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This article is also accessible as a Word Document: AAVE Course Offerings in 5 US News and World Report Rated National Universities.

 

 

Abstract: The following paper provides a critical overview of Rebecca Howard's 1996 article “The Great Wall of African American English in the American College Classroom.” In this article, Howard suggests implementing AAVE courses as a way to promote AAVE as equal to Standard English, or European American English. Based on this suggestion, and bounded by John Trimbur's argument of a monolingual American linguistic culture, this paper reports on the presence or absence of AAVE courses in Fall 2013 course offerings at the 5 top-listed national universities in U.S. World and News Reports.

 
AAVE Course Offerings in Top 5 U.S. News Week Rated National Universities

In her article “The Great Wall of African American English in the American College Classroom,” Howard recounts a classroom experience where, in a course she taught titled “Language, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States,” her class volunteered to speak African American Vernacular English (AAVE) for a day. The students set a date and began to prepare. However, soon the idea had its retractors. Howard states that two white students met her privately to explain that “they did not want to speak AAVE, because if they did, they would appear ‘prejudiced’” (270). The issue soon became “hotly debated” and when the day to speak AAVE in the classroom arrived, Howard found that


Yet another surprise awaited us…we discovered that no one except two African American students and I were willing to try it. It wasn’t just European American students it was African Americans, too. When the moment came for us to speak AAVE in class, the African Americans discovered that they did not want to be publicly associated with the language. One said that he had spent years learning to speak the standard and did not now want to make himself look ignorant in front of his European American peers. (270)

 

Although it is difficult to say what motivations lie behind the statements Howard recalls her students providing, it does seem accurate when Howard concludes that “the taint of stigma…motivated the collective desire to keep AAVE a private code sometimes witnessed but never spoken by outsiders” (270).

 

John Trimbur, in his article Linguistic Memory and the Politics of U.S. English, addresses this stigma with a broader lens. Trimbur designs to “trace the postcolonial politics of language in the United States” and then “suggest[s] how the linguistic memory that emerges from decolonization and nation building continues, often in unsuspected ways, to influence the language policy of the modern U.S. university and U.S. college composition” (575). Trimbur concludes that there exists a “relentless monolingualism” in “American linguistic culture,” and that the primacy of English in education persists, particularly in writing education in the U.S.(584). He explains that this occurred due to the Founding Father’s neutrality on the subject of language—whether or not the postcolonial U.S. would have a national language—and that this resulted in a covert, socially-controlled language policy of “English mainly” (577). Using much more nuance than I have presented here, Trimbur utilizes Postcolonial Theory and Joseph Roach’s theory of surrogation to attribute the “ritualized forgetting” of the United States’ multilingual past to an “Anglo-American linguistic dyad” and the insertion of an Anglo-Saxon surrogate. His analyses of Benjamin Franklin and Noah Webster seem to support the view that these postcolonial leaders imagined some truly “American” archetype existed, including a single archetypal American form of language, e.g. Standard English.

 

Thus, both articles present positions where language equity remains an issue. Trimbur finds a persistent ambivalence towards multilingualism in the U.S. due to its faulty national memory. Howard witnesses the inequality of European American English and African American English in her college classroom when students aborted an effort to speak AAVE due to what she determined was its stigmatized use.

 

The question remains, then, what do we do? How does one enact pluralistic pedagogy? Howard’s article, in particular, offers what seems a pragmatic step towards language equity. Howard suggests treating AAVE as other languages are treated in the university—offering it as a course where the language can be learned, not just studied as a cultural artifact (278). I can predict some counterarguments—for instance, U.S. universities teach languages that are considered foreign; AAVE originates from within the U.S. population. What kind of message does it send if we teach otherwise? However, if someone wants to argue that point—that treating AAVE as a foreign language perpetuates some kind of separation from the mainstream—they argue from a perception of mainstream U.S. as monolingual, which is just the kind of narrative that Trimbur tries to loosen.  The point of offering AAVE as a course is to expose more generations to its use in academia, thus familiarizing them with its use and freeing the language from the stigma it currently endures (as Howard found in her 1996 classroom) (270). In Howard’s own words:


What would be accomplished in an AAVE course would be different from what is accomplished in Italian or Swahili courses. The European American students would be learning the language, true, but they would be learning it in order to alleviate their ignorance about the culture from which it derives, and, initially at least, seldom for the purpose of entering that culture. (278)


Howard goes on to explain that teaching AAVE is this manner would instruct students “in the larger construct called American culture” and correct the mistaken view that it is a “monolithic European American culture” (278). Thus, Howard makes a convincing case to consider AAVE courses as a step towards linguistic parity… But, has any of this come to pass?

 
The Question: Do AAVE-Related Courses Exist?

These articles are dated 1996 and 2006, respectively. From the continued literature on the subject and by personal accounts, it appears that linguistic dis-parity persists in 2013 and we continue to ask what we can do in our careers or classrooms to promote multilingual, pluralistic views. Based on Howard’s suggestion, this report examines whether any universities offer AAVE as a language course, or, perhaps, show signs of a course that addresses AAVE as a language.


By analyzing the Fall 2013 course offerings of 5 top-listed national universities on U.S. News and World Reports, this report gauges whether these ideas are present in the course listings and descriptions. These top 5 National Universities are, in order, Princeton University, Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University, and Stanford University (“National University Rankings”). By searching for certain keywords using each universities' online course catalog, I produced listings which were examined for indications of AAVE instruction. For reference, a further discussion of methods and the data collected are included in Appendix A.

 

Results

Search Results By Search Terms and University

 

 

 

AAVE Course Offerings in 5 U.S. News & World Report Rated National Universities

by Mattie Hensley

As stated before, I searched the above universities' online course catalogs using certain keywords to produce listings of courses, narrowing the amount of material I then browsed for indications of AAVE being taught as a language, or addressing AAVE as a language. As can be seen from the table, "African American Vernacular English" and "AAVE" produced zero results except at Stanford University (5 hits). The Stanford University hits breakdown into multiple listings of the same courses for multiple departments; once the repetition is removed, Stanford offers courses titled "African American Vernacular English" and "Vernacular English and Reading" in its African American Studies Department and Linguistics Department at multiple levels. These courses are all taught by John Rickford, who is listed as the PI (or Principal Investigator) (“Stanford University Explore Courses”).
Yale also produced what can be termed as a "hit" for AAVE: in its linguistics department offerings it listed a course titled, " Grammatical Diversity in the US" (“Catalog A-Z Index”). This course was described as a

 

Study of differences among varieties of English spoken in North America, focusing in particular on morphosyntatic variation: double modals ("I might could go to the store"), negative inversion ("Don't nobody want to ride the bus"), aspect marking ("Bruce be running," "I done pushed it"), "drama SO" ("I am SO not going to study tonight"), personal datives ("I need me a new printer"), positive "anymore" ("Gas is expensive anymore"). Emphasis on the grammatical richness and complexity of each variety. Debunking of the prejudice against examples of a natural grammatical diversity. Prerequisite: at least one 100-level course in Linguistics, or permission of instructor. (“Catalog A-Z Index”)

 

Because it references an emphasis on varieties of English spoken in North America, it seems arguable to include this listing in the results as mark of instruction in linguistic diversity at the university level.

 

Due to the low number of hits for "African American Vernacular English" and "AAVE," I widened the search. By using the terms “Black English,” “Black,” and “African American,” I reasoned I might produce additional listings that had not, perhaps, appeared earlier, but still applied similar concepts. While using these search terms did not produce course descriptions relating to AAVE as a language, they did produce a variety of history and African American Studies courses that seemed to accept continuation Theory, or espouse an interest similar to Howard's regarding the cultural contributions of African descendants to American culture. For example, one Columbia University seminar titled “Topics in the Black Experience: African Spiritual – Americas” stated that "this seminar will investigate the cultural contributions of Africans in the formation of the contemporary Americas” (“CU Directory of Classes”).  Likewise, Princeton University's Fall 2013 course offerings included "Cultures of the Afro-Diaspora" which


"Analyzes key readings and studies on Afro-diasporic cultures across the Americas in the 20th century. From reggae's unrelenting rhythms to the dances that move carnaval, the New World thrums with activity from populations that have persevered conditions of displacement to create new aesthetic forms" (“Course Offerings « Office of the Registrar”)

 

Of the results, it is noticeable that the course offerings for Columbia University’s teacher college produced significantly fewer hits for the search terms in comparison to the course offerings for Columbia University overall. This difference may be due to reluctance to use these terms in course titles. However, the difference could also be due to sample size or university practices of naming courses generally (for instance “Topics in Education Technology” or “Topics in Diversity”) rather than specific to content. For more on the tentative nature of these findings, please see the discussion section.

 

I would conclude that a frame of reference similar to Howard's- in regard to cultural transmission- is present at these five universities. However, it does not appear that the Fall 2013 course offerings at three of the five universities examined here include AAVE language courses.

 

Discussion

Based on my findings, courses do exist in these five top-ranked universities that pertain to AAVE as a language. A larger, more thorough, sample might reveal more or fewer courses of the type Howard proposed. As it is, there are many reasons why my search only produced AAVE-related courses in two of the five surveyed institutions. First, some courses are offered on an intermittent basis, especially if they are a niche field. This would mean that my search might miss some listings of an AAVE-related course. In addition, it is possible some courses cover AAVE-related material without listing or referencing the fact in its description, which was the only measure available to me as I searched. Finally, higher-level courses—such as graduate courses—are sometimes listed only by their general title, not their specific topic. This means that some AAVE-related courses may exist, but have been overlooked by my search methods.


    Hopefully, these results provide a sense of the current landscape, gauging whether the idea of AAVE as a language is being transmitted to college students. The presence of AAVE-related courses within these five universities shows that sites of transmission exist. However, they do not appear to be prevalent (at least, as much as we can conclude from the small sample size presented here).

 

Works Cited

“Catalog A–Z Index < Yale University.” Web. 30 Sept. 2013. <http://catalog.yale.edu/ycps/azindex/>

 

“Course Offerings « Office of the Registrar.” Web. 30 Sept. 2013.
<http://registrar.princeton.edu/course-offerings/>

 

“Course Schedule | Academics @ Teachers College.” Web. 30 Sept. 2013.
<http://www.tc.columbia.edu/academics/index.htm?Id=Course+Schedule&Info=Course+Schedule>

 

“CU Directory of Classes.” Web. 30 Sept. 2013. < http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/>

 

“Harvard Course Catalog § Harvard University Catalog and Cross Registration.” Web. 30 Sept.
2013. < https://coursecatalog.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do>

 

Howard, Rebecca Moore. “The Great Wall of African American Vernacular English in the
American College Classroom.” JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory 16.2 (1996): 265-283. Print.

 

“National University Rankings | Top National Universities | US News Best Colleges.” Web. 30
Sept. 2013.

 

“Stanford University Explore Courses.” Web. 30 Sept. 2013.
< http://explorecourses.stanford.edu/>

 

Trimbur, John. “Linguistic Memory and the Politics of U.S. English.”College English , Vol. 68,
No. 6, Cross-Language Relations in Composition (Jul., 2006), pp. 575-588. Print.

 

Appendix A.
Method

Because it was what my college counselor used to guide me to a college, I looked at the top 5 colleges listed on US World and News Report of the top 100 National Universities in the US. I was unable to find a rationale for their selection—it is entirely possible these schools paid to enter the ranking or enter into the US News selection pool. However, it is a high-profile listing; US News boasts that “In 2013 U.S. News has expanded its monthly audience to over 20 million unique visitors with 120 million page views” (U.S. News and World Report).
In order of their ranking, these top 5 Universities were:

  1. Princeton University

  2. Harvard University

  3. Yale University

  4. Columbia University

  5. Stanford University

I further limited my search to these 5 universities’ Fall 2013 course offerings. I did this because of time constraints and due to the expectation that Fall 2013 courses would be posted.

 

Data Collection

Using the following course websites, I limited my search to Fall 2013 course offerings:

  1. Princeton University : http://registrar.princeton.edu/course-offerings/

  2. Harvard University: https://coursecatalog.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do

  3. Yale University: http://catalog.yale.edu/ycps/

  4. Columbia University: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/home.html and http://www.tc.columbia.edu/academics/index.htm?Id=Course+Schedule&Info=Course+Schedule

  5. Stanford University : http://explorecourses.stanford.edu/

I then used the following search terms to produce course listings on each website:

  •  "African American Vernacular English”

  • “AAVE”

  • “Black English”

  • “Black” and

  • “African American”

Except, however, in the case of Yale University, which did not have a search engine for its course listing. In the case of Yale University, I looked for courses under the listings: African American Studies, African Studies, and Linguistics. Columbia University, notably, had two sites to search: a primary catalog, and a catalog for its teachers college.
Once these course listings had been produced, I recorded the hits per search term and browsed the results for courses pertaining to Continuation Theory or AAVE. Positive hits—those relating to AAVE or Continuation Theory—were noted in a word document, supplemented by the course description and information where necessary.

 

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