The Consequence of Differences

This weeks readings addressed the applications of language in our social sphere and duties and in our own personal perceptions. The Rickford piece explained the particulars of African American Vernacular English and its implications for the state of Black America while Lupyan postulated about how language serves to help us categorize the world rather than comprehend it.

Dr. Rickford’s article particularly resonated with me because I identify as a speaker of AAVE and it was so reassuring to find validity in academia for a part of my culture that is often ridiculed and stigmatized. There is truly a system and history that governs how lots of African Americans (those who are descendants of American slaves and not modern immigrants from the continent of Africa) speak on a daily basis. This speech form is central to the black community and is what connected the community whilst on the margins of American society. I’m glad to see this value highlighted in this article for those not apart of the Black community.

I would point out that AVVE has evolved a little since Dr. Rickford’s article has been published, at least for the Mid-Atlantic American AAVE speakers. This includes example g on page 5 “steady” that is now realized as “stay”. For example “she stay submitting her blog posts at midnight.” Additionally, example h “come” is often used as “came” as in “he came up in class late as a mo’.” These are common usages of these grammatical features as I hear them in my daily life.

Moreover, much of Lupyan’s findings directly relate to applications of AAVE. If people use language as a means of categorization but within their own cultural context using lexical items familiar to that context. For example if an AAVE speaker labels a vehicle as “whip” and a Standard English Speaker labels it as “car” even though they identify they same object there can be confusion between speakers as to what is being labeled. This difference can often give rise to negative stereotypes for different speakers that can spiral into greater consequences mentioned in Dr. Rickford’s article such as Standard English dialect deficiencies, mass incarceration at unemployment.

Perhaps just noting this difference as a difference and not as incorrect would help remedy some of these negative effects.