论文总字数：31458字

摘 要

在美国，不同的民族相融合,不同的文化相交融，这是一种非常重要的社会现象。不同背景的人说英语时或多或少会带上其本族语言的影响或特点。黑人英语是指居住在美国，处于社会底层的黑人所讲的一种非正式语言。在语音、语法和词汇方面，黑人英语都有鲜明而系统的特征。它是一种独特的英语变体。在过去的几十年，黑人英语逐步成为一种重要的社会方言，主要原因是美国黑人的社会地位变得更加重要。黑人英语虽然不同于标准美语，但是这种不同却呈现出一定的规律性。也就是说，黑人英语在语音、词汇、语法等方面的变异是有规律可循的。语言是文化的载体，它能反映社会的发展和变化。本文在借鉴美国黑人英语的起源、特征以及相关理论的基础上，探析美国黑人英语对美国主流文化的影响，主要涉及语言、音乐、文学领域。

关键词：黑人英语；英语变体；文化影响

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

2.1 Ethnic Varieties of English 1

2.2 The Term of AAVE 2

3. Origins of AAVE 2

3.1 The Anglicist Hypothesis 3

3.2 The Creolist Hypothesis 3

3.3 The Neo-Anglicist Hypothesis 4

4. Features of AAVE 4

4.1 Phonological Features 4

4.2 Syntactic Features 6

4.3 Lexical Features 7

5. Cultural Influence of AAVE 8

5.1 The Influence on Standard American English 8

5.2 The Influence on American Music 10

5.3 The Influence on American Literature 11

6. Conclusion 13

Works Cited 14

1. Introduction

We have probably heard specimens of Black American English even if most of us have never been to the United States, either in American movies or in rap music. Its sounds and intonation make it very easy to identify. Black English was always discriminated and oppressed, so African Americans had hostile feelings towards white mainstream culture. In order to show their racial identity, black Americans managed to develop a new language system which was quite different from American Standard English. Before 1960s, a large number of people held that African American Vernacular English (AAVE) was “bad English”, and for many years, it has been considered as a substandard or deficient dialect. However, with the rapid development of sociolinguistics and the great improvement of black people’s social status, this view has no standpoint now. AAVE, like any other dialect, is very rigidly constructed set of speech patterns with its own distinctive features in phonetics, syntax, and vocabulary. Served as a very important tool of communication, AAVE, spoken by a large number of black Americans, has played a significant role for black Americans in striving for freedom and culture development. A great many black composers, writers and artists try to employ AAVE to finish their works and fight against racism. More importantly, due to the independence and integration of different language cultures, AAVE has exerted important influences on Standard American English and other aspects such as music and literature and these influences may last for a long time. Nowadays, with the promotion of Standard American English, AAVE also enjoys rapid development. Thus, it is of great significance to investigate the development and influence of this variety.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Ethnic Varieties of English

In the United States, there are several ethnic dialects (dialects that are spoken by ethnic minorities) such as Black English, Chicano English, Asian-American dialects, Polynesian dialects, etc. The most important of these varieties are African American Vernacular English (AAVE) or Black American English, spoken by large parts of the black population, and Chicano English, spoken by people of Mexican descent (Tottie, 2008: 207). Foreign ethnic groups were accustomed to live together in a certain area when they immigrated to the United States. For instance, immigrants who came from Germany usually lived together in Pennsylvania and those from Cuba preferred to settle in Florida. Moreover, immigrants from different races usually had their own traditional profession. Therefore, ethnic varieties of English are not language variants only formed by national differences; they are closely linked with many factors such as areas, profession, etc.

2.2 The Term of AAVE

In the United States, most of African Americans speak a characteristic variety of English that has been referred to by many different names. The first researchers, who took an interest in this variety (among them Labov) called it Non-Standard Negro English. However, because of the growing objections to the term negro, other labels had to be found for the linguistic variety, parallel to the changes in referring to black people. Thus the language variety spoken by African Americans has been variously called Black English, Vernacular Black English, Black Vernacular English, African American Vernacular English, African American English, and Ebonics. The term vernacular refers to the everyday language spoken by a people or a speech community, often a non-standard variety. Black English seems to be an acceptable term to most black speakers, but African American Vernacular English, abbreviated AAVE, is the term most current among linguists today (Tottie, 2008: 218).

3. Origins of AAVE

In the United States, the origin of AAVE is always a matter of speculation. Written records are sporadic and incomplete, and open to interpretation; demographic information about language use is also selective and largely anecdotal (Wolfram and Thomas, 2002: 184). There are three major hypotheses on the origins and development of AAVE, including the ANGLICIST, the CREOLIST, and the NEO-ANGLICIST hypotheses.

3.1 The Anglicist Hypothesis

In the mid-twentieth century the ANGLICIST HYPOTHESIS which held that the speech of black Americans derived directly from British-based dialects was commonly accepted by a large number of American dialectologists, along with the conclusion that twentieth-century African American speech was identical to that of benchmark rural Southern vernacular white speech.

The traditional Anglicist position maintains that the language contact situation of African descendants in America was roughly comparable to that of other ethnic groups. Slaves may have spoken different African languages, as well as some pidgin and creole varieties that arose in the African diaspora, but after a few generations they simply learned the regional and social varieties of surrounding European American speakers (Wolfram, 2003: 284).

3.2 The Creolist Hypothesis

In the 1960s and 1970s, Anglicist position was replaced by the widespread acceptance of the CREOLIST HYPOTHESIS, which maintained that the roots of AAVE were embedded in an expansive creole found in the African diaspora, including the antebellum Plantation South. Stewart provided a strong version of the creolist hypothesis: “Of the Negro slaves who constituted the field labor force on North American plantations up to the mid-nineteenth century, even many who were born in the New World spoke a variety of English which was in fact a true creole language-differing markedly in grammatical structure from those English dialects which were brought directly from Great Britain, as well as from New World modifications of these in the mouths of descendants of the original white colonists” (Stewart, 1968: 3).

Though not all AAVE researchers have accepted this strong interpretation of the creolist hypothesis, many of them accepted some version of it. The creolist hypothesis seems most likely to be correct, but it is certainly not so well established (Wolfram, 2003: 284).

3.3 The Neo-Anglicist Hypothesis

The emergence of new corpora that included an expanding base of written documentation and data from expatriate black enclave communities gave rise to the NEO-ANGLICIST HYPOTHESIS. This position, like the Anglicist hypothesis of the mid-twentieth century, maintains that earlier, postcolonial African American speech was directly linked to the early British dialects brought to North America. However, the neo-Anglicist hypothesis also holds that AAVE has since diverged and now it is quite different from contemporary European American vernacular speech.

In spite of the growing support for the neo-Anglicist hypothesis, it is hardly accepted by everyone. A large number of disputes remain over the validity of the data, the earlier language contact situation between Africans and Europeans and the sociohistorical circumstances that framed the speech of earlier African Americans. If nothing else, the significant shifts in positions over the past several decades should caution us against arriving at premature conclusions about the origin and evolution of AAVE (Wolfram, 2003: 284).

4. Features of AAVE

African American Vernacular English had ever been regarded as a substandard, deficient or lower language variant. But in linguistics, this is groundless. Many modern linguists hold that no dialect or variant is intrinsically bad or good. AAVE is very rigidly constructed set of speech patterns with its own distinctive characteristics in phonetics, syntax, and vocabulary.

4.1 Phonological Features

(1) Compared with Standard American English (SAE), a distinctive feature of AAVE on phonetics is the rule of r-deletion that deletes /r/ everywhere except before a vowel. Pairs of words like guard and god, sore and saw, fort and fought, court and caught are pronounced identically (Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams, 2007: 424).

(2) Conversion of /θ/ and /ð/ in AAVE. How they are pronounced depends in part on their position in the word—initial, medial, or final. For most of African Americans, /θ/ which is in word initial is usually converted into /t/. For example, the word “think” /θink/ is pronounced as /tink/. When /θ/ is in word medial or word final, it is often pronounced as /f/. The word “mouth” /mauθ/ is pronounced as /mauf/. Meanwhile, in AAVE, /ð/ which is in word initial or word final is often converted into /d/. As an illustration, black Americans pronounce the word “they” /ðei/ as /dei/, “with” /wið/ as /wid/, etc.

(3) Elision of /l/ in AAVE. There is also an l-deletion rule for some speakers of AAVE, creating identically pronounced pairs like toll and toe, all and awe, help and hep, sick and slick, will and wi (Zheng Lixin amp; Gu Jiazu 1998: 143).

(4) Confusion of /i/ and /e/ in AAVE. /i/ and /e/ in front of a nasalized consonant are often pronounced identically. For instance, the articulation of vowels in some pairs such as pin—pen, fen—fin, gen一gin, kin—ken is same. They are all pronounced as the sound between /i/ and /e/.

(5) Reduction of consonant cluster in AAVE. A consonant cluster reduction rule in AAVE simplifies consonant clusters, particularly at the ends of words when one of the two consonants is an alveolar (/t/, /d/, /s/, /z/). The application of this rule may delete the past-tense morpheme so that “meant” and “mend” are both pronounced as “men”, and “past” and “passed” may both be pronounced like “pass”. When speakers of this dialect say “I pass the test yesterday”, they are not showing an ignorance of past and present-tense forms of the verb, but are pronouncing the past tense according to this rule in their grammar (Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams, 2007: 424).

(6) As to the pronunciation and intonation, African American Vernacular English changes greater than Standard American English. For example, High tone or even falsetto is frequently used when black Americans chat with their good friends.

Actually, the phonological features of AAVE are more than this. The above-mentioned features are only some typical examples. By analyzing these features we can see the great differences between AAVE and Standard American English.

4.2 Syntactic Features

(1) A very peculiar syntactic characteristic of African American Vernacular English is the omission of linking verbs. If an action or a state has a fixed time, or it is motionless, not often happens, “be” in the sentence is often omitted. This phenomenon can happen before various predicatives. For example, “I a doctor now.” (The predicative is a noun.); “I here.” (The predicative is an adverb.); “She too tall for me.” (The predictive is an adjective.); “My momma in hospital.” (The predicative is a preposition phrase.) Auxiliary verb “be” in continuous tense can also be omitted. For instance, “They talking about school now.” We should remember that in AAVE, the omission of “be” is of its regularity (Huang Yonghong, 2010: 129).

(2) The loss of the change of “s” which is in the word final is a common phenomenon in African American Vernacular English. The simplification of consonant cluster in AAVE has already discussed but it is not just a phenomenon of phonetics. Since it affects the change of the word final, it also becomes a phenomenon of grammar. Due to the simplification of consonant cluster which is in the word final, the past tense verb “expressed” and its original verb “express” are pronounced identically. Therefore the change of the word final which expresses past tense disappeared. Based on the above-mentioned examples, we can arrive at the conclusions that owing to the simplification of consonant cluster in AAVE, the change of the word final which express noun plural forms, noun possessive cases and the third person singular “s” disappeared. Many Black American English users not only put “s” behind the third person singular but also put “s” behind all verbs, such as “I walks.”, “They studies very hard.”, etc. For them, the verbal “s” is regarded as the symbol of present tense instead of the symbol of the third person singular (Huang Yonghong, 2010: 129).

(3) In African American Vernacular English, “ain’t” is often used to form negative sentence. When predicate is not acted by lexical verbs, “ain’t” is almost unexceptionally used to be the symbol of negative sentence.

e.g. He ain’t gonna watch no movie with his parents. He ain’t afraid of nothing.

“ain’t” is widely used in the sentences of continuous tense.

e.g. He ain’t coming back.

She ain’t studying hard.

(4) AAVE also adopts multiple negations, where negation is repeated throughout the sentence. For Standard American English “She didn’t see anything like that anywhere”, AAVE has “She ain’t see nothin’ like dat no place”. Multiple negations often imply emphasis. For example, “Can’t nobody do nothing for him.” (Nobody can do anything for him.)

(5) The structure “there is a” in Standard American English (SAE) is often replaced by “It’s a” in African American Vernacular English.

e.g. It’s a book on his desk. (AAVE)

There is a book on his desk. (SAE)

In addition, “Is it” can be used to replace “Is there” to form interrogative sentences.

e.g. Is it a pen in his schoolbag? (AAVE)

Is there a pen in his schoolbag? (SAE)

4.3 Lexical Features

The vocabulary of AAVE is less distinctive than its phonology or grammar, but it has certainly contributed a lot to Standard American English. AAVE shares lots of common vocabulary with Standard American English, but it still has many unique words and expressions.

A great many words used in Standard American English may originate from AAVE or the West African languages. Most of the following items were firsrt used in black slang or jargon but were quickly adopted by white speakers.

attitude (cheeky self-confidence)

bad (very good)

brother (a black man)

chill out (relax)

cool (excellent)

dis (show disrespect, insult)

gig (job)

hip (wise, sophisticated)

homeboy, homey (a person from one’s neighborhood, a black person)

jive (talk nonsense, deceptive talk)

man (address form speaking to other man)

mean (excellent)

rip off (kill; take unfair advantage of; rob)

sister (a black woman)

square (the opposite of hip)

threads (clothes)

uptight (tense, anxious)

5. Cultural Influence of AAVE

Culture is learned and shared human patterns or models for living, and these patterns and models pervade all aspects of human social interaction. Culture is mankind’s primary adaptive mechanism (Damen, 1987: 367). Language is part of culture, and has a significant influence on culture. In other words, language also reflects culture. AAVE, a distinctive language, greatly influence and reflect American culture.

5.1 The Influence on Standard American English

As a variety of English or a social dialect, AAVE is different from Standard American English and it exerts a great influence on SAE. However, it is relatively easy to see how unevenly AAVE has affected phonetics, grammar and vocabulary of Standard American English.

5.1.1 The Impact of AAVE’s Phonetics and Grammar

The impact of AAVE’s phonetics is limited. A great many surveys prove that except black Americans, most of Americans speak English without taking any sounds of AAVE in public place; and even highly-educated black Americans also try to avoid the accent of AAVE. Compared with its phonetics, AAVE has a greater impact on Standard American English in terms of its grammar. So far, almost 20 grammatical rules of AAVE have been discovered by linguists and among them, two major rules have the biggest influence on Standard American English. The first rule is that “gonna” is used to replace “will/be going to” to demonstrate future tense, and the second is the universal use of double negative by using “ain’t”. For example, in two famous English songs, the structures of AAVE which appear the most are “I ain’t never gonna be to the same” (from the song Jimmy Jimmy) and “we are not going nowhere” (from the song White Heart). Very interestingly, perhaps because the two rules were the most distinctive and influential grammatical features of AAVE, President Reagan used publicly the only AAVE’s sentence pattern “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” in his presidential election platform in 1984. Given the above discussion and analysis, we can arrive at the conclusion that the grammatical influences of AAVE are mainly displayed by two or three syntactic structures.

5.1.2 The Impact of AAVE’s Vocabulary

The vocabulary of AAVE has exerted a lasting and profound impact on Standard American English. Over the past decades, AAVE has contributed a large number of lexical items to Standard American English, and it is commonly believed that lots of words of AAVE are borrowed from various African languages. The beginning of twentieth century saw a mass migration of African Americans from their hometown to northern big cities, for the First World War had greatly boosted the American arms industry. Since then, black culture has exercised a far-reaching influence on the white culture. In the 1920s, jazz, blues, cakewalk, jitterbug and breaking dancing gradually enjoyed wide popularity among Americans. In the 1950s, rock music came into being and developed rapidly. These innovative and imaginative artistic forms have been deeply rooted in American culture, and these new terms have already been absorbed by Standard American English. Moreover, black Americans also managed to create a great many distinctive words at the bar or the nightclub, and these words gradually entered the daily life of white people (Liu Jinming, 1996: 49). It was very easy to see that words or phrases like awesome, cool, dude and get busted originally used by African Americans become very popular catch phrases among American teenagers in the 1990s. As time goes on, pretty typical words from Black American English such as bread (money), blood (brother), hip (understand) and cool (excellent) are slowly absorbed by Standard American English.

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