LING 204 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: African-American Vernacular English And Education, Code-Switching, Language Contact
Document Summary
The most studied ethnic language variety is african american english. Community- often described as a single huge speech community with shared norms, but has internal diversity, regional variation, and local communities of practice (social networks). Language- terminology like ebonics, most linguists would describe aae as a variety of english. Place- originally a southern variety, presumably ethnic linguistic distinctions all along. Social status- overlap between ethnicity and socioeconomic status, urbanization. Time- long history with many contemporary features found even in 18th-century letters and descriptions. Researchers debate the origins, degree of input from earlier english, dialects, language contact phenomena, creoles, and/or african languages. May change faster, change not restrained by writing system, pundits. Age- aae-speaking students develop most of their dialect-switching ability between ages 6 and. Culture/ethnicity- some african or creole components, perhaps also in grammar or pronunciation, many features (of whatever origin) now clearly associated with aae.
