Ebonics Essays (Examples)

acial or ethnically-based teasing and peer pressure has long been associated with academic achievement, as Tyson et al. point out in his 2005 report studying the behaviors of blacks and whites during high school. While Tyson et al. also suggests that "school structures" are somewhat to blame for "stigmas" of "acting white" or "acting high and mighty" (582), he maintains that that teasing and peer pressure and also important components.

Because of the profound social implications of interactions between formulaic speaking and non-formulaic speaking students, teachers in the third year classroom need to be aware of students' interpretation of the formulaic speaking students, monitoring the communication between the groups. In addition to being aware of the situation, teachers should use the problem to educate students about stereotypes and teasing in addition to encouraging formulaic speaking students to express themselves in the language of instruction. Thus, third year students' use of…

References

Hamilton, Kendra. (2005). The Dialect Dilemma. Black Issues in Higher Education. 22

O'Neil and Gish. (2008). Customer did not provide the rest of the citation.

Pearson, David P., Hiebert, Elfrieda H., Kamil, Michael L. (2007). Theory and Research into Practice: Vocabulary Assessment: What We Know and What We Need to Learn. Reading Research Quarterly. 42 (2), 282-296.

Perez, Samuel a. (2000). Using Ebonics or Black English as a Bridge to Teaching

Race

The first three sources reviewed were retrieved from the Ethics Updates website. The fourth source was obtained from a newspaper.

Sullivan, ndrew. "What's So Bad bout Hate?" New York Times. 26 September 1999. http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/19990926mag-hate-essay.html

ndrew Sullivan's article is about how hate is not easy to define, and that it comes in many forms that are complicated and often abstract. Sullivan begins his article by recounting the details of a story that was in the news in 1997, of a group of three white supremacists in Texas that tied a black man to the back of their truck and dragged him to his death. He also mentions the ryan Nations member who shot a Filipino-merican mailman at pointblank range, and the beating of the young gay Matthew Shepard, and the writer ponders about the moment that hate begins in someone. In recent years, "hate" has become a buzz word in…

Applebome's article is about the decision by a California school board to recognize Ebonics, or a distinct language spoken by American blacks, as the native language of many of the district's students. This was the first school board to make this decision. The school board hoped that students would receive better instruction in standard English and other subjects if the teachers understood they were teaching students who spoke a separate language. Critics accused the school district of making this move in order to get funding only available to bilingual schools, and some say that recognizing Ebonics will simply reinforce poor grammar. Linguists argue, however, that it is in fact a distinct dialect, and that many of the elements of Ebonics are reflections of African language structure.

Times Wire Reports. "Activists March, Seek Leads in 1946 Lynching." Los Angeles Times. 3 April 2005.

In recent news, people in Georgia remembered four black people who were victims of hate crimes in the 1940s. In 1946, a white hate mob attacked two men and two women in their car, then dragged them into the woods and shot them. This activist group that marched is trying to both raise awareness of hate crimes today, as well as encouraging anyone with information about this lynching many decades ago to come forward so that the killers can be prosecuted.

Immigration

The target family immigrated to the United States of America (USA) in 2001 from Western part of Kenya in East Africa. Composed of two parents and three children, a ten-year-old girl, eight-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl, the family's move to the U.S.A. was not an easy one. The man of the family, Oyot, before immigrating to the U.S., worked as a primary school teacher in a small township of ongo in Nyanza province of Kenya. Life in Kenya was unbearable for him as his monthly salary was insufficient for his family.

Oyot had always wanted to leave Kenya in search of a better life for his family; there were issues that motivated his immigration to The U.S.A. First, in Africa, families are extended and some members of Oyot's family mocked him continually. They claimed that he was cursed and that he would never amount to anything. Oyot belongs…

References

Clegg, L.H. (1997, January). EBONICS:A Serious Analysis of African-American Speech

Patterns. MAAT News .

Kenya and the National Assembly . (2008, Oct 16). Kenya National Assembly Official Record

(Hansard). SACCO in Kenya .

African-American Vernacular English can be described as an assortment of American English that is mostly used by urban-working class and mostly bi-dialectical middle-class black Americans. The language is also commonly known as Black Vernacular English or Black English. In some cases, particularly outside the academic community, it is referred to as Ebonics given its distinctive features and similarities with other non-standard English varieties. The similarities with other varieties are evident when compared to various standard and non-standard English languages that are commonly used in the United States and the Caribbean. In the past few years, African-American Vernacular English has been the subject of various public debates and attracted considerable attention among sociolinguists. This paper examines the development of this language, its distinctive features, cultural context, and socio-economic implications of the use of African-American Vernacular English.

oots of African-American Vernacular English

The history and origin of African-American Vernacular English and other…

References

Fisher, D. & Lapp, D. (2013, May). Learning to Talk Like the Test: Guiding Speakers of African

American Vernacular English. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 56(8), 634-648.

Harris, Y.R. & Schroeder, V.M. (2013, January 24). Language Deficits or Differences: What We

Know about African-American Vernacular English in the 21st Century. International Education Studies, 6(4), 194-204.

Human Development

Operant conditioning could be used to get my roommate to make his bed by providing negative reinforcement every time he fails to make his bed. I could tell him that he is not allowed to use the TV. This should reinforce the idea that he must not fail to make his bed. Classical conditioning could be used to get my roommate to make his bed by providing an unconditioned stimulus -- telling him our neighbor is coming by to use the computer in the mornings from now on. He will naturally react by wanting to tidy the room including his bed.

The hypothesis I would use for testing the effect of Baby Einstein videos on cognitive development would be: Baby Einstein has a positive effect on the cognitive development of toddlers between the ages of 1-3. This would be a longitudinal study, using a randomized sample. A control…

In addition, they were often enslaved by fellow blacks, capitalizing on the white man's desires, and so, another misconception about slavery is demolished, races did not band together; they worked against each other when enslaving their neighbors.

Slavery ended due to several instances, such as nations becoming larger and larger, taking over more territory, and thus reducing the areas available for slave capture. These areas tended to be small and weak, and when they were taken over, they were no longer acceptable for slave capture (Sowell 115). Serfdom, a popular agricultural solution in Europe, tended to supplant slavery, ending it there, as well. A true philosophy of ending enslavement began in Britain in the 18th century, before that, most civilizations did not view slavery as a problem at all. In fact, the people who first objected were extremely conservation religious members of society, but this is often overlooked or ignored.…

References

Sowell, Thomas. Black Rednecks and White Liberals. San Francisco, Encounter Books, 2005.

Officials in border states see the matter as far more than a scholarly legal debate. Pam Slater, a San Diego County supervisor, called the current system "a travesty" that is bankrupting state and local governments. Educating 355,000 citizen-children of illegal aliens cost California taxpayers $1.7 billion in fiscal 1995-96, for example.

An offer of financial support to children born in the United States is far too great a lure," she said. "This loophole must be closed (p. 5)."

Educating illegal immigrants' children is reflected in the test scores of the border state public schools, and other school systems with a large population of illegal immigrants. While federal and state law prohibits the collecting of information that would specifically target Hispanic children as the problem behind low test scores, one might conclude that for some school districts the language barrier might contribute to those low test scores.

However, while we cannot…

References

Enforcing Immigration Laws. (2007, March 17). The Washington Times, p. A12. Retrieved March 13, 2008, from Questia database:  http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5019905500  http://www.questiaschool.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=106216446

Kalmar, T.M. (2000). Illegal Alphabets and Adult Biliteracy: Latino Migrants Crossing the Linguistic Border. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Retrieved March 14, 2008, from Questia database:  http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=106216448  http://www.questiaschool.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5001985430

States Pay $7.4 Billion to Educate Illegals; Report Notes Drain on U.S. Children. (2003, August 21). The Washington Times, p. A04. Retrieved March 13, 2008, from Questia database:  http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5001985430 

'We Are Overwhelmed'; Caring for Illegal Immigrants Taxes Facilities in Border States. (2002, September 24). The Washington Times, p. A01. Retrieved March 13, 2008, from Questia database:  http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5000828657

Within this shared common language they are able to see a commonality or a common existence and, despite the many other differences that exist, this common thread will hold a society together.

Thus, it can be said that, according to Marx, language is the great equator. Within language a society is able to claim equality as, at least at the time of his writing, societies, regardless of how many classes it may have had, shared one basic language. However, this is not necessarily the truth today. As societies become more and more intermixed, due to immigration and the global economy, languages are beginning to clash and the emergence of class-based languages are starting to arise (such as Ebonics). When these clashes occur, one begins to see sub-societies rally behind their language and thus, their right to identification. When someone else tries to translate ones language as being the foreign one,…

Bibliography

Crumb, R. (1996): Kafka. New York: Kitchen Sink Press, Inc.

Marx, Karl. (1998): Communist Manifesto. New York: Penguin Group.

" (Halpin and urt, 1998) Duois states: "The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife -- this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of White Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face. (Duois, 1903)

The work of Pope (1998) conducted a study to make examination of the relationship between psychosocial development and racial…

Bibliography

Alessandria, Kathryn P. And Nelson, Eileen S. (2005) Identity Development and Self-Esteem of First-Generation American College Students: An Exploratory Study. Project Muse January/February 2005 Vol. 46 No. 1 Online available at  http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/journal_of_college_student_development/v046/46.1alessandria.pdf 

ARMY ROTC: The John Hopkins University (nd) Training and Curriculum. Online available at  http://www.jhu.edu/rotc/training.htm 

Astin, a.W. (1984). Student involvement: A developmental theory for higher education. Journal of College Student Personnel, 25, 297-308.

Astin, a.W. (1993). What matters in college? Four critical years revisited. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Essentially, what the governor has done is strengthen the hand of tribes without federal recognition to exercise rights in a way that is similar to those with federal recognition. For this reason, it is prudent to investigate possible funding from these other sources.

The General Situation

The language situation of Native American Indians in North America in general and California in particular is not good at the present time. Native American language groups are dying out. The goal of bilingual programs is binary in nature. Besides promoting the proficiency of English for those who do not speak it as a native language, there is an ancillary responsibility to preserve the Native languages themselves (Pewewardy, and Hammer, 1). According to the data listed in Census 2000, 4.3 million people, or 1.5% of the total U.S. population, reported that they were American Indian and Alaska Native ("U.S. Census Bureau"). The total population…

Works Cited

"American Indian and Alaska Native Populations." U.S. Census Bureau. U.S. Census Bureau, 2011. Web. 1 Dec 2011. .

Betances, Samuel. "My People Made it Without Bilingual Education What's Wrong With Your People?." California School Boards Journal. (1986): 1-3. Web. 30 Nov. 2011. .

Bureau of Indian Affairs. Bureau of Indian Education. Bureau of Indian Education Guidance Handbook for Schools in Restructuring. Washington, D.C.: U.S. GPO, 2008. Web. .

"All California Reservations." Hanksville. Hanksville.net, 05 April 1997. Web. 1 Dec 2011. .

Jordan has not been honored by naming any street or postal holidays. She was respected and recognized by her own milestones; as she designed modern Harlem with . Buckminster Fuller, had coffee with Malcolm X, received suggestive teachings from Toni Cade Bambara, acted with Angela Davis in a film, and authored an opera with John Adams and Peter Sellars. Irrespective of so much achievements there was no 'Day' named after June Jordan. She was the awarded author of about two dozen books, a great American poet known both for creativity and collections and was one of most critical activists and teachers who have not yet been recognized. This paper is a good testimony to know her better. (June Jordan- www.randomhouse.com)

Jordan is all-inclusive as a poet, essayist, reporter, dramatist, academician, cultural and political activist, however above all she is an inspirational teacher both in words and actions and is considered…

References

Brown, Kimberly N. (1999) "June Jordan (1936- )." Contemporary African-American Novelists: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. Ed. Emmanuel S. Nelson. Westport, CT: Greenwood. pp: 233-37.

Busby, Margaret. "June Jordan" June 20, 2002. The Guardian. pp: A4-A5

Carpenter, Humphrey; Prichard, Mari. (1984) "Oxford Companion to Children's Literature" New York: Oxford University Press.

Jackson, Agnes Moreland. "June Jordan (b. 1936)" Retrieved from http://college.hmco.com/english/heath/syllabuild/iguide/jordan.html Accessed on 12 October, 2004

Also, student's vocabulary and formality of speech can and will differ in different social contexts, from school to home to the playground, as indeed does all human speech, as even teachers adopt a greater degree of formality speaking to the principal, to students, and also in their own homes.

hy teach standard speech at all? hat to do when certain patterns of speech, such as Black English, have different grammatical variations than standard written English? One approach is to stress contextual aspects of speech in education. (Chaika, 1994, p.299) It cannot be denied that job applicants and people are validated and valued differently, depending on how their speech coheres to Standard ritten English. Even dialect speakers are evaluated on a valuation gradient, as speakers with certain desirable accents, like a British accent for example, might be esteemed more than speakers with a traditionally Black or Spanish accent, unfairly. (Chaika, 1994,…

Works Cited

Adger, Carolyn Temple. (Mar 1997) "Dialect Education: Not only for Oakland." Vol. 20. No. 2. ERIC Database. Retrieved 2 Oct 2005 http://www.cal.org/ericcll/news/199703/9703Dialect.html

Chaika, Elaine. (1994) Language -- The Social Mirror: Teaching Methods. Third Edition. New York: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.

Wolfram, W., Christian, D., & Adger, C. (1996) Dialects in schools and communities. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Racism in Media

Television news casting has a long history of perpetuating negative stereotypes of the Black community through what the news broadcasts and how it creates images that are transformed into symbols that become associated with the African-American community. Through these images, certain signs and symbols are created that later become associated with the Black community. hile attempts to make media more inclusive have marginally succeeded, failure lies in its inability to create any sort of social change but instead continues to perpetuate stereotypes.

In "Racism and the Media," Yasmin Jiwanai describes the role the media has on people's everyday lives. Jiwani writes that the media provides "us with definitions about who we are as a nation; they reinforce our values and norms; they give us concrete examples of what happens to those who transgress these norms; and most importantly, they perpetuate certain ways of seeing the world and…

Works Cited

Balkaran, Stephen. "Mass Media and Racism." The Yale Political Quarterly Vol. 21 No. 1

(October 1999). Web. 3 December 2012.

Brown, Michael K. Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society. Los Angeles:

University of California Press, 2003. GoogleBooks. 3 December 2012.

Language

American English is incredible malleable and diverse, and it would be a mistake to impose artificial rules. Not only would it be a mistake, it could even be construed as racist. The imaginary Correct English (whether Oxford or Webster-based prescriptive grammatical rules) is one that is clearly defined by the white upper-class hegemony in higher education. As Deresiewicz (2005) states, "there is no such thing as Correct English, and there never has been." Dialects and accents are a sign that the language is alive. Language reflects subculture and social identity, and can allow for the vivid expression of ideas that would be severely restricted if there were only one Correct English.

Language is a form of cultural capital. Therefore, "stigmatized forms" of language such as edneck or African-American speech, are "typically those used by social groups other than the educated middle classes -- professional people, including those in law,…

References

Baron, D. (n.d.). Language and society. PBS. Retrieved online:  http://www.pbs.org/speak/words/sezwho/socialsetting/ 

Cutler, C. (n.d.). Crossing over. PBS. Retrieved online:  http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/prestige/crossing/ 

Deresiewicz, W. (2005). You talkin' to me? The New York Times. Jan 9, 2005. Retrieved online:  http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/09/books/review/09DERESIE.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print&position= 

Finegan, E. (n.d.). State of American. PBS. Retrieved online:  http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/correct/prescriptivism/

God, and the ord was God. So reads the first verse of the book of John, just two in a handful of bible verses I was made to memorize and recite before I was able to read. These verses and the ones preceding and following them were read to me nightly -- and often in the mornings as well -- by my mother, grandmother and grandfather in our home in the small Southern Baptist community of Perry, Georgia. In addition to the bible, I was read bible stories in books with colorful illustrations meant to engage children. The illustrations helped me to associate meaning with the words on the page, while the words themselves struck me as just another way of painting a picture. hen I was asked to recite the verses or stories read to me, remembering the picture the words described often helped me to remember the requested…

Works Cited

Brice, Shirley. Ways with words: language, life, and work in communities and classrooms. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

African-American Vernacular English

There are a couple of theories as to the origin of African-American Vernacular Englsh (AAVE). Some linguists believe that the language derives from est African languages. This dialect theory is based on the knowledge that most African-Americans who were brought to the United States from Africa had to learn how to speak English by ear. The may have picked up some of the English words incorrectly and incorporated the incorrect words in their language. Another theory is called the Creole Hypothesis. This theory bases its origin on the thought that slaves developed the language themselves. The slaves, who came from many different countries in Africa formulated AAVE so that they may talk amongst themselves. They developed with is called a pidgin by combining words from their own language with new words from America. They used grammar and speech patterns that were known to them from their own…

Works Cited

Jackson, Jenny Ebonics and Gullah, One and the Same? (http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~petersj4/jenny.htm)

Labov, William Academic Ignorance and Black Intelligence (Labov (http://www.arches.uga.edu/~bryan/AAVE/).

Rickford, John. "Creole Origins of AAVE  http://www.stanford.edu/~rickford/papers/CreoleOriginsOfAAVE.html 

Where Did It Come at (http://www.arches.uga.edu/~bryan/AAVE/).

Homosexual Interview

The subject of this interview is a twenty-nine-year-old homosexual male of African-American descent, originally from Miami, Florida. He has been employed as a Certified Personal Fitness Trainer since his 1997 graduation from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he majored in Kinesthesiology and Movement Science

and minored in Broadcast Communications.

The subject seemed ideal for this interview because he is openly homosexual himself, but acutely irritated by the common homosexual "affect" that he characterizes as a learned or emulated set of effeminate mannerisms and speech patterns that many people have come to associate with (or even expect from) male homosexuals. The subject has repeatedly expressed his disgust with homosexuals whom he describes as "flames" or even "faggots," because as a comfortably assimilated homosexual male, he believes that he (and all homosexual males) suffer from stereotyping and the homophobia that he believes it inspires. Specifically, the subject…

WORKS CITED

1. Breedlove, Marc, S. Sexual Differentiation of the Human Nervous System.

Annual Review of Psychology (Jan 1994) Accessed April 26, 2004, at:  http://www.highbeam.com/library/doc3.asp?DOCID=1G1:14857116& ; num=5& ctrlInfo=Round1a%3AProd%3ASR%3AResult

2. Branden, Nathaniel. The Disowned Self. (1989)

New York: Bantam

Spanglish is a combination of Spanish and English, with each of these two languages having more or less of an influence on the final product depending on the circumstances. The speech of Spanghlish users involves them bringing together the two languages and creating a dialect that is not native to the country they inhabit. Spanglish is widely used in Hispanic communities in North America, as they prefer it as an intermediary dialect assisting them to connect with the English-speaking community.

Living in two cultures can have a strong impact on a person, as he or she gradually comes to switch back and forth between cultural values promoted in each of these respective environments. This is perfectly demonstrated by individuals speaking Spanglish, taking into account that they need to concentrate on adopting attitudes that enable them to improve their relationship to both English and Spanish-speaking communities.

Although Spanish plays an integral…

Works cited:

Betz, Regina M., "Chicana "Belonging" in Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street," Retrieved November 23, 2013, from http://rmmla.innoved.org/ereview/SI2012/Betz.pdf

Canas, Alberto, "Spanglish: The Third Way," Retrieved November 23, 2013, from  http://www.hokuriku-u.ac.jp/jimu/kiyo/kiyo25/209.pdf 

Cisneros, Sandra, "The House on Mango Street," (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2004)

Johnston, Bethany, "Code Switching as Spanglish," (GRIN Verlag, 14 Jan 2011)

Linguicism and Its Implications for Assessing English Language Learners (ELL) For Suspected Disabilities

(a) Define The Term Linguicism And Explain It In Your Own Words,

Throughout the 1980s, a period of language conservatism resurfaced, with federal officials giving up their proactive position and advocating more decision making be moved to local control. The 1980s in addition saw the increase of the official English or English-only movement, which sparked the contemporary debate around the language and which shaped new tensions for educators teaching linguistically assorted students (Banks, 2006). During the 1990s, the sociopolitical environment became openly antagonistic toward the linguistic rights of non-English speakers with the passage of California Proposition 227 (Doppen & Tesar, 2008). The California proposition made sure that all children be placed in English-language classrooms, despite their English-language ability. Non-English-speaking, immigrant children were permitted to participate in ESL classes for 1 year (180 school days). The proposition's objective…

References

Banks, J. A. (2006). The historical reconstruction of knowledge about race: Implications for transformative teaching. Educational Researcher, 24(2), 15-25.

Banks, J., Cookson, P., Gay, G., Hawley, W., Irvine, J., Nieto, Schofield, J., & Stephan, W. (2001). Diversity within Unity: Essential Principles for Teaching and Learning in a Multicultural Society. The Phi Delta Kappan, 83(3), 196-198, 200-203.

Calderon, M. E., & Wasden, R. (2012). Preparing secondary school teachers to teach reading, language and content: A look at professional development programs. In J. Coppola & E. Primas (Eds.), One classroom, many learners: Best literacy practices for today's multilingual classroom (pp. 251-270). Washington, DC: International Reading Association.

Colombi, M. C. & Schleppegrell, M. J. (2002). Theory and practice in the development of advanced literacy. In M. C. Columbi and M. J. Schleppegrell (Eds.), Developing advanced literacy in first and second languages, (pp. 1-19). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

There is no cause worth killing and dying for, and killing and dying are not heroic.

It would be different maybe if another country invaded the United States (like we did Iraq) and want to change our government. Probably most people would fight that. But Vietnam and Iraq are "mistakes." Almost everybody knows it. Why should we die for a mistake? Why should 3,000 men and women die in Iraq for a mistake? More than 60% of the people in the U.S. are against the war in Iraq. They don't want it. And now the president wants to send 21,500 more troops there. That makes about 2,388 more who will also die. it's like throwing good money after bad. We never going to "win."

Anybody who goes in the military now must be just plain stupid. People that join up believe they'll find out what they're worth, how brave they…

References

Boyz in the Hood (1991). Film, 112 minutes. Columbia Tristar Home Video.

The demographics of military enlistment after 9/11 web site:  http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/em987.cfm 

Hedges, C. (2001). War is a force that gives us meaning. New York: Public Affairs.

Marriage a casuality of the war (2005). People, 17 Oct, 64 (16) 128-130, 132.

African-American in the Media

The comedy Barbershop, starring Ice Cube juxtaposes the harshness of city life with the resiliency of the people living in the city. The movie with its black cast has an impressive standing in the movie industry for the year 2002. I'm not sure that I agree that this specific film means a breakthrough for African-Americans in the industry. The Black person has after all been part of the industry for a long time, and there are many African-American stars, not featured in this movie, who have made a great success of their movie careers.

The "integration period" for example is determined to be around the years 1949-1969. During this period there is an integration of Black people into the societies depicted in films. Thus the African-American is portrayed in a more positive way. Also, "black" themes and issues of conflict among races and peers are depicted…