"Ebonics"/African American Vernacular English and education

[iiandyiiii]

Inspired by this article:

Julie Washington’s Quest to Get Schools to Respect African-American English

Many black kids in America grow up speaking African American Vernacular English (AAVE) as their native language. As children, many develop fluency early on in standard American English, but some do not, which can be a very significant barrier to learning, in the same way that immigrant non-English speaking children often struggle.

To summarize the article, a researcher believes that helping kids switch seamlessly between the two dialects is a key to ensuring black children have the best chance to succeed in school.

One of the key points that I think many in America fail to recognize is that AAVE is a real, actual dialect of English, with many sub-varieties of its own. It has its own grammar rules, alternate spellings, etc. It’s just as real a dialect of English as Australian English, or Jamaican English, or Cockney English, or any of the many other dialects of English. It’s not “bad English”, or “improper English” any more than any other dialect is.

And how it could affect classroom learning is more than just what you might expect (making mistakes on an English exam):

Black children at the California schools Piestrup studied often answered questions correctly, only to be pounced on for irrelevant differences of pronunciation or grammar. This climate had a drastic effect: As time went on, Piestrup saw students withdraw into “moody silences”; when they did speak, their voices were soft and hesitant. The interrupted students had the lowest reading scores of any children Piestrup observed.

In any class, on any subject, if the teacher is constantly criticizing a student’s language even when they answer questions correctly, that student’s a lot more likely to withdraw into themselves and find participating in class stressful.

If the researcher is correct, then this could be a big part of the achievement gap – if millions of American children are essentially having to translate in their heads for every question in school, and slapped down for mistakes in this mental translation, then no wonder they might lag behind on test scores and other achievement metrics.

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

I’m not a linguist, but I can’t think of any reason for AAVE to be any different or less legitimate than any other dialect. That said, for practical reasons, it’s not always helpful to be primarily conversant in a dialect which is different than that of the vast majority of the population.

Even if the problems noted in the OP are real - I don’t know if they are, but it makes sense to me - the question is what to do about it. Not so simple.

[iiandyiiii]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

I’m not a linguist, but I can’t think of any reason for AAVE to be any different or less legitimate than any other dialect. That said, for practical reasons, it’s not always helpful to be primarily conversant in a dialect which is different than that of the vast majority of the population.

Even if the problems noted in the OP are real - I don’t know if they are, but it makes sense to me - the question is what to do about it. Not so simple.

Certainly not simple, but acknowledging widely that this is a real dialect could be a start. And I’m not an education professional, but ISTM that jumping on little “mistakes” (and they’re not really mistakes – just normal speech from a different dialect) from kids who are really trying to participate and learn is counterproductive and should stop. If I understand the researcher’s intentions correctly, she’s advocating that schools should teach, in detail, the differences between these dialects, which means actually teaching that AAVE is a real dialect, and teaching the rules and details of that dialect to differentiate it from the standard dialect. Such that all kids learn to speak fluently in both dialects (as many folks already learn “naturally”, but many do not). So have an English class, or two, that teaches the rules of both dialects, such that children recognize their existence and can converse in both. Even teaching non-AAVE kids about how AAVE exists, and how it “works”, could be beneficial to understanding all the different cultural variations in American society.

As to whether or not it’s “helpful”, that’s beside the point, I think – kids are going to learn language first from their parents, and if their parents primarily (or only) speak AAVE, then that’s the language they’ll learn in the home.

[Shodan]

I assume that this would be less of an issue with subjects like math, and AFAIK the gap between black students and other races in math is as large or larger than for reading and science.

What about learning languages other than English? Do black students also have trouble learning (for instance) Spanish or French or German compared to everyone else?

Regards,
Shodan

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@iiandyiiii

Certainly not simple, but acknowledging widely that this is a real dialect could be a start.

Do you know for a fact that this is not widely acknowledged? (What would be the basis for disputing that it’s a dialect? I assume many ignorant people or racists like to make fun of things like this, but that’s like people making fun of fried foods or watermelon - just meaningless xenophobic smack talk. Do any linguists think it’s not a real dialect?)

[John_Mace]

@Shodan

I assume that this would be less of an issue with subjects like math, and AFAIK the gap between black students and other races in math is as large or larger than for reading and science.

What about learning languages other than English? Do black students also have trouble learning (for instance) Spanish or French or German compared to everyone else?

Regards,
Shodan

I think the issue comes down to the “dialect” of the instructor. If you only speak AAVE, and your math instructor uses a different “dialect”, then you might not learn as fast as those students who speak the same “dialect” as the instructor. I put dialect in “” since I’m not sure these variations really pass the bar of being a different dialect, but that’s a different debate anyway.

Presumably one might try and compare scores of AAVE speaking students with AAVE speaking instructors vs AAVE speaking students with non-AAVE speaking instructors to see if there is an achievement gap.

[iiandyiiii]

@Shodan

I assume that this would be less of an issue with subjects like math, and AFAIK the gap between black students and other races in math is as large or larger than for reading and science.

The article includes examples of how this can impact the learning of AAVE-only students in any subject. In short, if the student is afraid to speak up, even with the correct answers, for math or science or history or whatever, because the teacher is constantly correcting them for the way they speak (which is entirely proper for their dialect), then they’re not going to learn as effectively.

[iiandyiiii]

@John_Mace

I think the issue comes down to the “dialect” of the instructor. If you only speak AAVE, and your math instructor uses a different “dialect”, then you might not learn as fast as those students who speak the same “dialect” as the instructor. I put dialect in “” since I’m not sure these variations really pass the bar of being a different dialect, but that’s a different debate anyway.

Presumably one might try and compare scores of AAVE speaking students with AAVE speaking instructors vs AAVE speaking students with non-AAVE speaking instructors to see if there is an achievement gap.

I’m not able to find any scholarly sources that dispute that it’s a real dialect, and many, many scholarly articles that acknowledge that it’s a dialect. I don’t think your skepticism is very uncommon, though, unfortunately.

More here: African-American Vernacular English - Wikipedia

[iiandyiiii]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

Do you know for a fact that this is not widely acknowledged? (What would be the basis for disputing that it’s a dialect? I assume many ignorant people or racists like to make fun of things like this, but that’s like people making fun of fried foods or watermelon - just meaningless xenophobic smack talk. Do any linguists think it’s not a real dialect?)

I don’t know this for a fact, but according to the article, very few schools actually teach as if it is a real dialect (as opposed to just “bad english”).

[Inner_Stickler]

Geoffrey Pullum’s AAVE is not Standard English with mistakes is almost essential reading, I think, for these sorts of discussions.

For me, I think it is incredibly obvious that children who grow up learning non-prestige dialects should have practice learning the standard dialect, but not at the cost of feeling ashamed or embarrassed about their native dialect. And I think that is true for everyone whether you talk like california surfers, appalachian hillfolk or an extra from Fargo. How we talk is at the very root of who we are as people. Our dialects contain links with our families and our communities and you cannot teach someone to be ashamed of how they talk without implicitly teaching them to be ashamed of who they are.

I have very little patience for people who are content to throw away the message because they didn’t like the container.

[John_Mace]

@iiandyiiii

I’m not able to find any scholarly sources that dispute that it’s a real dialect, and many, many scholarly articles that acknowledge that it’s a dialect. I don’t think your skepticism is very uncommon, though, unfortunately.

More here: African-American Vernacular English - Wikipedia

There’s a blurry line on the continuum: accent <—> dialect <—> language. Yes, AAV is different, but where is it on the continuum. If it’s a dialect, do white people in Boston speak a different dialect than white people in South Carolina? That is all.

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@John_Mace

There’s a blurry line on the continuum: accent <—> dialect <—> language. Yes, AAV is different, but where is it on the continuum. If it’s a dialect, do white people in Boston speak a different dialect than white people in South Carolina? That is all.

I thought accent is about pronunciation of certain letters, mostly vowels. In AAVE there are different rules of grammer (word order, sentence structure), word usage (e.g. he be doing …) and some words are different (e.g. aks for ask).

But in any event, whether you call it an accent or a dialect, the bottom line remains that as long as a bunch of people speak a certain way and have a shared way of communicating, then there’s nothing less legitimate about that language/dialect/accent than any other language/dialect/accent shared by any other group of people. (Not that you’ve disputed this, just reiterating.)

[Inner_Stickler]

My understanding that an accent is the way the words are sounded, while a dialect includes grammatical features. So AAVE would definitely be a dialect and not an accent since it includes things like the ‘habitual be’ and copula deletion which are functional differences in the structure of AAVE compared to SAE.

[Darren_Garrison]

Remember the last time this happened?

[Chronos]

I’m used to debates about whether something is a dialect or a language, and that’s a fuzzy line, and often involves politics (“a language is a dialect with an army and a navy”). But I’m not sure by what standard one could say that AAVE isn’t even a dialect.

[Jasmine]

@iiandyiiii

If the researcher is correct, then this could be a big part of the achievement gap – if millions of American children are essentially having to translate in their heads for every question in school, and slapped down for mistakes in this mental translation, then no wonder they might lag behind on test scores and other achievement metrics.

I’ve been in education in one capacity or another for my whole adult life, and I can say for a certainty that this “researcher” is anything but correct. And, yes, the school districts I’ve taught/worked in are comprised almost entirely of minority students; approximately 75% Black, 23% Latino, and 2% White.

Children are amazingly flexible and adaptable. Even our Latino students directly from Mexico make, with very few exceptions, the transition to English with acceptable to outstanding achievement.

The article was a pathetically transparent and skewed attempt to justify Ebonics. The first push for Ebonics was quite a number of years ago and, I distinctly remember, was vehemently rejected by many BLACK LEADERS because it was considered racist, condescending, and totally inaccurate to assume that Black kids can’t learn unless you speak “street talk” in the classroom.

[iiandyiiii]

@Jasmine

I’ve been in education in one capacity or another for my whole adult life, and I can say for a certainty that this “researcher” is anything but correct. And, yes, the school districts I’ve taught/worked in are comprised almost entirely of minority students; approximately 75% Black, 23% Latino, and 2% White.

Children are amazingly flexible and adaptable. Even our Latino students directly from Mexico make, with very few exceptions, the transition to English with acceptable to outstanding achievement.

The article was a pathetically transparent and skewed attempt to justify Ebonics. The first push for Ebonics was quite a number of years ago and, I distinctly remember, was vehemently rejected by many BLACK LEADERS because it was considered racist, condescending, and totally inaccurate to assume that Black kids can’t learn unless you speak “street talk” in the classroom.

So I take it you don’t believe that AAVE is a real dialect of English?

[DPRK]

Mark Twain wrote,

In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary “Pike County” dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.

I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.

so someone who knew what he was talking about recognized the existence of a bewildering continuum of American dialects varying with geographical location, ethnic group, etc.

What is the debate, though? Whether schoolteachers should do a better job than they do now? Who would deny that?

[Jasmine]

@iiandyiiii

So I take it you don’t believe that AAVE is a real dialect of English?

How you or anyone else wishes to categorize Ebonics is totally irrelevant to me.

What I am saying is this: The assumption that the brains of Black children simply aren’t up to the task of understanding, internalizing, and eventually implementing proper English, and that they underachieve because they do not understand it is totally incorrect.

That assumption has strong racial overtones and is very insulting, and most educated Black people reject it for that reason.

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

Who said anything about “the brains of Black children” and why are there “strong racial overtones”?

He’s saying that anyone - black or white - might have an added difficulty in learning if they were constantly being told that their way of speaking is incorrect.

Whether this is accurate or not, or a reflection of what is happening in schools or not, I don’t see any racial overtones or any statement about black children’s brains specifically.