Aspects and Variations of African American English

Studying the aspects of African American English is important for understanding how and why people spoke in this dialect long ago and why people sometimes speak in this dialect today. This dialect of English can be dated back all the way to when the slaves came over to America. They quickly realized they needed to adapt to their new surroundings and begin speaking English so they could communicate with Americans. By mixing English with their culture’s language, African American English was made.
 
There are many pieces of literature that accurately display how African American English was used both years ago and today. In Toni Morrison’s book “Sula” we can see through the dialogue of the characters, how they spoke to one another in this dialect. Readers can see different aspects of African American English presented such as absence of copula for contracted forms of is and are, general plural is absence, as well as the use of ain’t for didn’t.

Toni Morrison’s book “Sula” is a great example of African American English. This excerpt from the story shows some of the dialogue between some of the characters. The dialogue in the story is the main source for showing how people of color use African American English. The story however is written in third person. While reading the book, readers can see a direct contrast of African American English with regular English that is spoken today. Toni Morrison may have done this to show the differences between the two dialects and inform readers of how people who use African American English talk.

Many of the variations we see throughout the dialogue in this story are discussed by Wolfram in his chapter on African American English. These include the absence of copula as well as many others. These variations are also discussed in Holt's article "Mechanisms of Vowel Variation in African American English." In her article, Holt aims to prove that there is vowel variation among AAE speakers. They focused their research in North Carolina and ultimately they prove that there is some sort of vowel variation in speakers of African American English.

 Jessica Berry's article "Dialect Variation of Copula and Auxiliary Verb BE: African American English- Speaking Children With and Without Gullah/Geechee Heritage” ultimately aims to prove the same thing: the dialect of African American English is not uniform in all speakers of the dialect. Berry aims to prove however, that the heritage of a person directly affects how they speak African American English. After researching with children, with and without the Gullah/Geechee heritage, they found that there is a correlation between a child's heritage and the way they speak AAE. Both these articles show that although many people speak AAE there is much variation in the aspects of the dialect.

In Terry's article, "Relations between Dialect Variation, Grammar, and Early Spelling Skills" she talks about how there is also variation in the way African American English is spoken in children. She also aims to prove that children's use of African American English directly correlates to how they perform in school, mainly reading and writing. After testing students on things such as spelling patterns, productive morphology, and word reading, they found that the dialect in which children speak directly affects their performance in school. While we did not see much of Sula's time in school it is clear that children have a harder time in school if they speak a different language. 

Toni Morrison's book "Sula" is a great example of how African American English was spoken. Throughout the dialogue in the book we see how African American English was used by people who spoke the dialect. We see many variations throughout the book and different aspects used, such as the use of ain't for didn't. When we look at how many variations and different aspects there are in African American English, we see just how diverse the dialect really is.