Richard Grünert
Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English - Pedagogy, Didactics, Literature Studies, grade: 15 Punkte, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen (Department of English), course: Grammar in the english foreign language classroom, language: English, abstract: Ebonics is probably the most popular and widespread linguistic phenomena in the world today. This is mainly due to the fact that American music is a worldwide predominant cultural reality. Black American music with its inherent linguistic characteristics, by the same token, looms large within that heritage. In this paper I will commence with a description of the term 'Ebonics' and some information on the scientific state of affairs concerning its origins. Then I will proceed to some phonological aspects and conclude with a short look at its grammatical structure and idiosyncrasies. African-American English, the linguistic variety spoken by many African Americans in the United States of America, is a system with specific rules for combining sounds to form words, phrases and sentences. The first researchers who took an interest in this called it 'Non-Standard Negro English', 'Negro dialect' or 'American Negro speech'. However, because of the growing objections to the term Negro, other terms had to be found - parallel to the changes - in referring to black people. But even though the terms 'African-American Vernacular English' (AAVE), 'Black communications', Black dialect', 'Black English', 'Black Vernacular English', 'African American language', 'African American English' and, as Stanford Afro-American Linguist John Baugh named it, 'Black Street Speech' (Baugh, 1983: 11), have all been used to label this variety over the past forty years, the word 'Ebonics' (a blend of ebony and phonetics that was created in 1973 by a group of black scholars) is probably the most popular one today. This essay is to be understood as a brief survey on its grammatical and linguistic features.
