Little-Known Facts about Black/White Speech

Abstract

Almost none of the recent studies done by sociolinguists of Black English' are really comparative studies of black and white speech. Typically, the studies contrast the speech of blacks with a monolithic standard English. The assumption in them is that the white speakers speak standard English. Thus, standard and White English are considered synonymous terms; black speakers speak something else. McDavid and McDavid, however, have reported that if the speech of blacks and whites within the South and with socioeconomic status held comparable are investigated these alleged differences would all but disappear.2 The historical issue involves the controversy between two theories about the origins of Black English: African influence and British Isles influence. According to the African origins of Black West Africans and Europeans came into contact through the slave trade. Communication between the two groups developed using the most basic elements of both languages. This process, called pidginization, created a language that served as a form of communication for Africans in the New World. Since slaves belonged to many different tribes and spoke different languages, they used Pidgin to communicate with the slave owners and among themselves. Some scholars contend that because many West African languages have similar structures and lexicons, the that the slaves learned was processed through a mutual linguistic system and ultimately developed into a Black English speech variety that exists even today. As subsequent generations of slaves learned this pidginized variety of English, it became the first language of African offspring born in the New World. This process, called creolization, added other features of to transform the Pidgin into a full-fledged language, called a Creole. As AfroAmericans came into more direct contact with the dominant Anglo culture, gained greater access to formal education, and acquired stronger motivation for using