Ebonics Essay

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Long Live Ebonics People call me lazy English, poor grammar, slang, BLACK and/or African-American English. Who am I? I’m Ebonics. I’m the language that has been the talk of the century. I’ve been fought over by Standard English and Ebonics users for many years. Why am I so popular? I’m popular due to the accusations against my name. I am supposedly responsible for the improper use of Standard English in schools, homes, interviews, yet I’ve been allowed in different environments across the world. I may be known as AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) but African-Americans aren’t the only ones who use me. Many different groups of people across the globe have their own version of Ebonics and now the question at hand is where should Ebonics be allowed? Ebonics should be allowed everywhere because it’s a form of speech, a sense of culture, and a huge part of our history dating back to the First Amendment. In the article “Do You Speak American?” Dr. Robert Williams discusses how he combined “ebony” and “phonics” in efforts to refer to “black sounds” in 1973. He also goes on to define “Ebonics” as “the linguistic and paralinguistic features which on a concentric continuum represent the communicative competence of the West African, Caribbean, and United States slave descendant of African origin”. (Williams) Arguments over whether Ebonics is either a language or dialect have began as early as 1960. Linguistics are the cause of these arguments due to the opposing thoughts on languages being diverse and able to transform versus staying formal and structured (Rickford). This form of speech has most definitely evolved since the days of slavery, but it is surely still not acceptable everywhere we go. In 1997, the Oakland School Board resolution settled Ebonics arguments and declared that it be known and used as a dialect. The effort put forth in fighting for this by the
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