Development of AfricanAmerican English in "Springville"

When you think about Texas, you think about cowboys and cattle. You don't think about cotton and slavery. But, that's in the history of this dry, flat and stiflingly hot east-central Texas. This has been cotton country ever since the time of slavery. After slavery was abolished this land was worked by dirt poor sharecroppers. I am meeting two linguists at the country store in "Springville", a tiny community sandwiched between two union pacific railroad tracks. For more than 17 years, Guy Bailey and Patricia Cukor-Avila have been conducting a remarkable piece of research into the language of local African Americans.
GB: How you doing? Welcome to Springville.
RM: Thank you.
GB: Welcome to the train.
PCA: Welcome to the train, right.
RM: Do you have these all the time?
GB: All the time.
PCA: Every few minutes.
RM: For generations of sharecroppers, black and white, the country store was the center of their lives. This is where they bought provisions, stores, and tools. And this where they borrowed money from the white store-owner until they sold their cotton. This store has been owned by the same family for more than a century. In many ways, it's hardly changed at all. It's in a kind of time warp.
PCA: Well, when I first started out with this project, I would sit out at the general store inside and basically hang out there most of the day and interact with people who came in and talk with them and not necessarily record right at first until I got to know people. The mail is still delivered at the store there is no home delivery. People often times don't just come to get their mail and leave. They come, get their mail, sit down, open it, sit around, and talk.
RM: "Springville" is a fictional name Guy and Patricia gave to the community so that local people would feel relaxed in their company. To win their trust, Guy and Patricia also promised them that they would use pseudonyms.
PCA: Willy is a lifelong resident of the area. He grew up on one of the farms close to the store. He's always lived out here and worked in agriculture his whole life. He's a very good example of what we would call older rural African American speech patterns.
GB: You told me that when you were a boy you did a lot of hunting and stuff?
W: Yeah, I hunted a little bit, yes sir.
GB: What all did you hunt?
W: Armadillo, rabbits, and anything I could catch!
GB: Is that right? Is the armadillo pretty good to eat?
W: Yessir, it's good sir.
GB: I've never had armadillo. What's it taste like?
W: Tastes good. Like chicken.
GB: Is that right?
W: Yessir. You cook it right, sir.
GB: Is that right? How you cook it?
W: Well sir, my momma she boiled it. Boiled it. In a pot, you know. Put some onion rind in, make gravy, fry em.
PCA: What we've been able to do with this research is to look at how things change over time in a single community.
W: We've had some hard times in my day. Yessir. We work hard, sir, like my Daddy.
RM: Willy's way of talking can be traced right back to the time of slavery. We know this because one of the things that makes this part of texas so special is a series of recordings and photographs made here in the 1930's and 40's.
GB: These were pictures that were made by workers for the WPA here in Texas. The top two are from former slaves who were from this district. The others are from slaves in other parts of Texas.
RM: You think of slavery being so long ago, so long in the past.
GB: So much of it though was a nineteenth century phenomenon.
RM: So, these people photographed in the late 30s or 1940 thereabouts could actually be the grandchildren or even children of people brought directly from Africa?
GB: That's exactly right.
GB: Now, here are some of the recordings from the Library of Congress with former slaves who were born Texas.
Recording 1: Born right there and stayed there until I was about nine, ten years old, maybe even more. Stayed right there. We didn't know where to go. Momma never did know where to go. You see, after freedom, you know, it's just like you turn someone out, you know. Didn't know where to go. They just would've stayed.
Recording 2: I said I'm 61 or 2 years old and I've never had no trouble in my life. I say I never asked a no one for a nickel, but they didn't give it to me in my life. And not a one of them never trusted me.
RM: What is significant to you in the speech patterns on these recordings?
GB: They're very different from current day African American vernacular English. Many of the features that are most common in what linguists call a AAVE things like invariant "be", "they be working", or the deleted copula, "they working". You don't see as much the invariant "be". You don't see it at all, hear it at all in the slave tapes.
RM: African American speech changed in the epic migration of rural southern blacks to the cities of the north. Over many decades until the 1970s, some 6million made that journey. And as always when there are great movements of people, there

Category:

Education

Tags:

• linguistics
• sociolinguistics
• African
• American
• English
• AAVE
• language
• change
• segregation
• Patricia
• Cukor-Avila
• Guy
• Bailey

[theguymjp]

African American English = Normal English with an accent that's not spoken anywhere else (like all accents, lol) with slight incorrect grammar. Though, you cant say that its incorrect, because its perfectly fine to their ears, so lets just say, different grammar.

When I see people saying that they can't understand it... I think WTF? People who say that they cant understand it are obviously trying to cause trouble.

Notes from an English man.

[bostonteabagger71739]

actually i do think about slavery man....not just cowboys

[jmayuk]

Actually, when you consider that Texas was not part of the US until 1844, previously being part of Mexico and an Independent Republic (which allowed slave importation from Africa until 1811 and continued via Cuba until statehood) as well as the fact that the people photographed look to be in their 70s and 80s, it is entirely possible that they are children or grandchildren of Africans.

[TheHeronofalexandria]

No, they couldn't be son or grandchildren of people directly from Africa. Importation of African slaves was banned in 1808, 60 years before the Emancipation Proclamation.

[macdaddy4591]

wow, very informative.

[najami12]

Google "Dr. Lewis Steiner" and see how blacks served in the Confederacy!

[ruaxhatsafon]

you can not call the grammar of african american english incorrect, it is just different. blacks in america have been speaking english for more generations than most people of european-immigrant descent. therefore it has the richest american heritage. it is as beautiful and sophisticated as any dialect of english can be.

[GreyAutumn]

most blacks can code switch, anyway

[VirginiaSlim5]

The name of this documentary is Do You Speak American. It was broadcast on PBS in 2005

[McLennon23]

Excuse me, I'm hoping you could tell me the name of this documentary; I would love to watch the whole thing.