LING 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 28: General American, Double Negative, Present Tense
Language Prejudice
Prejudice - act of prejudging, coming to a conclusion about someone (or something) without
real evidence
Language prejudice - act of prejudging someone based on the language that they speak
(accent, vocabulary, grammar)
Discrimination - treating someone (or something) differently based on their membership in a
certain group or category, rather than their individual properties
Language discrimination - discriminating based on the language someone speaks (accent,
vocabulary, grammar)
African American English (AAE)
• Not all speakers of AAE are African American
• Not all African Americans speak AAE
o Are all speakers of English from England? Do all people from England speak English?
o A child will speak AAE if they grow up hearing AAE spoken around them, just like any
language, regardless of race
• Past names: Ebonics, Black Vernacular English, African American Vernacular English,
African American English
• Power asymmetry: between two languages, the names themselves reinforce that
asymmetry
o Compare "Standard American English" to "African American Vernacular English,"
which sounds more important? Or more appropriate?
o To reinforce idea that every language is equal, we try to create names that do not
create asymmetries: "General American English" ad "African American English"
• AAE is a full human language, just like any other, as it has its own phonology, morphology,
syntax, and is acquired through mechanisms of language learning
AAE phonemes
• Doesn't have "th" sounds
o "birthday" is "birfday," "with" is "wit," bath" is "baf"
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LING 1010 Full Course Notes
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