Ebonics Essays (Examples)

& #8230;Through language, children acquire a sense of who they are as well as a sense of their speech community" (Sulentic 2001, What Is Language? Section: ¶ 2). In addition, language serves as a venue for a particular people to transmit their cultural values and mores.

Language portrays power. Standard English, particularly in the U.S., portrays the language of power. "Language is power and that power grows when one knows the dominant language well" (Yolanda De Mola, as cited in Sulentic 2001, Langauage is Power Section: ¶ 1). Jesse Jackson, an African-American "politician" reportedly employs the term "cash language" to distinguish Standard English to reflect the language of power and wealth in America. Foster (n.d.) asserts that in his statement: "It's not your apti-tude, but your attitude that determines your alti-tude" 10), Jesse Jackson employs alliteration, repetition, rhyme and rhythm, five elements characteristic of a lack discourse style. Sulentic purports…

DEA wants to hire Ebonics translators" by Carol Cratty and Phil Gast, 2010

Ebonics, or African-American English, is the term coined in the mid-1990s to describe a manner of speech used by some African-Americans that some linguists maintain is a legitimate dialect that deserves further study. More pragmatically, the point is made in the title article that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) wants translators who are fluent in Ebonics to facilitate criminal investigations involving Ebonics speakers who may or may not be African-American suspects, but which may also include Hispanics and white Americans. To determine the facts, this paper provides a summary of the title article to include a summary its goal, background information relevant to the article, the authors' findings and conclusions, and the evidence used by the authors to support their claims. In addition, this review also evaluates the respective strengths and weaknesses of the news article…

Linguistics

Ebonics

Ebonics is a term coined by obert L. Williams in 1975. It was developed by merging the words ebony and phonics. Ebonics is defined as a system of oral communication utilized by Americans of African ancestry that consists of phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics, lexicon, rate, rhythm, stress, and nonverbal communication. Ebonics started during the trans-Atlantic African slave trade during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Africans who were brought over to the new world spoke languages such as, Ibo, Yoruba, Hanusa, Wolof, Twi, Hausa, Dogon, Akan, Kimbundu, and Bambara, among others. In spite of the use of these isolating tactics, slaves developed ways to converse with one another. White slave owners also comprehended that they needed a way to converse their needs to their slaves and vice versa. This led to the advancement of a mixture of different African languages and English. This type of language is normally…

" Another is "Sister," or "Brother" (or Sistah or Brotha) which is used to mean another black person on the street. Most of the Ebonics I have heard is on television or in reading articles about it.

Personally, Ebonics does not seem professional enough for use in business and other professional situations. It evolved on the street, and may serve a good place there, but it is not good business communication. Because of the way words and contractions are often dropped, it is often difficult to understand by others who do not speak the language, and that is another reason it does not fit in many professional situations. In personal situations, some Eubonics phrases may be more appropriate, and many have made it into the mainstream, such as "bling-bling," "hood," "chillin'," and many others. In fact, many people may not realize that so many phrases used today actually came from…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.…

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…

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,…

" (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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…