Black English Vernacular
- noun
- /blæk ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ vɜːrˈnækjʊlər/
- Specialized
:
inglés vernáculo negro
- Black dialect is referred to by many names: Ebonics, Black American dialect, Black English Vernacular, and African American dialect.
Examples
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Price (1993) examined the speech of four black students from poverty-stricken families who could readily shift from Black English Vernacular to Standard American English.
Academic text (2000) -
In examining the writings of African American students, Collier (1993) observed that the students had traces of Black English Vernacular at the organizational level, but that the occurrences varied widely from one student to the other.
Academic text (2000) -
Many African American communities express their culture through Black English Vernacular, which has distinct grammatical features.
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The use of Black English Vernacular often reflects the speaker's identity and heritage in sociolinguistic studies.
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Linguists study Black English Vernacular to understand its unique vocabulary and phonetic patterns among African American speakers.
Synonyms
4
9.6
A way of speaking American English that many African Americans use
1
9.1
A way of speaking English used mainly by African Americans in the United States
1
6.9
A form of American English with its own grammar and words, often spoken by African Americans
A way of speaking English used by many African Americans with its own grammar, words, and sounds
A way of speaking English used by many Black people in the United States
A variety of American English many Black people speak, with different pronunciation, grammar, and words
A way of speaking English used by many Black people in the United States with its own sounds and grammar
Surface Forms
Morphology
black + English + vernacular
The meaning is directly compositional: 'Black' (pertaining to African-descended people) + 'English' (the language) + 'vernacular' (the common dialect) yields 'the variety of English spoken by Black people.' This straightforward adjective-noun combination follows normal composition patterns and is cross-linguistically transparent, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words can infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Black English Vernacular simply names the everyday English of many African American communities: Black points to the people, English to the language, and Vernacular means 'everyday speech'. That's why the term today refers to a living, local way of speaking with its own rules, sounds, and words.