New Perspectives on African American English: The Role of Black-to-Black Contact

Abstract

One of the most widely researched language varieties in the field of sociolinguistics is African American English (AAE), a term used to describe a range of English dialects, from standard to vernacular, spoken by many (but not all) African Americans as well as by certain members of other ethnic groups who have had extensive contact with AAE speakers. Most linguists agree that AAE developed from contact between enslaved Africans and predominantly English-speaking Europeans (who spoke a range of English vernaculars) during the early to middle period of colonization of what is now known as the United States of America. Consequently, research on the development of AAE is traditionally framed in terms of the degree of contact with white English vernaculars, both during and after AAE genesis, with white vernaculars playing a primary, if not exclusive, role (McDavid & McDavid, 1951; Mufwene, 1996; Poplack, 2000; Poplack & Tagliamonte, 2001). Though some analyses of AAE allow for substrate influence from creole and/or African languages in its development (cf. Winford, 1997, 1998; Rickford, 1998, 2006; Wolfram & Thomas, 2002; Holm, 2004), many studies place a particular focus on Earlier African American varieties or Diaspora varieties, such as the Ex-Slave Recordings, Samaná English, and Liberian Settler English rather than contemporary AAE varieties spoken within U.S. borders (cf. Rickford, 1977, 1997, 2006; DeBose, 1988; Schneider 1989; Bailey, Maynor, & Cukor-Avila, 1991; Hannah, 1997; Singler, 1998, 2007a, 2007b; Kautzsch 2002). This research has helped further linguists’ understanding of AAE yet does not reflect its full history in the United States.