Black English as an American Dialect

<BODY> <h2>Black English as an American Dialect</h2><br> The term "Ebonics," which is a fusion of the words "ebony" and "phonics," also called a Portmanteau, received national attention in the U.S. in 1966 when the Oakland School Board in California made the decision to recognize Ebonics as an official dialect of African American children who were attending school there and to educate teachers in its use; later on a newly elected school board modified then dropped the resolution entirely. Today, Ebonics is more commonly referred to as African American Vernacular English (AAVE), and the discussion as to whether Ebonics should be officially recognized as a "language" of African Americans is on going. <B>John Rickford</B>, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor at Stanford University's Department of Linguistics, and author of <I>Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English</I>, clarifies the issues surrounding the Ebonics controversy; he also advocates the method of studying language, called "contrastive analysis," which involves drawing a student's attention to similarities and differences between Ebonics and Standard English. 08DR/CL SCA 30 min. <A HREF="index.htm" target=_top>Home</a><br> </BODY>