African American Vernacular English Research Articles

Brazilian translation of African-American Vernacular English: Giving voice to the African diaspora

Brazilian translation of African-American Vernacular English: Giving voice to the African diaspora

The representation of African American identity on screen for a Spanish audience

Existing studies of translations of audio-visual productions that explore African American issues focus exclusively on African American Vernacular English and culturally specific references, the standardisation or omission of which are seen to compromise the originals’ critique of race and their value for in-group identity. This article takes a multimodal approach to three such productions dubbed for a Spanish audience. Firstly, it examines how characters’ African American identity is rendered not only by language but also visually and aurally. Comprehension in dubbed versions is more likely to be affected by non-linguistic matters, such as casting of voice talent. Secondly, it is shown how translations shape the audio-visual creation of a fictional world and extra-diegetic elements that address a particular audience and thus enable in-group identification along ethnic lines. Lastly, an alternative translation strategy is outlined that targets audiences from the international Black diaspora to whom such productions might appeal.

Dialect on Trial: An Experimental Examination of Raciolinguistic Ideologies and Character Judgments

The current study examines the effect of dialect for a Black speaker, paying particular attention to the implications for criminal justice processing. Participants in this study heard an audio clip of a Black man describing his weekend and were randomly assigned to hear the account spoken in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) or Mainstream American English (MAE). For half of each sample, the audio clip was described as an alibi. Participants then evaluated the speaker across dimensions related to character and criminality, as well as his race, education, and socio-economic status. Results indicate that the speaker was viewed as having worse character and a greater criminal propensity if he spoke using the AAVE guise rather than the MAE guise. Additionally, participants perceived the AAVE speaker to be more stereotypically Black, less educated, and lower socio-economic status. These findings raise questions about contemporary forms of bias in criminal justice processing.

Deciphering Linguistic Stereotypes in Polandball Comics: A Qualitative Analysis of 'Engrish' and Cultural Representation

Polandball, or Countryballs, are online user-generated comics about geopolitical satire, with countries personified in spherical characters. One of the most important aspects of Countryball memes is the non-standard English, or Engrish, used in the conversations between characters. This research delves into the Engrish phenomena by collecting and qualitatively examining 200+ comics in the subreddit r/polandball, proposing plausible causes of the phenomena, and raising concerns regarding the implications of the exhibited linguistic stereotypes. The investigation figures out that the language choice in Polandball comics on Reddit generally ranged between serious cultural misunderstanding and code-switching of English with another language. It is concluded that the linguistic stylizations of non-standard English in Polandball comics might be rooted in certain cultural and racial stereotypes and might further reinforce these biased cross-cultural perceptions. The research shed light on the long-ignored African-American Vernacular English appropriation in Polandball comics, and extensively enumerated and identified the most recent Engrish stylizations in Polandball comics.

The Representation of Earlier African American Vernacular English by Charles W. Chesnutt

This article examines the validity of regional speech represented in the writings of an African American short story writer, essayist, lawyer, and stenographer Charles W. Chesnutt (1858–1932) with a corpus of dialogues extracted from his literary works (approximately 40,000 words). As a touchstone for exploring its accuracy, the Atlas data from Fayetteville, North Carolina, and the surrounding regions in Cape Fear and Pee Dee Valley− a region where the author spent his youth and his stories are set−are compared with the speech of his African American characters. The result reveals that the Atlas records and Chesnutt’s dialogues share many expressions in their regional lexicons ranging from single words to phrases. Considering the difficulty of recording all the synonyms and semantically related words from the same informant during the interview, the overall agreement between the two provides further evidence that as an African American writer who spent his formative years in a rural community in North Carolina, Chesnutt’s literary dialect offers a glimpse of earlier AAVE spoken in the region in the mid-nineteenth century. Furthermore, this article touches on Chesnutt’s racial identity and what led him to enter the literary world as it is pertinent to his linguistic background and the motive behind the use of literary dialect.

English Language with Reference to African American Vernacular English and Creating Cultural Attitude in a Multicultural Setting

Language is one of the crucial factors that have developed in humans since ancient times. It is one such source that enables one to communicate with another person and maintain once existence. This language gradually changed its pattern, and now it has become one of the most important factors for not only communication but also survival and English being one of them. The English language today is the language of development, as it is one of the major languages of commerce. In this part, one needs to understand and learn the English language according to the prescribed rules and regulations. But, then, could it be possible to make this language learning process better with more understanding and the inclusion of vernacular language? The paper tries to present the origin and cultural consequences of the use of African-American vernacular English. Also, the paper tries to present that AAVE is no different language than SAE.

Factors That Influence Automatic Recognition of African-American Vernacular English in Machine-Learning Models

Factors That Influence Automatic Recognition of African-American Vernacular English in Machine-Learning Models

Linguistic emancipation

Abstract: The term linguistic emancipation embraces various interpretations. One relates to occasions where linguists have helped people overcome problems that are attributable to various linguistic calamities. Another pertinent vector relates to methodological innovations that extricate linguistic research from methodological confinement and that embrace new technologies to help advance our collective scientific mission. These alternative perspectives are illustrated here in small measure through studies of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and gender modification in the speech of a trans woman. The legacy of inventive methodological advances in linguistics is celebrated by emphasizing some liberating linguistic research trajectories in which experimental, self-generated data and descriptive investigations of endangered and underrepresented languages or dialects stand side by side, serving a comprehensive linguistic science in which alternative analytical procedures abound in harmonious complementarity.

“Pseudo-dialect” or “role language”? Speech varieties in three Japanese translations of Gone with the Wind

Abstract This study considers the use of dialectal and distinctive language features in three Japanese translations of the 1936 novel Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, published in 1938, 2015, and 2015–2016. Previous studies have noted that these translations adopt various linguistic features originating in dialects from Japan’s Tōhoku region when rendering the African American Vernacular English–influenced eye dialect spoken by Black enslaved characters, and suggest that this translation strategy draws on and reinforces negative social perceptions of real-life Tōhoku-dialect speakers. Conversely, through a dual approach involving both a comparative textual analysis and a quantitative perceptual survey, this study argues that these speech styles should be viewed rather as an enregistered form of “role language”: a speech variety unique to fictional contexts serving to identify a character archetype that in the eyes of a majority of readers is disassociated from any historical origin.

Intensifying expletive constructions and their use on social media: Innovative functions of the hashtag #wokeAF in English tweets

The hashtag has seen increasing attention in the linguistics literature, in recognition of its prevalence on social media and in other modes of communication. Here, we report on a diachronic analysis of the hashtag #wokeAF in English-language tweets posted between 2012 and 2022. First, we trace the use of the word woke from verb to adjective, with novel uses arising in African American Vernacular English. Such uses then spread into mainstream standard English, eventually being used in a novel construction: the intensifying expletive ([adjective + as + expletive]). Although examples of the intensifying expletive are listed in the Urban Dictionary, to our knowledge, this is the first linguistic analysis of the construction. Second, we analyse semantic interpretations and syntactic characteristics of the intensifying expletive #wokeAF, by documenting its occurrence in tweets spanning eleven years. Analysis of the discourse and the context in which the hashtag appears allows us to uncover its novel use as a collective noun, which in our data, is linked to a pejorative stance. In general, we find innovation in the semantic scope of the hashtag and versatility in its position and integration within tweets. Given the pervasiveness of the word woke in the public consciousness, as evidenced by its occurrence in the popular press, this article aims to fill a timely gap while providing an interesting example of language innovation online.

BRAZILIAN TRANSLATION OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN VERNACULAR ENGLISH: GIVING VOICE TO THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

African-American Vernacular English has been simulated in literature through eye dialect or feigned orality at least since the time of Mark Twain and Joel Chandler Harris, lurching between realism, empathetic paternalism, and hostile caricature. More recently, Black authors and filmmakers have been foregrounding the connection between identity, speech, and code-switching, and African-American Vernacular English is becoming increasingly present in media. Combined with expanding global media penetration, this trend has created a situation that translators and subtitlers worldwide must address. Among the small body of research on the translation of dialect/orality in Brazil, specific analysis of African-American Vernacular English is lacking, which is surprising, since Brazil is a major consumer of imported American cultural products and home to the second-largest African diaspora community in the world. Because no race-based dialects exist in Brazilian Portuguese, three general translation strategies have been used to represent African-American Vernacular English: homogenizing, ruralizing, and urbanizing. Examples will be presented of each strategy, their limitations will be discussed, and translator justifications for their use will be explored. A recent apparent trend away from homogenization will also be discussed.

A Cognitive Linguistic Reading of Features of African American Vernacular English in Kathryn Stockett’s The Help

A Cognitive Linguistic Reading of Features of African American Vernacular English in Kathryn Stockett’s The Help

Grammatical Analysis of African American Vernacular English in The Eminem Show Album: A Linguistics Perspective

Albeit the research on African American Vernacular English (AAVE) as nonstandard form of English spoken by African Americans in lower socioeconomic classes has been documented by many scholars, little is known about it from the perspective of Wolfram's theory. To fill this lacuna, the present study aims to elucidate the grammatical elements of Eminem's lyrics song in the album "The Eminem Show." This single case study showcased 32 lyrics song from Eminem's album with that seven grammatical features such as copula/auxiliary absence, the invariant be, the remote been, the subject verb agreement, the negation, the question formation, and the nominals. The findings found that negation is the most common grammatical features whereas the invariant be is the least common. The findings indicated that songs serve as a platform for asserting identity and criticizing diverse social, cultural, political, and economic issues. The performers are free to improvise in accordance with the tendencies and interests of the critic. Thus, the song can serve both to identify the current social crisis and as a catalyst for the crisis itself.

AFRICAN AMERICAN VERNACULAR ENGLISH (AAVE) AND THE AMERICAN SOCIETY IN THE 1960’S IN THE HELP NOVEL BY KATHRYN STOCKETT

<p>The aim of this research is to analyze how the African American Vernacular English is applied by the characters and to identify how American society in the 1960’s was portrayed in The Help novel. Using the descriptive qualitative research as a method, this researcher attempts to reveal the characteristics of African American Vernacular English as a language used by the characters in their daily life and American society back in the 1960’s. In identifying the data, theory from Wolfram (2004) about AAVE characteristics and Kurtz (2003) about America’s society in the 1960’s is used. The data were mainly collected from the dialogues of the maids as the native speaker of AAVE. </p>

An Analysis of African American Vernacular English Grammatical Features in Shark Tale Film

An Analysis of African American Vernacular English Grammatical Features in Shark Tale Film

African-American Vernacular English as Hip-Hop Artist Identity in Indonesian Rapper Ramengvrl's Songs

This study aimed to investigate and identify the grammatical features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) used in the song lyrics of the Indonesian Rapper Ramengvrl’s album, Can’t Speak English, and understand the underlying reasons for this AAVE use by applying the language and society of sociolinguistics approach. The data was analyzed using Wolfram’s theory of classification of grammatical features of AAVE in Ramengvrl’s songs to elaborate on the purpose of its use. The data analyzed were qualitatively collected by closely and thoroughly listening to the songs and reading the transcribed lyrics. The results are as follows: Ramengvrl employs 8 out of 13 grammatical features of AAVE. Those are copula/auxiliary absence, specialized auxiliary, subject-verb agreement, negation, remote “been,” nominals, non-standard pronouns, and question formation. Furthermore, this AAVE use by Ramengvrl is because of (1) the influences of Hip-hop artists, (2) the authenticity of Hip-Hop culture, and (3) as an anti-language to represent herself.
 Keywords: African-American Vernacular English, AAVE, hip-hop, identity

Voices of Black Folk: The Sermons of Rev. A. W. Nix, by Terri Brinegar

Voices of Black Folk: The Sermons of Rev. A. W. Nix, by Terri Brinegar

Our Language Belongs in Our Learning

Millions of Black Americans speak a version of English not reflected in the American education system. This version of English—African American Vernacular English—is rule-governed, oral, and systematically different from the “standard” form of English (referred to as Mainstream American English from hereon) used in academic spaces. Though many young Black students enter the education system knowing African American Vernacular English, classroom instruction occurs in Mainstream American English. Black students are instructed in a language that is radically different from the one they use at home yet are expected to perform at levels similar to those of students who already speak mainstream English. This expectation contributes to the achievement gap, wherein Black students, on average, perform at lower levels than white students on evaluations in education.
 This research, as a community-centered attempt to examine differences in literacy and achievement rates between Black and white students in America, seeks to address the achievement gap in two West Philadelphia elementary schools by leveraging the University of Pennsylvania’s resources. This paper describes my problem-solving learning research, using the Penn Reading Initiative as a vehicle for change in order to support students’ cultural and sociolinguistic backgrounds in the classroom, ideally improving literacy rates through culturally responsive pedagogy. This article lays out the problem of dialectical miscomprehension and details a solution developed alongside community members in West Philadelphia. This article also reflects on the progress made in the two years since the original research took place. It highlights the development of the Netter Center’s Professional Development Associates team and the Anti-Racism Working Group—both having been influenced by work done in this problem-solving learning framework.

Understanding African American vernacular English and reading achievement: Implications for the science of reading.

The purpose of this article is to discuss issues of language, specifically African American Vernacular English (AAVE), as it relates to the reading performance of African American children. Previous research on the science of reading provides a research-based framework that is a starting point for evidence-based research that can be used to improve the reading outcomes of African American children. School psychology literature is limited in its inclusion of issues posed by deficit perspectives of AAVE with Black children and reading achievement. Given that practicing school psychologists spend significant portions of their time conducting assessments related to identifying and remediating reading problems, an increased awareness on how AAVE can impact African American children's reading performance is necessary. Implications for research and practice will be discussed, such as inclusion of instruments to differentiate between reading difficulties and dialect differences (i.e., Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Lexicogrammatical Analysis on African-American Vernacular English Spoken by African-Amecian You-Tubers

Lexicogrammatical Analysis on African-American Vernacular English Spoken by African-Amecian You-Tubers