Liberating American Ebonics from Euro-English

Abstract

he term Ebonics, a blend of ebony (black) and phonics/phonetics (speech), was originally coined to refer broadly to the linguistic and paralinguistic features ... which represent the communicative competence of the West African, Caribbean, and the United States slave descendant (Williams vi). The compass of Ebonics in the United States includes the Gullah language and what we academics, at least, know as English, Vernacular, African-American English, and African American Vernacular English, its most up-to-date scholarly name. The Oakland School Board used the term Ebonics to refer narrowly to African American as the mother tongue of most of its African American student population, with the intention of giving terminological credence to its historical origins. Following the Oakland tradition, we shall use the term Ebonics to refer to that variety of Ebonics also known as and its synonyms, unless otherwise noted. However, even then, Smitherman has made the point that American Black English itself may be thought of as comprising an entire range of distinctives from unique grammatical patterns to simply characteristic tones, rhythms, and communicative styles that can overlay the most proper standard (It Bees Dat Way 16). The terminology pertaining to Ebonics raises certain questions that we shall address: Is American Ebonics (in the narrow sense of Ebonics in the United States) a different language from English? Is it a dialect of English? How does American Ebonics relate to the larger Ebonics picture? In pursuit of answers, and while acknowledging Arthur L. Palaca is Professor of at the University of Akron and director of its Certificate Program in Linguistic Studies. He teaches linguistics, including courses on and the linguistics of point of view. His work has appeared in Written Communication and in the edited collections Landmark Essays on Voice and Sentence Combining: A Rhetorical Perspective. This paper is based on a 1999 CCCC presentation and was supported by a University of Akron Teaching Excellence Grant.