African American Vernacular English

John Rickford's class on AAVE covers, "The English vernacular spoken by African Americans in big city settings, and its relation to Creole English dialects spoken on the S. Carolina Sea Islands (Gullah), in the Caribbean, and in W. Africa. The history of expressive uses of African American English (in soundin' and rappin'), and its educational implications."

This page gives some links to materials I prepared as John's teaching assistant. (Looking back on them years later they are a lot less visual than I usually make materials. Doh.)

First off, here are the slides from my lecture on language attitudes and the media (especially Disney). A lot of this work was actually compiled by Rebecca Starr who was a TA for AAVE in 2006:

• Lecture on language attitudes, the media, and the Ann Arbor King Case

Here are the presentations I prepared for section:

• Introduction, the lexicon, phonetics/phonology
• Phonetics/phonology (and how writers use AAVE)
• Grammar (AAVE's got structure)
• More grammar (and review of what we saw in our church visit)
• Mid-term prep (and some stuff on comedians)
• Post-midterm notes
• Pidgins and creoles
• The origins of AAVE (Creolists vs. Anglicists); AAVE in the classroom
• Language attitudes and the media
• Review session for the final

And here are some non-Power Point materials that students found helpful:

• Complete lecture notes (with notes on the first week's readings thrown in)
• Practice with the International Phonetics Alphabet
• Student Q&A about course material (prepping for the final)