No, It's Not Just "Slang"

You should thank Black culture for the language that your favorite influencers and TikTokers — and likely some of your friends — appropriate every day.

While African American English (AAE), also known as African American Vernacular English (AAVE) or African American Language (AAL), has been appropriated across the internet, it’s often seen as “slang” that needs correcting — in the workplace, in pop culture, at school. Examples include “periodt, sis,” “spill the tea,” and “woke.”

But AAE is not slang. It’s not “internet stan culture.” It’s not poor or incorrect English. AAE has distinct rules, grammatical structure, regional dialects and vocabulary.

“No matter what, people will take and appropriate. The beauty of African Americans and African American English speakers is that they continue to still generate. They still continue to use the language as a representation of who they are,” Dr. Renée Blake, an associate professor in NYU’s department of linguistics and social and cultural analysis, told AJ+.

So where does the stigmatization of Black language come from?

“It's not only that the language is seen as negative or devalued, it's that the people are seen as negative and devalued. And that language then becomes a proxy for that stigmatization,” Blake said. “So you can't outright say, 'I don't like you because you're Black,' right? But you can say, 'I don't like your language, and therefore I won't hire you or talk to you. I don't want to hear from you. I won't teach you,' right?”

Society, from the classrooms to the boardrooms, has devalued, misrepresented and misunderstood AAE, often labeling those who speak it as “ignorant” and the language as “broken” and “improper” English. This has affected the educational, housing and employment opportunities Black people are afforded in the U.S. It has also influenced who gets justice and who does not. Here’s a brief breakdown of how this works.

Education

In 1979, a federal judge ruled in favor of Black parents suing Michigan’s Ann Arbor School Board for discriminating against its Black students and the way they spoke. Judge Charles Joiner argued that teachers ignoring African American language could create “a psychological barrier to learning.” He ordered that AAE needed to be acknowledged and considered when teaching Black students.

“Can you imagine what happens to a young African American who comes into the classroom and is told that the language that they speak is systematic and rule-governed, and you start to show them?” Blake said. “Oh, the ways that they come alive. Oh, the ways that they feel validated and that they can say, I matter, my language matters.”

Nearly two decades after the Ann Arbor decision, a school board in Oakland, California, decided to acknowledge African American English and asked teachers to learn about the language a majority of their students spoke. Public uproar ensued and the school board eventually backtracked, though it continued teaching students how to translate AAE to standard English.

Legal system

Disregard of AAE impacts the daily lives of Black Americans. For some, the prejudice they face for speaking AAE can have long-term, devastating impact.

Linguistic prejudice may have kept George Zimmerman out of prison for the 2012 killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Martin’s close friend Rachel Jeantel was a key prosecution witness during the trial, but her testimony was deemed “not credible” and “hard to understand.” The presumed reason? She spoke African American English. She was on the phone with Martin when he was being followed by Zimmerman. A juror on the nearly all-white jury later reported that during the 16 hours of deliberations, Jeantel’s testimony was never mentioned. As the Los Angeles Times reported, “Her voice didn’t matter.”

A 2019 study showed that court stenographers in Pennsylvania often misinterpreted AAE speakers’ testimonies, at times assuming admission of criminal behavior.

Less than 60% of transcriptions by Philadelphia court interpreters were accurate.
Court stenographers were unable to accurately paraphrase what they had heard 77% of the time.
Court transcriptions made no sense 11% of the time.

(For more on this, check out our AJ+ video.)

Employment

In the job market, a name alone can shut you out. For Black people, simply “sounding Black” can increase the wage disparity they face. A 2009 study showed Black workers who were perceived as sounding Black earned 12% less than similarly skilled white people. Another study showed AAE speakers were rated as less intelligent and ambitious and less favorably overall.

Some Black people find themselves having to “code-switch” while at work. It’s the practice of alternating between multiple languages or dialects. Blake says Black people often code-switch between American Standard English and African American English because they want to be accepted by those in power, whether that’s at school, work or generally in society.

“They don't feel that the other part of them is accepted in this society. They think that if they speak the language of ... those that they are very close to, that they'll be ostracized, that they won't get hired in the jobs that they want, that they won't be seen as smart, that they won't be seen as articulate,” she said. “So these are the things that we're working up against, and that's really hard because we want to be liked.”

Language matters

The chants of Black Lives Matter do not stop with demands for police accountability. Black lives matter and Black language does too. Though racism and prejudice infiltrate every space of Black lives, African American English is here to stay and Blake says it will continue to evolve and expand.

“There's something really beautiful about the expression of African American English by its speakers. It's alive. It is explicit. It's indirect. It has all of these wonderful aspects,” she said. “It gets preserved just by being, just by living, just by experiencing, just by expressing who we are. It's inevitable. I just think this is such a language that has so much life. And as long as there is life in us, it will continue to be produced.”

To watch the entire video (produced by Eileen Salazar and voiced by Imaeyen Ibanga) click here.