bell hooks Blog Post

"An unbroken connection exists between the broken English of the displaced, enslaved African and the diverse black vernacular speech black folks use today. In both cases, the rupture of standard English enabled and enables rebellion and resistance. By transforming the oppressor’s language, making a culture of resistance, black people created an intimate speech that could say far more than was permissible within the boundaries of standard English."

Selected Text: What's so wrong with "sounding black?"

The following text correlates with the quote above made by bell hooks as it speaks of the common misconceptions and viewpoints towards African Vernacular English as having wrong or incorrect grammatical rules and forms of speech. The author produces and proves her own claims of AAVE and how certain linguists have categorized and contrasted it to standardized English, leading to false results or conclusions which are usually based upon "racial bias". The text battles with white stereotypes, as the author declares that "I stress that, in this case, I am talking about an accent, not poor diction and not slang, but a distinct cadence and way of pronouncing words.". She urges for such a rebellion to stop, facing away from black vernacular, through comparing and contrasting other dialects in English "The change is largely unconscious mimicry, much like how a New Yorker who now lives in California might find her Brooklyn accent gets a little stronger when she goes back home".

Similarly, this idea connects with bell hook's saying above where she states that there are still distinct features of AAVE and Broken English that separate the two, as she persuades the audience of the fact that the African Americans produced an independent dialect to portray sovereignty to showcase the varied features their society has achieved regardless of the white's. As a result the two authors display the tongue as a form of resistance from the acts of oppression applied towards them in the past, and symbolize the significance of their own rights through the craftsmanship of this dialect.