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William Labov Unendangered Dialect, Endangered People TRAA 1066 Dispatch: 27.1.10 Journal: TRAA CE: Lalitha Rao Journal Name Manuscript No. B Author Received: No. of pages: 14 Op: Chris/TMS 1 WILLIAM LABOV 51 2 52 3 UNENDANGERED DIALECT,ENDANGERED PEOPLE:THE CASE 53 4 54 5 OF AFRICAN AMERICAN VERNACULAR ENGLISH 55 6 56 7 57 8 58 9 African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is not The primary condition for such divergence is resi- 59 10 an endangered language variety; on the contrary, it is dential segregation. 60 11 continuing to develop, as all languages, and to diverge Residential segregation, combined with increasing 61 12 from other varieties. The primary correlates of such poverty, has led to a deterioration of many 62 13 divergence are residential segregation and poverty, features of social life in the inner cities. 63 14 which are part of a developing transgenrational cycle In these conditions, a majority of children in inner 64 15 that includes also crime, shorter life spans, and low city schools are failing to learn to read, with a 65 16 educational achievement. The most immediate challenge developing cycle of poverty, crime, and shorter life 66 17 is creating more effective educational programs on a span. 67 18 larger scale. In confronting residential segregation, we Reduced residential segregation will lead to great- 68 19 must be aware that its reduction will lead to greater er contact between speakers of AAVE and 69 20 contact between speakers of AAVE and speakers of speakers of other dialects. 70 21 other dialects. Recent research implies that, if residen- If, at some future date, the social conditions that 71 22 tial integration increases significantly, AAVE as favor the divergence of AAVE are altered, then 72 23 a whole may be in danger of losing its distinctiveness AAVE in its present form may become an endan- 73 24 as a linguistic resource. While many of us would regret a gered dialect. 74 25 decrease in the eloquent syntactic and semantic options 75 26 of AAVE and its possible withering away, we must also THE UNENDANGERED DIALECT 76 consider that the loss of a dialect is a lesser evil than the 27 8 Among all the nonstandard dialects that have been 77 endangerment AAVE speakers currently confront. Q1 28 7 described in the history of linguistics, AAVE is the 78 29 KEYWORDS: African American Vernacular most closely and extensively studied. (Note that 79 30 English (AAVE), dialect divergence, education, liter- there is also a standard variety of African American 80 31 acy, race/racism, segregation, language endangerment English. See, e.g., Spears 2007.) From the mid 1960s 81 32 to the present, studies of its invariant and variable 82 33 features have been published for urban speech com- 83 34 INTRODUCTION munities throughout the United States (New York: 84 35 In the 21st century, linguists are very much concerned Labov 1972; Labov et al. 1968; Detroit: Edwards 1992; 85 36 with the rapid decline and disappearance of the ma- Wolfram 1969; Philadelphia: Ash and Myhill 1986; 86 37 jority of the world’s languages, most of them subject Labov and Harris 1986; Washington, DC: Fasold 87 38 to unequal treatment; and, much of our effort is de- 1972; the Bay area: Mitchell-Kernan 1969; Rickford 88 39 voted to social change that can reverse this process. and McNair-Knox 1993; Rickford et al. 1991; Los 89 40 This report will deal with another aspect of inequal- Angeles: Baugh 1979, 1983, 1984, 1999; Legum et al. 90 41 ity.1 I will be looking at social factors that lead dialects 1972; Columbus: Weldon 1994). Regional differences 91 42 to diverge, develop, and flourish, and forms of cultural have appeared in only a few phonological features. (In 92 43 diversity that need no help to survive. In the final cities with r-ful White vernaculars, African Americans 93 44 summary, I will have to say that I wish the world were show lower levels of r-vocalization than in cities with 94 45 otherwise, because this flourishing dialect is closely r-less vernaculars, Myhill 1988.) AAVE emerges as a 95 46 associated with the oppression, discouragement, and geographically uniform system with the following 96 47 death of its speakers. general characteristics: 97 48 The argument of this paper may be outlined as First, AAVE maintains a fairly uniform sound 98 49 follows: system, based on a modification of the Southern 99 50 African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is States vowel pattern, and does not participate in 100 51 not an endangered dialect; on the contrary, it is con- sound changes characteristic of surrounding White 101 52 tinuing to develop and diverge from other dialects. vernaculars. Remember that all living languages 102 53 103 54 104 Transforming Anthropology, Vol. 18, Number 1, pp. 15–28, ISSN 1051-0559, electronic ISSN 1548-7466. & 2010 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-7466.2010.01066.x. 15 (BWUS TRAA 1066 Webpdf:=01/27/2010 06:15:20 487072 Bytes 14 PAGES n operator=M.Chackalayil) 1/27/2010 6:15:37 PM TRAA 1066 1 change over time, sometimes very slowly, sometimes A similar alignment is found with the simplifi- 51 2 more rapidly. In New York City, African Americans cation of coronal clusters. The higher quantitative 52 3 were found to be shifting the nucleus of/ay/in why, level in AAVE compared with other dialects is 53 4 wide, et cetera to the front, while in the White popu- largely due to a qualitative difference in the effect 54 5 lation, a new and vigorous change was moving the of following pause on simplification. In AAVE, 55 6 vocalic nucleus further and further back of center following pauses favor simplification, while in 56 8 Q2 7 (Labov 1966, 1994). In Philadelphia, the fronting of/ other dialects this environment has a disfavoring 57 7 8 aw/is an absolute differentiator of White and Black effect on simplification, resulting in higher overall 58 9 speech patterns, so that in an experimental study the rates of simplification in AAVE (Guy 1980). 59 10 controlled raising of the second formant of/aw/in Third, several morphosyntactic features present 60 11 out and house converted the perceived identity of the in most varieties of English are absent in the under- 61 12 speaker from Black to White (Graff et al. 1986). At lying grammar of AAVE. Quantitative and 62 13 Calumet College in Chicago, African Americans qualitative differences between AAVE and other 63 14 showed no tendency to participate in the Northern dialects is illustrated in figure 1, based on a study of 64 15 Cities ShiftFthe raising of/æ/, fronting of/o/and 287 elementary school children in low-income 65 16 backing of/e/–characteristic of the White population schools (Labov 2001; Labov and Baker 2008). These 66 17 (Gordon 2000). In cities of the North, the Midland children are a random sample of recordings of a lar- 67 18 and the West, such phonetic patterns immediately ger group of 721 struggling readers. They were 68 19 differentiate the speech of African Americans from recorded in a relatively formal situation, in a school 69 20 that of the local Whites. setting, but with sociolinguistic techniques that shift 70 21 Second, several phonological constraints on speech style toward the vernacular. For all four 71 22 leniting sound changes are aligned with those oper- variables, the vertical axis represents the percent ab- 72 23 ating in other English dialects but operate at higher sence of the consonant involved. The differences 73 24 frequencies. The alignment of AAVE with general among the four language/ethnic groups are quanti- 74 25 sociolinguistic variables was first demonstrated in tative forFt,d deletion and copula absence but 75 26 the study of auxiliary and copula deletion, where qualitative for absence of attribute possessive fsg 76 27 deletion was found to be governed by the same and third-singularfsg. ForFt,d deletion, Blacks 77 28 constraints as contraction in other dialects (Labov and Latinos show 55–65 percent absence and Whites 78 29 1969). The major grammatical constraints on cop- 40 percent; for copula absence, Blacks and Latinos 79 30 ula/auxiliary deletion are replicated regularly in are clustered at a much lower level, and Whites are 80 31 many different geographic areas, with future tense close to zero. In contrast, the Black children are close 81 32 favoring deletion over progressive over following to 70 percent absence for attributive possessivefsg 82 33 locative/adjective over following noun phrase (e.g., and verbal fsg, far different from Latinos and com- 83 34 Rickford et al. 1991).2 pletely different from Whites. 84 35 85 36 86 37 87 38 80% 88 39 89 70% 40 90 41 60% 91 42 92 50% 43 African-American 93 White 44 40% Latino(Span) 94 45 Latino(Eng) 95 30% 46 96 Percent absence 47 20% 97 48 98 49 10% 99 50 0% 100 51 -t,d deletion Possessive {s} 3rd sg. {s} Copula {s} 101 52 Figure 1. Percent absence for four linguistic variables for African-American elementary school children in Philadelphia, 102 53 Atlanta, and California by language and ethnic-group (N 5 287). Latino(Span), Latinos who learned to read in Spanish first; 103 54 Latino(Eng), Latinos who learned to read in Spanish first. 104 16 TRANSFORMING ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 18(1) (BWUS TRAA 1066 Webpdf:=01/27/2010 06:15:20 487072 Bytes 14 PAGES n operator=M.Chackalayil) 1/27/2010 6:15:37 PM TRAA 1066 1 Fourth, variable past tense marking due to high The semantic content of this combination is not 51 2 levels of consonant cluster simplification is rein- simply that B will follow A, but that B will inevitably 52 3 forced by the use of had as a past tense marker.
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