African American Vernacular English

I have attended many cyphers and spoken word poetry readings that are speaking on the central issues of American society today like racism, classicism, sexism, and homophobia. Young people in Oakland are living these realities while expressing themselves through language. Many of the poems in these readings speak on police brutality, violence in the inner city…

battle in the Civil War. Tenniel 's cartoon, drawn from the perspective of someone who believed blacks shouldn’t be allowed to join the military, most likely had a variety of targeted audiences, including both Southerners and Northerners, as well as Americans, like Frederick Douglass, who thought that black conscription would both help the Union triumph over the Confederacy and help blacks achieve…

a period in which slavery was legal. Through the novel, Twain made an effort to accurately portray the Southern society. However, the novel has been widely panned by critics, mostly because of the widely usage of the word “nigger” to refer to African American slaves; that being the reason for it to be banned. Whether the novel was worth banning continues to be highly debatable even today. For instance, June Edwards defends Twain when she says that “Nigger is what blacks were commonly called in…

segregation is the “linchpin” of economic inequality. In this essay, I argue that because discriminant policies and ideologies make it virtually impossible for Black Americans…

Where’re Y’all From?: A Brief History of the Southern United States Dialect Southern American English, more commonly known as the Southern drawl or the Southern accent, is one of the most immediately recognizable of the United States’ many dialects. The dialect can bring many different connotations to mind depending on the preconceptions of the hearer. Those with positive ideas of the South may conjure up images of hard-working, hospitable, family oriented people, whereas others may prejudge…

They were wearing afros, had dramatically over-drawn lips, and were yelling phrases from African American Vernacular English, often incorrectly, such as “yasss hunty” and “throwing shade”. While they did this, they were getting plenty of praise from the mostly white crowd, which made me and my partner uncomfortable. I felt like I was watching a caricature…

communicate. Slang is often used when people are among their friends or other social groups. To understand slang, you have to begin with understanding language. Understanding slang involves the understanding of the English language, how it has changed, and what slang is. John Algeo wrote that English came from the same ancestor as German. This dates back to the fifth century while the Celts were living in the British Isles. However, “warfare got so fierce that one local king asked for help the…

When does a person stop appreciating the culture and begin to appropriate it and how is that defined? These questions and interest in cultural appropriation are more relevant than ever in today’s American society, as hip-hop culture is becoming a prevalent trend inside and outside the African American community. Hip-hop is a culture that has been appreciated through cultural exchange but has also been appropriated for numerous years. James O. Young defines culture as the core values, religious…

to explore English language and how people use it and what reasons affected the language. We all know that the formal spoken language in the United States is English language, but after watching this documentary our idea has changed. Thorough MacNeil’s journey, it is appeared that the situation is different and not all American people speak the same version of English or the same dialect or accent. There are many dialects spoken over the united states such as African American English and Chicano…

thoughts about their race. This has been an ongoing problem in the African American community in the U.S. There have been incidents that have occurred that have been made internationally known like, the beating of Rodney King in 1991 and more recently the murder of Trayvon Martin. These events cause fear in the African American community when the police are involved. In the Rodney King beating consisted of a videotape of an African American male being beat continuously by four police officers…