WRITTEN ENGLISHES
Diversity and Inclusivity
in the Writing Classroom
Researched
African American Vernacular English (AAVE)
Political
The University of Duisberg-Essen supports a page describing AAVE and its history, grammar, vocabulary, and phonology as well as the political issues surrounding it.
The PBS "Do You Speak American?" page includes a look into the origins of AAVE or Ebonics - a controversial discussion in itself - and an overview of its politically-charged and educationally-sound recognition as a legitimate way of speaking and writing.
The PBS "Do You Speak American?" page provides a timeline of the AAVE or Ebonics discussion in American politics.
The University of Hawai'i hosts a language varieties site which includes detailed, relevant information on the history, vocabulary, sounds, and grammar characteristic of AAVE. It also includes helpful classroom tips and links for further reading.
The Center for Applied Linguistics provides an affirmative definition of AAVE as well as an extensive bibliography, a page of online resources, and a list of AAVE's appearances in literature.
The Linguist List: International Linguistics Community Online provides a place for academic discussion of AAVE as a legitimate dialect and features links to resolutions, reactions, and historical analyses.
Linguistic
Relevant
African American Vernacular English, variously known as Ebonics or Black English, has a long history in the United States. With roots in West African languages, it is associated with racial and inner-city communities. It is frequently encountered in popular culture.
Continue exploring common language varieties
It is the thing that black people love so much — the saying of words, holding them on the tongue, experimenting with them, playing with them. It’s a love, a passion. Its function is like a preacher’s: to make you stand up out of your seat, make you lose yourself and hear yourself. The worst of all possible things that could happen would be to lose that language. There are certain things I cannot say without recourse to my language. It’s terrible to think that a child with five different present tenses comes to school to be faced with books that are less than his own language. And then to be told things about his language, which is him, that are sometimes permanently damaging. He may never know the etymology of Africanisms in his language, not even know that ‘hip’ is a real word or that ‘the dozens’ meant something. This is a really cruel fallout of racism.
---Toni Morrison in an interview with The New Republic on March 21, 1981
For an example of how to begin applying this information in the classroom, the University of North Carolina School of Education provides a sample lesson plan using a video and a verb worksheet to introduce 8th grade students to the history of AAVE and to illustrate its legitimacy as a rule-driven dialect of English.
Read more here.
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The ASCD website also features the article " Using Ebonics or Black English as a Bridge to Teaching Standard English" by Samuel A. Perez which presents different strategies for using AAVE in the writing classroom.
Read more here.
© 2013 by the students of IUPUI's ENG-W600 - Written Englishes: Living Cultural Realities, Dr. Kim Brian Lovejoy, professor.