKS:
Parks is best known for her December 1, 1955, arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat to a White rider. That incident sparked the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott, which eventually desegregated that city's public transit. Parks and her family moved to Detroit in 1957, and she remained active in civil rights until her death.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, it is important to highlight and reaffirm once again the way in which these Afro communities were treated for centuries and as due to this their race and culture has been distributed throughout the world, this is where we arrived in the United States of America, one of the world powers where several African communities were forced to learn a language that did not belong to them, but to this day, they have managed to overcome all the adversities that they have had to experience for centuries and not only learned the language that once I enslave them if not that they manage to adapt it to their own need for communication and culturization by creating this dialect that we know as AAVE or African American Vernacular English, a new way of speaking and thinking in this language, which even adds new forms of simplification and habitualness in itself.
REFERENCES.
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