African American English In Modern Cinema

3 Pages 784 Words

Is Y’all Uneducated? : African American English in Modern Cinema



Many Americans still view African-American English, mistakenly referred as Ebonics, as an incorrect speaking of English. The speakers of this dialect are often seen as uneducated or worse. Linguistically speaking, African-American English is a valid dialect of English that started as a pidgin language due to the mixture of English and African dialects. As with any pidgin language, AAE quickly became a creole language and is now a dialect of modern English. If one were to study this language, the best way would be to immerse oneself in the culture. This is not always easy, especially for someone that may have a hard time fitting into that certain crowd. African-American films are a great representation of this dialect and not in its stage form, but in the form it is spoken comfortably and amongst friends.
In many ways, African-American English is just a simpler form of English. The movie Barbershop is a great example. One of the minor characters J.D., who is played by Anthony Anderson, shouts “We about to get paid!” and the main character Calvin, played by Ice Cube simply states, “She getting’ big.” African American tends to eliminate certain auxiliary or helping verbs, such as “is” and “are” that are not necessary to the semantics of the sentence. When the latter is said in this certain situation, we understand that the character is describing a woman that is gaining weight, but we did not need so many words. Other words that are frequently missing from AAE sentences are the words “have” and “has”. These are usually replaced by the word “got”. In Barbershop, the character Calvin says, “You know he got a drug problem,” or “You got to quit comin’ round here.” The word “got” replaces the word “have” or “has” and can also eliminate some of the afore mentioned helping verbs, making a simpler sentence...