African American Vernacular English In Contemporary Music

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2011 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, language: English, abstract: This thesis investigates the use of African American Vernacular English in contemporary music. AAVE is an ethnic variety spoken by many, though not all, African Americans living in the United States. This dialect does not have one name only, but is also called “Negro dialect,” “Nonstandard Negro English,” “Black English,” “Black Street Speech,” “Black Vernacular English,” “Black Vernacular English,” or “African American English.” I would like to add that some terms are historical. It is crucial to know that researchers call it differently because to a large degree it depends on the time he/she conducted research on this topic. Today, the dialect is either called African American Vernacular English or African American English. The words “contemporary music” in the title refer to Hip Hop. This music genre was chosen to be investigated because out of the music genres African Americans are involved in, it is the one that generates most of the sales and is the most popular one. The rappers which are going to be analyzed in this thesis use many of the features of the African American vernacular. Given the huge number of AAVE features, only one of them will be analyzed, the copula verb to be, which in the following will only be called “the copula.” According to Wolfram, the copula is “one of the most often described structures of AAVE” (2008: 517). For this reason, the copula might be an interesting feature to look at. When researchers examined AAVE in the past, they did not necessarily take music as a source of data, but rather spoken language. One has to know that language in music is a different genre of language use, which differs from the usual use of the language. Music can be considered an artistic expression, but not “real” speech. Nevertheless, as music has always been and presumably will always be a big part in African American culture, it should be possible to recognize features of AAVE and use music as a reliable source. In the analysis conducted in this thesis, the use of the copula will be examined by having a look at the lyrics of three famous rappers from the US: Tupac, Jay-Z and 50 Cent. Even though the three of them can be assigned to “gangsta rap”, they all differ from each other. They all started their careers in different decades, come from different cities and have a different style of rapping. What they have in common is that they are African American rappers from a lower class who grew up in poverty and have become successful musicians.

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, Humboldt-University of Berlin, language: English, abstract: "The language, only the language...it is the thing that black people love so much – the saying of words, holding them on the tongue, experimenting with them, playing with them. It’s a love, a passion. Its function is like a preacher’s: to make you stand up out of your seat, make you lose yourself and ear yourself. The worst of all possible things that could happen is to lose that language. There are certain things I cannot say with-out recourse to my language." With these words Toni Morrison, an American professor and novelist, probably expressed exactly what many African American people felt and still feel. In her statement she refers to the so-called “African American Vernacular English”, abbreviated AAVE, which is “a variant of English spoken mostly by black people in the United States.” (Jokinen 2008: 1) It is also known as “African American English”, “Black English Vernacular”, “Black Vernacular Eng-lish”, “Black Vernacular”, “Black English” or “Ebonics”. It is important to point out that not all African Americans inevitably speak this ethnolect and that there are also people with a non-African American background who nonetheless may speak it. (cf. Patrick 2007: 1) Fur-thermore, it is hard to define who actually speaks AAVE as some speakers may only use some features, e.g. vocabulary or grammatical aspects, of this variant. (cf. Jokinen 2008: 1) AAVE is a variant of English that you can see and hear every day – it is present in the Internet and in many songs and that makes it so interesting to find out more about it and to get a better understanding of AAVE. In this paper, I will focus on different aspects. I will start dealing with the question “Where does AAVE come from?” under point two and will continue with a brief overview of some basic grammatical features of AAVE in point three. Under point four, I will present and discuss a concrete example of a text, in which AAVE plays an important role, namely in the short story The Gilded Six-Bits of Zora Neale Hurston, written in 1933. Afterwards, under point five, I am going to talk about AAVE in Rap and HipHop songs as there can be found a considerable number of this kind of music all around the world and, under point 6, I will deal with the controversial question whether AAVE should be taught in schools or not. Finally, in the conclusion of my paper, I would like to let the uniqueness of AAVE and the importance of recognizing...

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,0, , course: Varieties of English: New Englishes, language: English, abstract: First of all, this term paper will give some general information about the variety African American Vernacular English itself, its origins and who the speakers of AAVE are. Furthermore, it will give an overview of some features of AAVE and finally the analysis of two of the features on different rap songs from the famous rapper Snoop Dogg. The first feature that I will be looking at is zero copula and the second feature is the omission of the third-person singular –s in the present tense. In this term paper I will investigate the occurrence of these two features in Snoop Dogg’s lyrics from his first album “Doggystyle” and his latest album “Bush” and if they decreased or increased with time. Since music plays such a huge part in African American culture it should be possible to see these features of AAVE in the lyrics. The analysis will contain 16 rap songs from Snoop Dogg’s first album Doggystyle from 1993 and 10 rap songs from his latest album Bush from 2015. English is a language with many varieties and also one of the most spoken languages in the world. The varieties of English are results of colonial expansion and may differ from each other in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the variety that people associate with as the language used by the black community. The additional term vernacular refers to the speech style in everyday communication and differentiates black African American Vernacular English speakers from black speakers of Standard English. Especially in rap and hip-hop music the number of black performers is very high since it was introduced as a new music genre. The style of language that is used in hip-hop lyrics is highly influenced by the African Americans. AAVE is a variant of English that you can hear every day on the radio or television for example and that also makes it so interesting to analyze its use, features and origin.

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,0, course: Varieties of English: New Englishes, language: English, abstract: First of all, this term paper will give some general information about the variety African American Vernacular English itself, its origins and who the speakers of AAVE are. Furthermore, it will give an overview of some features of AAVE and finally the analysis of two of the features on different rap songs from the famous rapper Snoop Dogg. The first feature that I will be looking at is zero copula and the second feature is the omission of the third-person singular -s in the present tense. In this term paper I will investigate the occurrence of these two features in Snoop Dogg's lyrics from his first album "Doggystyle" and his latest album "Bush" and if they decreased or increased with time. Since music plays such a huge part in African American culture it should be possible to see these features of AAVE in the lyrics. The analysis will contain 16 rap songs from Snoop Dogg's first album Doggystyle from 1993 and 10 rap songs from his latest album Bush from 2015. English is a language with many varieties and also one of the most spoken languages in the world. The varieties of English are results of colonial expansion and may differ from each other in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the variety that people associate with as the language used by the black community. The additional term vernacular refers to the speech style in everyday communication and differentiates black African American Vernacular English speakers from black speakers of Standard English. Especially in rap and hip-hop music the number of black performers is very high since it was introduced as a new music genre. The style of language that is used in hip-hop lyrics is highly influenced by the African Americans. AAVE is a variant of English that you can

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, language: English, abstract: The question that will be addressed in this thesis is whether dialect choice in soul music from Memphis and Detroit was, with regard to commercial success, stronger than the mostly homogeneous character of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) across all regions of the US. A detailed linguistic analysis of a selection of songs from Motown and Stax will try to investigate the extent to which that artists from Detroit did adapt their language habits to their surrounding white fellow citizens. This might be even more interesting for northern blacks who moved away from their dialect roots in the South. With respect to a separation from the white population, which can at least be assumed for the artists' childhood and early adulthood, it appears necessary to look at certain features that were either kept or lost. In addition, the analysis will try to connect the commercial success of all included songs and artists to the language habits of the performers. First, some background for this paper's study will be provided, including the social implications of AAVE and the reference studies for the analysis. Then, the relevant phonological and grammatical variables will be listed and explained. These variables will be, with regard to the Motown and Stax data sets, analyzed in detail. Finally, the interpretation of the results will try to find an answer to the thesis of this paper.

Seminar paper from the year 2022 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 3,0, University of Würzburg (Neuphilologisches Institut), course: Hauptseminar: Linguistics of theoretical orientation. Language and Music, language: English, abstract: For this paper, song lyrics will be examined more closely for typical features of African American Vernacular English. Based on the analysis of the findings, any differences and similarities in the use and frequency of African American Vernacular in the rap lyrics will be clarified and thus possible developments in the use of African American Vernacular English in Hip-Hop identified. If necessary, these will also be used to draw possible conclusions about American society. In the second chapter of this thesis, the theoretical background relevant to the understanding of the topic will be discussed. An overview of the music genre of Hip-Hop, the variety of African American Vernacular English and the selected artists is given. After that, the methodology of this thesis will be explained, which will be used for the investigation of the Research Question. This is followed by a comprehensive presentation of the results with a subsequent discussion and commentary on the findings. Linguists are constantly noticing a constant change in languages and their varieties. Thus, in the end, it is to be expected that the characteristics of African American Vernacular English have also changed in the rappers' texts of different ages and can be determined with the help of this mini-study. Since African American slang is still a stylistic device even in the works of white rappers, no significant changes are to be expected in terms of the total frequency of general language elements from the African American Vernacular English.

A New Perspective for the Use of Dialect in African American Spirituals: History, Context, and Linguistics investigates the use of the African American English (AAE) dialect in the musical genre of the spiritual. Perfect for conductors and performers alike, this book traces the history of the dialect, its use in early performance practice, and the sociolinguistic impact of the AAE dialect in the United States. Felicia Barber explores AAE’s development during the African Diaspora and its correlations with Southern States White English (SSWE) and examines the dialect’s perception and how its weaponization has impacted the performance of the genre itself. She provides a synopsis of research on the use of dialect in spirituals from the past century through the analysis of written scores, recordings, and research. She identifies common elements of early performance practice and provides the phonological and grammatical features identified in early practice. This book contains practical guide for application of her findings on ten popular spiritual texts using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). It concludes with insights by leading arrangers on their use of AAE dialect as a part of the genre and practice.

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,7, University of Münster (Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: Proseminar American English, language: English, abstract: This abstract shall give another piece of the puzzle to what is considered to be African-American Vernacular English. With scientific aid of well-known concepts by linguists such as Green in particular but also Wolfram, Schilling-Estes, Mufwene and Poplack we want to focus on specific grammatical features of AAVE and to what extend these can be recovered in the Hip-Hop subgenre of American West Coast Gangsta Rap. A small but significant text corpus of four representative songs (added to the appendix in the shape of lyrics) cover the source for a quantitative and qualitative evaluation. The given text shall give a short overview about the origin and different theories on AAVE first and will further on primarily adapt the characteristic linguistic features L. Green and Wolfram & Schilling-Estes worked out and apply them to our little song text corpus.

In response to the flood of interest in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) following the recent controversy over "Ebonics," this book brings together sixteen essays on the subject by a leading expert in the field, one who has been researching and writing on it for a quarter of a century.

Trabalho de conclusão de curso que analisa o processo de padronização de uma língua, como o inglês se espalhou pelo mundo tornando-se uma língua global, a provável formação do inglês afro-americano e como o rap pode ser usado no ensino de língua inglesa.