Preview

African American Language Summary

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
303 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
African American Language Summary
In her speech, “African-American English: From the Hood to the Amen Corner,” Geneva Smitherman, English professor and Director of the African American Language and Literacy Program at Michigan State University, uses her research and personal experience on African-American English to illustrate the value of language itself, and more specifically the different dialects and variations that serve as proof of the adaptable nature of human communication. Professor Smitherman traces several traits of African-American English back to the beginning of America, revealing them to be valuable pieces of history that are currently treated as a defect to be stamped out. She states that instead of the current policy of treating cultural and geographical
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    If Black English Isn T A Language Summary
    • 350 Words
    • 2 Pages

    If Black English Isn T A Language Summary

    In the essay “If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?”, James Baldwin argues that languages evolve based on the environments in which they are spoken. Baldwin claims that, “people evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances [...] [People from different regions] are not saying, and cannot be saying, the same things: They each have very different realities to articulate” (1). Essentially, people's environments play a large role in the way they speak their language. The different areas in which a language is spoken all have different environmental and circumstantial factors that need to be described Inhabitants of each of these areas must be able “articulate” what they see and experience in…

    • 350 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Ebonics Categorizing African-American Language
    • 173 Words
    • 1 Page

    Ebonics Categorizing African-American Language

    To be honest I find It a little offensive and discriminatory to categorize the African-American language as being a language of its own. Why not call it informal language instead of categorizing it as African-American language or Ebonics? I do not hear this language coming only from African-Americans, but I also hear it from Latinos. I do not have a problem with teaching children the standard English, but I think that Ebonics is profiling the African-American culture. The teacher’s technique when working on translating Ebonics into standard English is a good way to teach students how to use standard English; however, it should not be categorized as African-American language. It should be categorized as an incorrect use of English. Of course,…

    • 173 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Pros And Cons Of Ebonics In African American Society
    • 1307 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Pros And Cons Of Ebonics In African American Society

    For the purposes of this paper, an emphasis is placed on the cons of the use of such slag. “The term Ebonics (a blend of ebony and phonics) gained recognition in 1996 as a result of the Oakland School Board’s use of the term in its proposal to use African American English in teaching Standard English in the Oakland Schools. The term was coined by Robert Williams in 1973, but it wasn’t until the Ebonics controversy that Ebonics became widely used. Most linguists prefer the term African American English as it aligns the variety with regional, national, and sociocultural varieties of English such as British English, Southern English, Cajun English, and so forth” (http://www.cal.org/topics/dialects/aae.html, November 7,…

    • 1307 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    West African American Dialectical Journal
    • 1608 Words
    • 7 Pages

    West African American Dialectical Journal

    “They call me Rain. I have long forgotten my real name as I was very young when they came into my village and took me. I can’t remember much from my life before being a slave girl, but my masters have told me I am from a small village in West Africa.”…

    • 1608 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Summary Of Race And Racism In Higher Education
    • 305 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Summary Of Race And Racism In Higher Education

    This text made me think about the way I talk and how I sound to others. Growing up in a family who uses Black English, I rarely use it myself. Sometimes I can hear myself say certain phrases that I feel normal saying out in public, but most of the time I speak Standard English. This text…

    • 305 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    African American Vernacular English
    • 170 Words
    • 1 Page

    African American Vernacular English

    African American Vernacular English has been developing and evolving over generations and generations. The language is a mixture of English language with its own semantic, syntactic, morphological, phonological and lexical rules. It is commonly spoken by the urban working class and middle-class African Americans, and is often identified as an unsophisticated form of dialect despite having similar elements to other languages such as it’s pronunciation, grammatical structure and vocabulary. Although this language is now used commonly and freely, and has adopted an almost comedic profile, it has a deeper, contextual meaning, associated with the time of black inequality and slave trading. Today we will be investigating and comparing two texts from…

    • 170 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Do You Speak American Analysis
    • 541 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Do You Speak American Analysis

    As one of the most dynamic countries that primarily use the English language, the United States is a wonderland in which each state has its own accent and that all Americans take pride in their own language culture. In the documentary film Do You Speak American?, celebrated journalist and novelist Robert MacNeil sets out on a journey all around the United States, exploring how the language of America defines, unites, and separates its people. The title of the film proposes an intriguing question: what does it mean by speaking American? Speaking American is not just a matter of speaking English, and the answer to that question is far more complex. According to this film, not all Americans speak English, and those who do tend to speak it in different ways. As MacNeil explains, the reasons American accents vary…

    • 541 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Best Essays

    Marie Laveau
    • 2004 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Marie Laveau

    Holloway, Joeseph. Africanisms in American Culture. 2nd. Boomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005. 131-137. Print.…

    • 2004 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Best Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Week 1 Vernacular Language
    • 327 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Week 1 Vernacular Language

    Week one of Language and Literacy for Teachers has broadened my thinking about the English language, how vast it is and the different ways people communicate. The first, and most interesting topic for me that was brought up in week one was vernacular language. “A vernacular variety of language is the form of language people use in their “everyday” lives when they are not speaking as specialists of experts of any sort.” (Gee & Hayes, 2011, p. 8). Learning about vernacular language led me to think about and explore the different ways language can change depending on factors such as a social setting, social class or geographical location.…

    • 327 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    African American Vernacular Traditions: Integrated Into Modern Culture
    • 1279 Words
    • 6 Pages

    African American Vernacular Traditions: Integrated Into Modern Culture

    African American vernacular traditions have been around for many centuries and still cease to exist in their culture. The vernacular traditions of the African Americans started when slaves were existent in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. It is believed that the slaves spoke a mix of Creole and partial English, in which they had to create in order to communicate between them discreetly. The vernacular traditions originated from the way the slaves lived their lives and their creativity. The relationship between the slaves and their masters, were very weak because the master’s believed that the slaves were inferior to them. It is believed that African American slaves have better lungs than whites; therefore, giving them the advantage in singing over the whites. It is indicated that early landmark anthologies of black literature included black songs and stories, which originated from the earlier vernacular forms. Early vernacular traditions of the African American literature influence the modern day African American literature.…

    • 1279 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    African American Studies
    • 1123 Words
    • 3 Pages

    African American Studies

    In regards to the subject of slavery being based on racism or economic necessity, I think that slavery was based on economic necessity. When the slaves were first brought to Virginia in 1619 they were not traded because of their skin but because the boats carrying the slaves was on a shortage of food, because of this reason the ship traded slaves for food and supplies. According to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1narr3.html “From Indentured Servitude to Racial Slavery” “In the early years of the colony, many Africans and poor whites-- most of the labors came from the English working class-- stood on the same ground. Black and white men and women worked side-by-side in the fields. Black and white men who broke their servant contract were equally punished.” This shows that both whites and blacks worked together on equal grounds without discrimination based on skin color, the only discrimination that there might have been was the discrimination of being poor. It was later that skin color was used like a leash. “Historically, the English only enslaved non-Christians, and not, in particular, Africans.” This quote shows that even back in time people were enslaved because they were not a certain religion, it does not describe being enslaved because you were a certain color. Even the Incas of Peru enslaved people of defeated tribes and used them as workers or as sacrifice for their sun god. People have enslaved each other even before the word racism came into play. Also from “Indentured Servitude to Racial Slavery” it described how “ All were indentured servants. During their time as servants, they were fed and housed. Afterwards, they would be given what were known as “freedom dues,” which usually included a piece of land and supplies, including a gun. Black-skinned or white-skinned, they became free” the telling of this displays that freedom was possible and when freed you weren’t thrown out into the world without anything, at least you had a piece of…

    • 1123 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Meroitic Language In African American Culture
    • 1206 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Meroitic Language In African American Culture

    The effervescence of who we are relies on us knowing ourselves but also relies on us to know who touched and walked this earth before us. Our skin and melanin was related to the great kings and queens of Africa, but due the outright dubious mindset of surrounding continents, is why we don’t think highly of ourselves now. As our ancestors stood and marched around the great continent Africa many centuries ago, they were and had already built what they knew as life; however, they did not expect what was coming next. Ships upon ships barricaded the country of Africa and kidnapped many of innocent: men, women and children, just so they could use the African people for their own personal gain. Those barbaric and savage people only saw these people…

    • 1206 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Not White Just Right Response
    • 363 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Not White Just Right Response

    Therefore, in conclusion, I would like to thank Rachel Jones for writing those two texts about young African American lingual. It is about time that someone made it public to the Black community that this speech is NOT conserving our culture; it is keeping…

    • 363 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    African American Vernacular
    • 1239 Words
    • 5 Pages

    African American Vernacular

    According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, the definition of vernacular is “of, relating to, or being a nonstandard language or dialect of a place, region, or country.” In terms of African American history, the evolution of vernacular is very important and a very unique part of the culture. The African American vernacular has aided the development of a distinct culture in terms of what African Americans were subjected to from the installation of slavery. The African American vernacular was used as a way to expose the atrocities that African Americans were imperiled to through songs and language. “Go down Moses ,” a spiritual and “Strange Fruit,” performed by Billie Holiday are two songs that represent the vernacular of African American culture. “Go down Moses,” was a song that had a Christian religious theme that spoke of the Israelites being enslaved by Pharaoh in Egypt’s land. Spirituals had ambiguous meanings that included a reverence for Christianity and a desire to be free from the bondages of slavery. “Strange Fruit” was a song originally written as a poem that exposed racism against African American and called for a social change. Although they bear some similarities, the differences between “Go down Moses” and “Strange Fruit” include setting, meaning and cultural impact.…

    • 1239 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Essay On African American Culture
    • 908 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Essay On African American Culture

    “My culture is my identity and personality. It gives me spiritual, intellectual and emotional distinction from others, and I am proud of it”. African-American culture, also known as black culture, in the United States it refers to the cultural contributions of African Americans to the culture of the United States, either as part of or distinct from American culture. The African American, and also my own culture are made up of a lot of things. In common with some and very different from others. My culture involves my school, my family tradition, food, music, clothing, and shoes.…

    • 908 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More