What Experts Wish You Knew About African American English

[00:00:00]there are a handful of videos out there purporting to teach about african-american english mostly they're a little out of date call it african-american vernacular english which now has a more limited meaning in linguistics and mostly they're made by word nerd white guys i thought it's time for something a little different so a while back i interviewed four of my favorite linguists about african-american english i sat down with dr hiram smith professor of linguistics at bucknell university dr sanja lainhart professor of linguistics at the university of arizona you may know it as the same department as noam chomsky minion phd candidate in linguistics at georgetown university and christopher hall a co-author of mine and researcher and facilitator at culture point all four have published on african-american english but more importantly they've significantly impacted how i and many others think about aae and language in general so today we're going to hear what they wish the public knew about african american english don't forget to like and subscribe and ring the bell for notifications i'm dr taylor jones and this is language jones [Music] so you know who you're listening to dr lainhart wrote the book on african-american language literally the oxford handbook of african-american language dr smith is an expert on historical development of african-american english and changing uses of the n-word yes that n-word which he's currently writing a book on he's also an expert on the spanish lexifer creole palincaro black lingus do a lot more than only study aae mini is an expert on aae in washington dc and was the main interviewer for the corpus of regional african american language's recent recordings the corpus is open to the public and i've got a link in the description she's a phd candidate at georgetown writing her dissertation on aae and she's involved with the language change in dc project which has already documented black dc regionalism like bama zeist and luncheon and chris is the hyper polyglot who got me interested in linguistics in the first place a native harlemite and a jazz musician and a co-author of mine we've published are presented on negation and negative polarity items in a e n words but no not like that one rachel dolezal's accents statistical methods and changing use of the n word yes that one he's also an expert on diversity equity and inclusion and a facilitator for culture point where he trains government military and private sector clients i asked all four variations on the same question what do you wish the average person knew about african-american english because of what my academic experience was and because they're all linguists i expected certain things and honestly i was a little surprised by what they said i was expecting discussions of accents the minutia of grammatical and phonological rules and so on while there was a little of that instead there were a few things that came up over and over again and they're themes that aren't really talked about in a lot of the material on aae that's already out there those themes were one not all african-americans speak aae and not all aae speakers are african-american this is probably because they were talking to me and they know that i grew up in a speech communities two aae is systematic and rule governed and those rules exist in other languages that people respect three you can get it wrong it has grammatical rules like anything else when you break those rules you aren't speaking ae correctly yes there's such a thing as correct and incorrect aae four the reason that people don't always respect ae isn't really about the language it's about stigma and five ae speakers shift registers within aae from vernacular to african-american standard english and many but not all shift across dialects between ae and other varieties of english we might think of as white let's hear these in their own words note that as they discuss different topics they might shift among african-american vernacular english african-american english and african-american language depending on what exactly they're talking about and the point that they're trying to make so first up the venn diagram of ae speakers and black americans is not a circle so when i think about african-american vernacular english african-american english african-american language i think about a a linguistic variety a type of language is spoken um predominantly both people but people who aren't black can't speak african-american language and people and it doesn't say that every black person speaks african-american language i think those are really important things to remember so i'll say it again because i think it's critical every black person doesn't speak african-american language and every person that speaks african-american language doesn't have to be black dr lainhart echoed those points and talking about why she called her book the handbook of african-american language so african-american language simply is language spoken by her among african americans and i used that uh based upon sally coco muffweeny's uh presentation and paper that he did for another book that i edited in which he does a comparison uh for how you name things so for example japanese is language spoken by or among people from japan right so sort of that sort of concept so what that means is it doesn't mean that other people can't speak it it's just that this is the origination of it to really hammer the point home there's nothing biological about speaking aae it's social so it's the language variety originated by african americans and spoken by many but not all of them and a small handful of people who aren't african-american the second point was that ae is a system that has rules as chris put it it's a thing what would i want people to know um firstly i mean simply it's a thing you know just simply put it's it's really is a thing it's um it's a it's not a a qualitative thing like it's not bad english like some people say it's actually what happens when you have cultural contact you know one could argue it's a dialect of english it's a a pigeon or creole at some point that developed into its own thing because of cultural circumstances or historical circumstances but it's certainly something that exists and there's a lot of overlap with standard english there's some things that make it unique because of the aforementioned circumstances or you know the history but there's definitely a system dr smith built on this sentiment referring to a classic experiment that illustrates the grammatical system of aae i think all linguists know that despite and people in general kind of know this that just despite our linguistic differences and dialect differences that for the most part we're understood we can for the most part but the simple cookie monster test so we do this and it uh you've got a picture of a sesame street the cookie monster elmo cookie monster in the photo does not have a cookie in his hand elmo is eating eating cookies in the in the photo but you ask students and you survey people and say who be eating cookies the vast majority of whites or and those who are not familiar with black english will say elmo be eating cookies because they say he's eating them right now whereas those who are familiar with black english say no cookie monster doesn't have cookies in his hand right now or in his mouth but he's the one who'd be eating cookies because they understand um that uh invariant b is for habitual actions building on this the third point was that you can get it wrong and i think that for me african-american language is what i want people to know about african-american language is that it's rule-governed it's very systematic you can do it wrong just like you can do standard english wrong you can do it wrong and if you do people will look at you well that doesn't make sense and because you can do it wrong because you can say things that are not grammatical let me put it that way because you can say things that don't follow the rules that's clearly evidence of rules this is a crucial point that i want to underscore ae is not broken english and it's not just anything goes it's not mistakes it's a system and because it's a system you can get it wrong as non-ae speakers often do here's many giving another example beyond the grammar police like there's things that i would never say like i would never say that right because you can't use those two features together yeah i mean you can't use you know and it's not about style and it's not about you know right it's just that that doesn't right so it doesn't have parts yeah she is not doing it or she she's not doing it but i could also say she ain't doing it and i can say she doing it she'd be doing it but i can never say she ain't be doing it right and i think just making sure that that paradigm of what's possible and what's not people need to understand that just like we do conjugations in english and spanish and just like we have different forms that we can use in english and spanish and any other language so is it in african-american language as well the part about the grammar police i think it's really important like i'm not talking about you know susie telling you not to use ain't but i'm really talking about the fact that we do use ain't we can we can talk about using eight um but in this case she ain't doing it it's totally fine she'd be doing it it's totally fine and and you can say she be doing it she don't be doing it but she would never say she ain't be doing it notice that what these experts are talking about is a core component of the grammar how you conjugate verbs and what those conjugations mean often when people talk about ae they talk about slang which reduces ae to merely passing fads and sassy catchphrases those may be used in aae but they're not ae it's a set of rich systems of syntax and phonology when linguists talk about aae we're talking about habituality markers and remote past marking and negative auxiliary inversion as in don't nobody never say nothing and said it nobody don't never say nothing and camouflage constructions at different systematic accents i've published papers that talk about aave but i'm actually talking about a vernacular register of aae not all ae is aave and calling everything aave reduces ae to only one of its registers and gives the impression that african-american english is just slang it's not and perhaps most importantly of all their points the stigma around aae isn't actually based in linguistic fact if you say double negatives are wrong but french is sophisticated or you love russian literature you're not being consistent as many put it the stigma is more about skin than language um when i think about when i think about all of the negativity and the way people look at african american language i don't think it's about the language at all it's really about the people who speak the language and it's really about we think about where we are today in 2020 um we've just witnessed the horrible horrible murder of george floyd you know we brianna taylor we've seen ahmad arber like we see all of these things happening in front of us it has nothing to do with the words that they're coming out of those people's mouths and everything to do with the skin color and i think when we talk about african american language if we put this same beautiful melodic variety into the mouth of someone else it wouldn't get as much negativity or as much um criticism as it gets but because the person who speaks it the group of people who speak it we're criticizing them chris asks a rhetorical question that i think gets to the heart of the matter what's more important the message or how it's delivered right and for a lot of people there's a politic about the how delivered when people have conversations they're always weighing what is said against how it's delivered and judging you know weighing one or the other deciding the importance of one over the other is key in a lot of a lot of places all over the world and um with african-american english with the history of africans in america at any given time or any group in america really but in this case africans in america um the appropriateness of a particular of the usage of a particular register of african-american english or african-american english at all is constantly weighed over what is said lastly african-american english isn't always vernacular it's great to see people talking about aae but the fact that what is caught on out in the world as aave is a little depressing sandra lane heart's the editor of the oxford handbook of african-american language and she's been a proponent of the term aal for years so i'll start with her take on names and what comes into play when talking about how african-americans speak and so but that also means that it includes all african americans and that means as a result there is a continuum just like there is in any other language from what you might sort of think about as this uh basilecto form if you want to use the creole continuum to a sort of acrolecto standard form right this these standard forms which arthur spears talks about my conversation with sandra was so enlightening that i really want to share it with everyone you can watch the whole thing here and there's a link in the description she wasn't the only one to say that aae is more than just its vernacular register some have argued uh like arthur spears that there is uh not just we're not just talking about vernacular varieties when we're talking about black folks english but that black there is a black standard standard black english yeah however you define that there's a lot more that can be said and i hope to have many future public discussions with these scholars and others like them i have another video explaining the basic linguistic facts of ae here these experts made different points today which i think are bigger picture and in some cases a little more subtle let's take a second and recap in a slightly different order than we saw just now ae exists it's a language variety that has rules and structure which means you can get those rules wrong it has multiple registers including a higher educated standard register and despite that is highly stigmatized but the stigma is about who speaks it not anything inherent in the language variety itself and the fact that people don't understand it and don't respect the people who speak it has serious and dramatic repercussions but we'll leave those for another video on another day what do you wish people knew about aae is there anything about it you wish you knew more about leave me a comment below and let me know if you haven't already don't forget to like and subscribe and ring the bell for notifications i've got merchandise available link in the description and i'm always on the lookout for interesting questions to make a video about so leave me a comment or a question below until next time [Music]