African American Vernacular English is a systematic, rule-governed dialect spoken by millions of Americans. It has roots in West African languages and developed further during the eras of slavery and segregation. While seen as non-standard by some, it transmits important cultural aspects of identity and history. Students who speak AAVE often face a dilemma, as their community speaks one version of English but schools expect standard English. This can cause students to feel they must change their identity to succeed academically. Educators also face tensions in how to respect both dialects. The document outlines linguistic features of AAVE and implications for how students learn to read and write standard English.

1. African American Vernacular English

2. African American English
• Black English
• African American English
• African American Vernacular English
• Ebonics
• Urban English (North)
• Rural English (South)

3. Facts
• Spoken by millions of Americans throughout the
United States
• Has roots in African languages
– Creole, Gullah, Jamaican English, and Patois
• Is not substandard English but a systematic,
rule-governed, and patterned language
• Surviving words: banana, banjo, gumbo,
jamboree, mumbo, jumbo, voodoo, yam, and
zombie

4. History
• Can be traced to West African languages
• Great migration
▫ African Americans forced into concentrated areas
▫ Southern language began to merge with Northern
language
• Residential segregation
▫ Most speakers of African American English live
near other speakers of African American English

5. Attitudes towards Type of Speech
• Racism effects
▫ Haphazard, substandard, undesirable, deviant,
illogical, lazy, and broken
• Media
▫ Akeelah and the Bee: Akeelah is criticized for
using “improper English”
 “Ain’t you got a job?”
• Languages are meant to be nuanced, unique
and innovative
▫ Transmitting culture, history, personality, and
identity

6. Dilemma for Students
• “Push-Pull” (Smitherman, 2000)
▫ Family, friends, and community all speak African
American English
▫ Teachers and administrators do not
▫ They are expected to learn and use a new type of
English
▫ Forcing them to assimilate to academic culture in
an effort to acquire good grades may cause them
to pull away from their home communities
(Carter, 2007)

7. Dilemma for Students
• “Double consciousness” – (Du Bois [1903])
▫ African American students and educators find that
they switch linguistically between languages as
they switch from one setting to the next
• Dueling Expectations
▫ Feeling as though one must use academic
language to succeed, but is still highly invested in
maintaining their speech and culture
▫ Voices of North Carolina (Hutcheson, 2005)
 Richard Brown

8. Dilemma for Students
• Tucker and Lambert Experiement (1969)
– Obtained evaluative judgments from 150 listeners
– On a range of personal characteristics, listeners gave
lower ratings to the voices of speakers of African
American English and higher ratings to the voices of
speakers of other varieties
– Listeners gave the lowest ratings to the African
American speakers on the characteristics of
• Speech
• Education
• Talent
• intelligence

9. Dilemma for Students
• Fogel and Ehri (2000) found that educators tend to
rate African American English-speaking students as
– Less intelligent
– Less confident
– Less likely to succeed
• Perceptions often affect the feedback professors give
students
– Everyday interactions
– Expectations
– Use of African American English in speaking or
writing assignments may lead to placement in special
education or remedial classes

10. Dilemma for Students
• Effects of African American English bias in
schools
▫ First direction
 Discouraged
 Devalued
 Culture, family, friends, and themselves
 Loss of confidence in school and educator
 Disengage
▫ Second direction
 Accommodate as much as possible to standardized
English
 “Sounding White” or “Acting White”
 May cause stigmatism from other African American students
 May still not be accepted by White peers
▫

11. Dilemma for Educators
• Tension around the use of African American English
may be caused by unfamiliarity
– 90% of teachers are White
– 30% of students are African American
– 2/3rds of all African American teachers live in the
South
• When students and teachers come from different
ethnic backgrounds there could be confusion in the
classroom
– Non-standardized speakers are made to learn
standardized English, but not vise a versa
– May cause rifts and resentment

12. Dilemma for Educators
• May advocate the use of standardized English for
the tangible, real-world benefits
▫ Told they sound more educated
▫ More likely to get ahead in education and
professional pursuits
▫ Less likely to face discrimination
• However, does not guarantee success
▫ Racism is still a factor

13. Dilemma for Educators
• Bertrand and Mullainathan (2003)
▫ Those with “White sounding names” received 50%
more callbacks for interviews
• Grogger (2008)
▫ Employees who sound “black” earn 10% lower
▫ White employees who sound “black” ear 6% lower
▫ Black employees without a distinct sound still
earn 2% lower

14. Features of African American English -
Sound
• “Ask”
▫ Often pronounced as “axe” in African American
English
▫ Originates from Old-English pronunciation of
“ascian” as “askian” (North) and “axeian” (South)
▫ Metathesis: reversal of 2 neighboring sounds or
syllables
 Old-English “third” as “thred” (original word –
“three”)
 Jewelry, Nuclear, Chipotle

15. Features of African American English -
Sound
• The “r” sound is near absent or completely
absent
▫ If it follows a vowel sound
▫ Rarely absent following consonant
▫ Never absent beginning a word
▫ Reduced within consonant clusters
 “Professor” = “puhfessor”
▫ Inserted into words
 “fruneral” = “funeral”

16. Features of African American English -
Sound
• The “th” sound
▫ Soft “th” (think)
 Pronounced like standardized English when used at
the beginning of a word
 Middle or end of a word = “t” sound, “f” sound, or
glottal sound
▫ Hard “th” (there)
▫ Beginning a word = “d” sound
▫ Middle or end of a word = “d” or a “v” sound

17. Features of African American English -
Sound
• Final Consonants – “b”, “d”, and “g” sounds
can be devoiced when occur at the end of
word or syllable
▫ Lad = lat
▫ Lag = lack
▫ Lab = lap
• May sound similar to glottal sound
▫ Badlands = batlands or ba’lands
• May be absent altogether
▫ Five or fine pronounced similar to fie

18. Features of African American English -
Sound
• Consonant Blends
▫ Sk, nd, ts, kt, sts, and sts
▫ “Tactful” and “lists” = “tackful” and “liss”
▫ “str” = “scr”
 “strawberry” = “scrawberry”
 Feature also found in the Gullah language

19. Features of African American English -
Sound
• “ai” and “oy” sound
▫ “ah” sound is pronounced similarly to “ah”
▫ “time” = “tom”
▫ “bye” = “bah”
▫ “oil” may be pronounced as “oll” or “all”

20. Features of African American
English – Sound
• Vowel Merger
▫ Vowels “I” and e” may be pronounced in the same
way
 “ten” as “tin” or “pen” as “pin”
 “heel” as “hill” or “feel” as “fill”
 “hail” as “hell” or “bail” as “bell”
• The “oo” sound
▫ The sound “yu” may sound similar to “oo”
following a consonant
 “Houston” as “Hooston” or “Computer” as “Compooter”

21. Features of African American
English – Sound
• The “air” sound
▫ “air” at the end of a word may sound similar to
“ur”
 “hair” as “her” or “care” as “cur”
 “Maryland” as “Murrland”

22. Educational Implications
• To communicate respect for both types of
English it is important to
▫ Avoid statements like: “Don’t leave off your
ending of words”/ ”Don’t drop your r’s”
• Make students aware of variations in English
▫ Refer to standard-English as “different” rather
than “correct” or “incorrect”

23. Educational Implications
• African American children may encounter
difficulty when confronted with reading
unfamiliar items
▫ Ex: standard-English use of the silent “e” (blame)
and African American English contrast (Kwame 
Kwahm-ee)
▫ “their”: in African American English the “th” is
pronounced “d” and a student may wonder why
the word is not spelled with a “D”

24. Educational Implications
• Homophones in African American English may
account for many misspellings by African
American students (Gilyard, 1996)
▫ Ex: “mind” as “mine”, “told” as “toll”, “find” as “fine”,
“mist” as “miss”, or “passed” as “pass”
• Variations in sounds may cause variations in
rhyme
▫ Ex: “door” may rhyme with “dough”, “turf” with
“earth”
▫ African American students tend to have less access to
popularized White nursery rhymes, affecting their
ability to successfully familiarize themselves with

25. Educational Implications
• Consonant blends may cause African
American English speakers to sound as if
they are not marking the proper tenses
▫ Ex: “walked” or “talked” will sound like “walk” or
“talk”
• However, students to not have any real
misunderstanding of subject-verb agreement
or tense (Labov and Baker, 2003)
• Students may overcompensate for this error
by adding an extra “ded”, in past tense, or
“es”, in plural markers

26. Educational Implications
• Effects for African American English Speakers
when learning to read and write
▫ May lose confidence in the alphabet
▫ May doubt their ability to read
▫ May give little credit to decoding strategies
 “Just sound it out” or “Just write it like it sounds”
▫ May doubt the importance and validity of
educational assessments
▫ May lose faith in the educational system

27. Educational Implications
• Effects for educators of African American English
speaking children
– May lose confidence
– May doubt the ability of African American English
speaking students to learn
– May question their own ability to teach concepts
• Phonics, rhyming, and reading
• Conclusion: help the student understand how the
sound system of standardized English is similar and
different from African American English

28. Grammar
• “Ain’t” – commonly used as a helping or linking
verb in African American English
▫ Can replace: “haven’t”, “hasn’t”, “isn’t”, “aren’t”, or
“didn’t”
• Multiple Negatives – used to add emphasis to
statements

29. Grammar
• Helping or Linking Forms of “Be”
▫ Verb forms may be fully produced (He is funny)
▫ Verb forms may be contracted (He’s funny)
▫ Verb forms may be absent (He funny)
• The linking form of “to be” can only be absent if
the subject of the sentence is “you”, “he”, “she”,
“it”, “we”, or “they”
▫ NEVER when the subject is “I”
• “to be” may not be absent in the past tense

30. Grammar
• Use of invariant “be”
▫ Conveys habitually in a way that does not require
the addition of words such as “usually” or
“typically”
▫ Ex: “The students be missing class when the bus
comes late”
▫ Known as “habitual be” in African American
language
 Use is regular, patterned, and predictable

31. Grammar
• Stressed “Been”
▫ Stressed in pronunciation
▫ Paired with a main verb in the siple past tense
▫ Indicates that an event has happened in the remote
past, a long time prior to the present time
 Ex: “I been finished my homework.”
• Call “–self” Construction
▫ “to call” + personal reflexive pronoun
▫ In the opinion of the speaker (and others), someone
has made an attempt to do something that is not
meeting typical standards
 Ex: “He calls himself cooking” = “He thinks he’s cooking, but
he’s merely playing around in the kitchen” (Green, 2002, p. 21)

32. Grammar
• Absence of “-s” inflections
▫ Third-person singular verb form (“He talk too
much”)
▫ Possessive constructions (“I’m going to my mama
house”)
▫ Plural constructions may be absent (“Give me 50
cent”)
• Existential “it”
▫ “it is” or “it’s” may be used to denote the existence
of something in a way that is generally equivalent
to the use of “there is”, “there’s”, and “there are”
 Ex: “It’s some cake in the pantry”

33. Grammar
Educational Implications
• Knowledge of how and why specific language
variants appear in students’ oral reading and
writing is invaluable information when
assessing students who speak African
American English
▫ Consider if mistakes are rooted in students’ use of
language pattern in African American English
 If so, compare and contrast African American English
with standardized-English without harsh criticism
• Issues also surface in science and math
classes as well
▫ Word problems

34. Pitch, Tone, Rhythm, and Volume
• Melody and rhythm can mark someone as
African American, even with the use of
standardized English
• Syllable Stress
– First syllable (CE-ment or DE-troit)
• Pitch
– Lower pitch
– Wider pitch range, with more use of falsetto
– More pitched accents
– Stressed syllables said in very high pitch

35. Pitch, Tone, Rhythm, and Volume
• Intonation
▫ Questions may also be said in a flat or falling
intonation
 May be misinterpreted as disengagement, lack of
interest, disrespect, aggression, uncooperativeness,
noncompliance, or withdrawal
 Males often receive the most misinterpretation

36. Pitch, Tone, Rhythm, and Volume
• Volume
▫ Stereotype: African American’s speak louder than
other speakers, more rambunctious, and tend to
shout
 “acting ghetto”
▫ In contrast, some are silent or withdrawn, which
leads others to believe they have a learning
disability
 In reality most don’t want attention, or are insecure
in their standardized English abilities

37. Pitch, Tone, Rhythm, and Volume
Educational Implications
• Don’t assume low intelligence,
uncooperativeness, or hostility
▫ They may use their type of English to assert
identity, gain confidence, and enjoy academics
• Positive messages about African American
language help students view learning as an
accessible and engaging process

38. Conversation
• African American kids and adults prefer to use
titles to show respect
• Speak in ways that are interactive and energetic
• Engage in more conversational overlap (more
than one person speaking at a time)
 Educators often take overlap as a show of being
boisterous, loud and out of control (Morakinyo,
1995)

39. Conversation
• Storytelling
▫ African American Girls: narrative “topic-
association style”
 Series of topics, anecdotes or episodes presented
 Topics are related by common theme
 Relationship may not be clear to listener
 Not presented in a linear way (beginning, middle, and
end)
▫ Can lead to frustration and confusion on the part
of both the educator and the student

40. Conversation
• Direct Versus Indirect Commands
▫ Common to use direct commands (“I want you to
line up now.”)
▫ African American students have little experience
with indirect commands
 When used by standard English speakers in polite,
as preferences or suggestions, they may be met with
disobedience

41. Conversation
• Verbal play
– Verbal offense tactics
• Instigation
• Initiation of spoken commentary
• Insult in order to provoke
• Generally more playful
– Participants exchange insults about each other or the others family
– Positives
• Use figurative language
• Draw on shared cultural and personal knowledge
• Learn verbal and creative improvisation skills
– Danger
• Misinterpretation
• May escalate to other forms of confrontation

42. Conversation
• Hyperbole – exaggerated or grandiose accounts
or evaluations of their own behavior or personal
characteristics
▫ Muhammad Ali – “I am the greatest.”
▫ Creative and personalized dance routines after a
touchdown
• May be perceived as harmful boasting that
fosters competition, mocks, and provokes

43. Conversation
• Individual Variability
▫ When first starting school African American boys
and lower-class children used African American
English more than African American girls and
middle-class children
 Difference fades as children get older
 Shift occurs between kindergarten and 3rd
grade
 Reducing by more than half

44. Conversation
• Females
– Females are more verbal than boys
• Against using language that is stigmatized by others
• Will be innovators for new features in language
– Increased number of female educators may allow
females to become closer and feel more comfortable
with their educators
– Females often held to stricter linguistic standards
– African American girls earn higher verbal scores than
African American boys
• Twice as likely to take AP exams
– Educators often focus on manners and social skills

45. Conversation
• Males
• Male language may differ due to miscommunications
between male students and educators
• African American boys are often viewed as being
aggressive troublemakers
• Higher rates of
– Being placed in special education
– Speech therapy
– Suspension
– Expulsion
• Outperform girls on verbal section of the SAT, across
races and ethnicities

46. Vocabulary
• African American English has had differences in
vocabulary as far back as slavery
• “keeping it real” – even though the norms of White
society may prevail in most social institutions, internal
respect for African American culture, which includes
respect for African American English, is essential
• “jazz”, “jive”, “hip”
• “saddity” – snobby or pretentious
• “kitchen” – curly hair a the nape of the neck
• “in a minute” – for a while
• “shorty”, “young’un”, “yo”, “you go, girl”, “off the
hook”, “that’s the bomb”

47. Take-Away Message
• Knowledge of African American English can
provide educators with the tools to better
instruct African American English-speaking
students
▫ Help to recognize and value rules, norms, and
conventions
▫ Help to honor language patterns brought from
home