Rationale
Written Task One
I’ve chosen to produce a memoir because it is a text type
that is able to portray the individual’s insights on their personal thoughts
and views. Through using a memoir, many anecdotes can be told that which shows
a person’s wisdom evolving creating inspiration for other people. The response
will be written in the perspective of Paul Dunbar, the poet who wrote Little
Brown Baby because he will best be able to convey the meaning and express the
feelings that were go along with the piece of writing. The target audience is
everyone especially because it is a memoir, therefore everyone you should be
able to read it and have an opinion. The purpose of this response is to show
and prove to people that just because AAVE isn’t classified as Standard English,
doesn’t make it any less degrading or for it to be considered as broken English
or wrong and that in fact a lot of times it is understood and used for people
to express themselves in their own ways and it is a part of peoples cultures
and identity. There is a lot of historical context to AAVE and how it has
developed through the years and how it is used with certain people at certain
times. There is definitely a social setting, it is used to socialize between
African Americans most of the times but recently other cultures have started
using it but there is an extent to were no other culture can interfere because
it is their language of intimacy between their culture.
Memoir
AAVE… The first thing that comes to mind is our ownership. It’s
a dialect that we own, we use and we understand. It is our dialect of intimacy.
AAVE, also known as Black English Vernacular is mainly spoken in the United
Sates and the Caribbean. AAVE has developed through the years with speakers of
West Africa who learnt English on plantations in the southern coastal states such
as Georgia or South Carolina. All our ancestors have been speaking this way and
it has been passed down for generations now, it is understood between us.
Many people and scholars would argue that it is not an acceptable
form of speaking and communicating because it is “broken” or “wrong” and less
valuable and degrading to society because it degrades the English language and
those who speak it are of less standards and do not really wish to educate
themselves on a higher level. Some people also argue that in certain
situations, speaking in AAVE is inappropriate and can sometimes let a person
achieve less than they should. For instance, if a person was to apply for a job
and went to an interview and spoke in AAVE to the manager, they would less
likely be able to receive this job because the way they speak portrays a less
understanding and devalued manner yet why should we be judged based on who we
are? We don’t intentionally put on that dialect; it is a part of who we are a
part of our master identity. Why should we have to change ourselves to be
accepted or classified as “smart”? Many people don’t realise what an important
role AAVE plays in our lives.
In my poem Little Brown Baby, I wrote the whole poem in
AAVE, all of it. My use of AAVE in the poem creates the effect of speech
patterns. In the poem, the father of the baby is the speaker, he came back from
work and looks at his baby and is concerned of his sons future when he says: “Wisht
you could allus know ease an’ cleah skies;/Wisht you could stay jes’ a chile on
my breas’--/Little brown baby wif spa’klin’ eyes!”
When writing this poem I tried to establish the joys of life, the baby’s father
holds him and enjoys his son’s innocence. The son has sparkling eyes and a
smile that’ll never leave his face.
So, Little Brown Baby conveys the importance of family, love, joy and humour and
the heart wounds that occur in the life of the speaker but not only him but
also the whole race of the African Americans. This poem was best written in
AAVE because it best described the situation and best expresses the feelings
and emotions that we have in our lives, it is not only a speech but a dialect
of intimacy, a dialect understood within our culture and who we are.
I dislike how others thought of black people’s dialect, as
if black people were limited to a compelled form of expression that was
unassociated with the more educated class. When once asked at an interview how I
felt about all this, I replied: "I am tired, so tired of dialect, my
natural speech is dialect and my love is for the Negro pieces"
Back in school I was the only coloured kid there was but that wasn’t what stood
out the most, it was my scholarly performance. I did very well and became the
resident of the school Newspaper but later as I wanted to pursue these dreams
of mine I couldn’t due to the black discrimination that was going on. Instead I
became an elevator operator but much later was discovered for my true talents
yet I started writing to suit society and in a way that didn’t please me much
and much later did I realise that I will write in AAVE because that is my
dialect of my people and it is a part of who I am which took a long while because
living in that society made you feel like you were less of value and not
capable of accomplishing much if you spoke or wrote in AAVE.
The article “Ain’t No Reason” and the video “African-American
English” both agree with important use of AAVE in our community. Just because
AAVE doesn’t follow the traditional American English rules of grammar doesn’t mean
it’s wrong, instead it has its own rules. In the articles on “Ain’t No Reason” the
author explains how we enforce our own grammatical rules such as using double
negatives such as: “I ain’t got none” or “I ain’t singin’ nothing”
or “I ain’t never eat no sushi” yet the interesting part
is if you translated these sentences into French you’d have: “Je n’en ai
pas” or “Je ne chnaterai pas” or “Je n’ai jamais
mange de sushis” you can clearly see that French has the same structure as AAVE
in using the double negatives, does that make French wrong? AAVE follows its
own strict grammatical rules.
AAVE is spoken by younger people because they’ve brought up like that because that’s
what they know, it isn’t wrong- it’s their language.
In the video “African- American English” it discusses the importance
of language and how the music and poetry of the language creates a bond of love.
People talk like they talk; they talk like who they are because they are who
they are. The use of language is a way to continue to communicate ideas and especially
emotions. We use AAVE to keep connection with group and to make sure we don’t lose
them or our connection with them. AAVE is a part of life and a sense of family
and familiarity and it determines lines. Every generation has to identify
itself and create own language. We develop AAVE, like language to keep communicating
and keep ideas going and most importantly because it is a language/ dialect of
intimacy it is most certainly used to express our emotions in our own manners.
