Ebonics (from the words ebony and phonics) is a term that was originally intended to refer to the language of all people descended from enslaved Africans, particularly in West Africa, the Caribbean, and North America. Since 1996, Ebonics has primarily been used to refer to African American Vernacular English (AAVE), a dialect distinctively different from Standard American English. Since the 1996 controversy over its use by the Oakland School Board, the term Ebonics has come to refer to using the pedagogical tool of teaching Standard American English to native speakers of AAVE by creating a distinction between Standard American English and African American Vernacular English.[1][not in citation given]
The word Ebonics was originally coined in 1973 by African American social psychologist Robert Williams in a discussion with linguist Ernie Smith (as well as other language scholars and researchers) that took place in a conference on "Cognitive and Language Development of the Black Child", held in St. Louis, Missouri.[3][4] His intention was to give a name to the language of African Americans that acknowledged the linguistic consequence of the slave trade and avoided the negative connotations of other terms like "Nonstandard Negro English".
We need to define what we speak. We need to give a clear definition to our language...We know that ebony means black and that phonics refers to speech sounds or the science of sounds. Thus, we are really talking about the science of black speech sounds or language.
In 1975, the term appeared in Ebonics: The True Language of Black Folks, a book edited and cowritten by Williams:
A two-year-old term created by a group of black scholars, Ebonics may be defined as "the linguistic and paralinguistic features which on a concentric continuum represent the communicative competence of the West African, Caribbean, and United States slave descendant of African origin. It includes the various idioms, patois, argots, idiolects, and social dialects of black people" especially those who have adapted to colonial circumstances. Ebonics derives its form from ebony (black) and phonics (sound, the study of sound) and refers to the study of the language of black people in all its cultural uniqueness.
Other writers have since emphasized how the term represents a view of the language of Black people as African rather than European. The term was not obviously popular even among those who agreed with the reason for coining it. Even within Williams's Ebonics book, the term Black English is far more commonly used than the term Ebonics.
John Baugh has stated[10] that the term Ebonics is used in four ways by its Afrocentric proponents. It may:
1. be "an international construct, including the linguistic consequences of the African slave trade"
2. refer to the languages of the African diaspora as a whole;
or it may refer to what is normally regarded as a variety of English: either
3. it "is the equivalent of black English and is considered to be a dialect of English" (and thus merely an alternative term for AAVE), or
4. it "is the antonym of black English and is considered to be a language other than English" (and thus a rejection of the notion of "African American Vernacular English" but nevertheless a term for what others term AAVE, viewed as an independent language and not a mere ethnolect).
Garry, we know you have changed the OIFY password because we called your girlfriend fat. Make OIFY available to all or else you will be killed.
[img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/38222943/garry.gif[/img]
[highlight](User was permabanned for this post ("Gimmick" - Orkel))[/highlight]
