Ebonics: A Dialect or Language?

African American Vernacular English, commonly referred to as “Ebonics”, is quite dynamic; it is intertwined with African American history in conjunction with the African American experience, literature, education, and social life. Ebonics is spoken primarily by African Americans. However, over time, the language has infiltrated African American communities in urban areas, the South, and across other realms, as non-African Americans in the United States also now speak Ebonics (Green, 2002, p.14). Since the distinction between language and dialect is made using social and political discourse, some linguists believe that Ebonics is a language while other linguists undoubtedly believe Ebonics is a mere representation of a dialect. In a dire effort to determine whether African American Vernacular English is considered a language itself or if it is simply a dialect of English, sharing linguistic qualities, linguists and their proposed theories must be meticulously examined, assessed, and evaluated.

In an article entitled “Dialects: A linguist looks at the ebonics debate,” a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkley examined the linguistic debate surrounding Ebonics. Many linguists believe that African American Vernacular English is “one of the dialects of American English, historically most closely related to forms of Southern speech but with differences attributable both to the linguistic history of slaves and to generations of social isolation” (Fillmore, 1997, p.3). Ebonics is a term attributed to the varying forms of non-standard English dialect, which is associated with a political undertone, as both the usage and acceptance of Ebonics remains a controversial issue. Linguists who support Ebonics as a dialect are firm believers in the dialectal hypothesis. The dialectal hypothesis demonstrates that Ebonics evolved due to social and geographic separation, as all dialects ultimately do, and is therefore considered a dialect of English (Rubba, 1997, p.1). Ebonics is thereby categorized as a dialect of American English.

The controversial debate regarding whether African American Vernacular, Ebonics, is considered a language or dialect has transpired into the educational system. Most linguists refer to the distinctive speech originally characteristic of African Americas as “Black English”. This emphasizes that Ebonics is not categorized as standard English because history highlights language spoken in the Black Diaspora such as in Jamaica or Nigeria (Rickford, 2012, p.2). During the latter part of 1996, the Oakland, California school board of education sparked a nationwide debate as they unanimously passed a resolution that declared Ebonics was indeed a “genetically-based language of its African American students, not a dialect of English” (Depit & Perry 1998, p.5). The Oakland school district acknowledged the reality of “Black English” in the classroom as an entirely different language, which essentially created a paradigm shift toward social change.

Ebonics has therefore been recognized as a separate language that originated from African linguistic roots. Linguists who still consider Ebonics a language tend to base their assertion on the creole hypothesis. The creole hypothesis states that Ebonics evolved from a pidgin language that developed in West Africa after the slave trade and the commercial trade between Africans and Europeans since the 16th century (Rubba, 1997, p.1). According to the creole hypothesis, Ebonics, originally used by slaves, transformed into a full-fledged language (Rubba, 1997, p.1). Due to its pidgin and creole origins, Ebonics is definitely viewed as a separate language. Since many linguists define language in accordance with political, social, and cultural discourse, African American Vernacular English is recognized as an independent language and must, therefore, be treated as one.

References

Delpit, L., & Perry, T. (1998). The real ebonics debate: Power, language, and the education of African-American children. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Green, L. J. (2002). African American English: A linguistic introduction. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Fillmore, C. J. (1997). Dialects: A linguist looks at the ebonics debate. Center for Applied Linguistics. Retrieved from www.cal.org/topics/dialects/ebfillmo.html

Rickford, J. R. (2012). What is ebonics?: African American vernacular English. Linguistic Society of America. Retrieved from http://www.linguisticsociety.org/files/Ebonics.pdf

Rubba, J. (1997). Ebonics. California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Retrieved from http://cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba/Ebonics.html