African-American Vernacular English: Origins and Identity

Origins of AAVE

There are several competing theories about the origin of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). Some linguists believe the language derives from West African languages. This dialect theory is based on the understanding that most African-Americans brought to the United States from Africa had to learn English by ear. In doing so, they may have absorbed some English words incorrectly and incorporated those forms into their developing language.

Another prominent explanation is the Creole Hypothesis. This theory holds that enslaved people developed the language themselves. Slaves, who came from many different countries in Africa, formulated AAVE as a means of communicating among themselves. They developed what is called a pidgin — a language formed by combining words from their own native tongues with new words encountered in America — while also drawing on the grammar and speech patterns familiar to them from their home languages. This language was then passed on, indirectly, to their children and grandchildren, so that future generations came to know AAVE as a natural inheritance (Where Did It Come From).

It is also important to note that before the name AAVE was adopted, the dialect was called simply Black English. The name was changed partly because Black people are not the only racial or cultural group to speak the dialect. The renaming also reflected a desire to remove the stigma attached to the earlier label, which had characterized Black English as an inferior language — a characterization most likely rooted in the racial prejudices of the time. The name was formally changed to AAVE around the 1970s.

Most speakers of AAVE live in America's urban areas. Because not all African-Americans live in urban settings, it would be inaccurate to claim that all Black Americans speak AAVE. However, most African-Americans do have some familiarity with it. They may not speak it actively, but they understand it. In most cases, AAVE is spoken at home or among close friends, while Standard English is used in more formal, public contexts.

The Deficient Theory and Its Critics

Some theorists have gone so far as to erroneously claim that AAVE is the result of a cognitive deficiency in Black children — the argument being that Black children are incapable of learning Standard English. This discredited position is known as the Deficient Theory. It suggests that Black children are attempting to speak Standard English but consistently fall short. In response to this belief, a system called DISTAR — Direct Instruction Systems for Teaching Arithmetic and Reading — was developed to teach Black children how to write and speak Standard English, which proponents framed as a more acceptable form of language (Controversy of Black English, Gilbert-Manning).

African-Americans often feel they cannot speak AAVE in public because it is widely viewed as slang and grammatically incorrect. To speak AAVE in a formal setting is treated almost like uttering a profanity in an academic lecture. One key difference, however, is that most people would recognize a profanity, whereas polite society often claims ignorance of the meaning behind words spoken in AAVE — a reaction that is, in many ways, remarkable given how closely AAVE resembles Standard English. In fact, over the years, AAVE has been so thoroughly devalued that it has been gradually absorbed and diluted to the point where it sounds increasingly like Standard English.

The linguist William Labov worked to disprove the Deficient Theory beginning in the 1970s. In his paper "Academic Ignorance and Black Intelligence," Labov argues that there is no problem with the way inner-city children speak. Rather, the problem lies in the relationship between children, teachers, and other educators. He holds that inner-city children do not necessarily have inferior language or experience, but that their language, family style, and ways of living differ significantly from the standard culture of the classroom — and that this difference is not always properly understood by teachers and psychologists. Labov contended that schools must begin to adapt to the language and learning styles of the majority in inner-city schools (Labov).

William Labov's Research and Findings

While Labov affirmed that children have the right to read and write within their own cultural context, he also maintained that they must first gain a command of Standard English. He argued that learning to communicate within one's own culture should be the end result of an American education — not its starting point. In his research, Labov and a team of white and Black investigators followed groups of teenagers in South Central Harlem from 1965 to 1968, studying the language spoken by groups with names like the Jets, Cobras, Thunderbirds, the Aces, and the Oscar Brothers (Labov).

Labov found that the language spoken by these teens was very similar to that spoken by young people in other cities such as Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Washington. At the time, prevailing assumptions held that Black children lacked proper role models for speaking Standard English, that they were too socially isolated, that they didn't know the names of common objects, and that they could not form grammatically correct sentences or convey ideas logically.

Labov directly disputed these claims, arguing that the theorists making such assertions knew nothing about the people or the culture they were describing. He maintained that Black children receive substantial verbal stimulation, do hear proper English, can form logical sentences, and do know the names of common nouns and everyday items. In his words:

"The concept of verbal deprivation has no basis in social reality; in fact, black children in the urban ghettos receive a great deal of verbal stimulation, hear more well-formed sentences than middle-class children, and participate fully in a highly verbal culture; they have the same basic vocabulary, possess the same capacity for conceptual learning, and use the same logic as anyone else who learns to speak and understand English" (Labov).

Labov further argued that the Deficient Theory is dangerous because it gives academia the power to convince others that something is inherently wrong with Black children, while deflecting attention from genuine defects in the educational system responsible for teaching them (Labov).

To illustrate why Black children are sometimes misread as uncommunicative, Labov describes the following scenario. A white interviewer sits at a table. A young Black child enters the room, where a toy fire engine rests on the table. The interviewer asks the child a series of questions, and the child responds with brief, single-word answers. When asked what the object is, the boy pauses eight to twelve seconds and suggests it could be used as a jet. When asked who he might give it to, he pauses again for a similar duration and offers a single name: Clarence.

Labov explains that the child is in a situation in which he believes anything he says could be used against him. He feels like a defendant on trial — the friendly-seeming interviewer functioning, in effect, as a prosecutor. Regardless of how the interviewer behaves, the young man knows from experience that the interviewer holds the upper hand in the exchange. He does not know this person, and he may well view someone of the interviewer's background as someone inclined to find fault with his language and communication. In short, the young man is walking on eggshells (Labov).

As Labov concludes: "The verbal behavior which is shown by the child in the test situation quoted above is not the result of ineptness of the interviewer. It is rather the result of regular sociolinguistic factors operating upon adult and child in this asymmetrical situation" (Labov).

Conclusion

Irving, a young man from Southwest Atlanta interviewed for one of the studies cited here, explained that he learned to speak from his grandparents, both of whom were schoolteachers. His grandmother did not discourage him from speaking AAVE; she simply made sure he knew Standard English and understood when each was appropriate. As he explained, there was code-switching even within his family — some situations called for AAVE, others for Standard English, and everyone understood which was which. He described Standard English as "a weapon that you use wherever you need to go if you're black" (McLucus).

Irving went on to explain that Standard English is often referred to as "proper English" by African-Americans. In some circles, people who speak it exclusively are snubbed or considered arrogant. The inability to speak AAVE fluently can carry the same social stigma as an inability to speak Standard English in formal settings. Irving himself noted that he "did get into trouble for speaking proper." While he viewed Standard English as a practical utility — a language for the corporate world — he regarded AAVE as primarily a social tool: a means of connecting with a community and affirming belonging.

On that note, it is worth addressing what happens when people without a background in AAVE attempt to learn and use the language. When AAVE is learned artificially rather than absorbed through lived experience, the words tend to sound forced and hollow to native speakers — similar to the experience of hearing someone speak a foreign language they have only partially mastered. Because of the deep social and cultural significance embedded in AAVE, it is not easily adopted by outsiders. In fact, AAVE functions as a relatively closed linguistic community: there are things that AAVE speakers say among themselves that are simply not considered acceptable when spoken by those outside that experience.

Works Cited

Jackson, Jenny. "Ebonics and Gullah, One and the Same?"

Labov, William. "Academic Ignorance and Black Intelligence."

Rickford, John. "Creole Origins of AAVE."

"Where Did It Come From?" AAVE resource.

Gilbert-Manning, Fenix. "Controversy of Black English."

McLucus, Bryan. "A Sociolinguist Interview."