- Annual Meetings & Institutes
- What is Linguistics?
- LSA Publications
- Annual Meetings & Institutes
- What is Linguistics?
- LSA Publications
At its most literal level, Ebonics simply means ‘black speech’ (a blend of the words ebony ‘black’ and phonics ‘sounds’). The term was created in 1973 by a group of black scholars who disliked the negative connotations of terms like ‘Nonstandard Negro English’ that had been coined in the 1960s when the first modern large-scale linguistic studies of African American speech-communities began. However, the term Ebonics never cong the general public. That all changed with the ‘Ebonics’ controversy of December 1996 when the Oakland (CA) School Board recognized it as the ‘prierican students and resolved to take it into account in teaching them standard or academic English.
Most linguists refer to the distinctive speech of African Americans as ‘Black English’ or African American English (AAE) or, if they want to emphasize that this doesn’t include the standard English usage of African Americans, as ‘African American Vernacular English’ (AAVE). In theory, scholars who prefer the term Ebonics (or alternatives like African American language) wish to highlight the African roots of African American speech and its connections with languages spoken elsewhere in the Black Diaspora, e.g. Read more