As with most africanamerican english, africanamerican vernacular english shares a large portion of its grammar and phonology with the rural dialects of the southern united states, and especially older southern american english, due to historical connections of african americans to the region. The development of african american english wiley online. African american english aae, a language variety that has also been identified at different times in dialectology and literary studies as black english, black dialect, and negro nonstandard english. Most linguists refer to the distinctive speech of african americans as black english or african american english aae or, if they want to emphasize that this doesnt include the standard english usage of african americans, as african american vernacular english aave. The book challenges the longstanding creole hypothesis but raises enough questions about the structure of early aae to keep the origin debate alive. African american vernacular english is not standard english with mistakes author. Since the late 1980s, the term has been used ambiguously, sometimes with reference to only ebonics, or.
African american vernacular english aave is the variety formerly known as black english vernacular or vernacular black english among sociolinguists, and commonly called ebonics outside the academic community. Walt wolfram tells us that while debate about language origins and evolution is common, the history of race relations in american society makes the case of african american english, popularly. Also referred to as african american vernacular english aave, black. No topic in sociolinguistics has been studied more than the history and the structure of african american english aae.