A Brief Look at Ebonics in the Classroom

Ebonics, a portmanteau made up of the words ebony and phonics, is the term for African American Vernacular English, a dialect that differs distinctly from Standard English.  This dialect has its own definable pronunciation patterns, vocabulary, and verb tenses.  While its origins are not fully agreed upon by linguists, many scholars argue that it is essentially a Creole dialect that developed out of a West African pidgin language as a result of the slave trade between the 16^th and 19^th centuries.  Supporters of this view argue that Ebonics is a separate language, while others maintain that it can more accurately be called a dialect.

All linguists agree, however, that Ebonics is its own linguistic system and should not be criticized as linguistically deficient slang or “street talk”. In spite of this, Ebonics carries with it specific social and political baggage that often leads to stereotyping and prejudice against speakers.  It is of great importance that the issues of linguistic stigmas and inequalities are addressed in the classroom.  In order to effectively maintain identity and heritage while opening up further opportunities for students, educators should utilize a contrastive approach, teaching a respect for Ebonics alongside Standard English in the classroom.  This balanced method would recognize and preserve the richness of the dialect while at the same time providing speakers with Standard English skills that would benefit them in the working world.

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Ebonics, like all dialects, is rich with implications on both personal and social levels.  Through the dialect, particularly in interaction with others, speakers contribute to their constantly building and changing identities just as a speaker of any other dialect might.  In the same way a woman who shies away from her Southern drawl at the workplace may embrace it when she returns home for a holiday, a black person may make use of Ebonics to associate with speakers of the dialect and thereby strengthen his or her identification with the racial group. In his New York Times article, linguist John Baugh asserted that “it is wrong to misrepresent the unique and profound linguistic consequences of American slavery [as ‘street talk’]”, particularly when these linguistic consequences have been a means of attaining solidarity and group identity since the days of enslavement.  To condemn Ebonics as a perversion of Standard English is to criticize an essential component of Black tradition and selfhood.

At the same time, however, the stigma attached to Ebonics has given rise to a negative perception of speakers, visible in both the classroom and the adult world.  In the words of linguist Bernard Spolsky, “When we hear someone speak, we immediately make guesses about gender, education level, age, profession, and place of origin.”  Few dialects carry with them judgments as negative as those evoked by Ebonics.  In the classroom, the negative attitude towards Ebonics has given rise to “ignoring, and/or constantly correcting vernaculars in a disparaging fashion”.

Unfortunately, as damaging as these stigmas are in the classroom, they are even more so in the adult world.  Speakers of Ebonics are victims of employment exclusion because the dialect is associated with lower class, inner-city populations and differs from the prestige language, Standard English.  In an effort to overcome these disadvantages, many methods for eradicating the dialect have come into use, including language coaching and instructional books.  American English dialect consultant Garrard McClendon, author of Ax or Ask: The African American Guide to Better English, believes that gaining skill with language is the only way Black students will be accepted professionally.  According to McClendon, “People are losing out on opportunities every day because of the way they speak.” It is clear that Ebonics must be addressed in the classroom in order to allow students to learn the language skills that will provide them with equal educational and employment opportunities.

With the conflicting notions of the richness of dialects and their stigmatized nature, one might shrug his shoulders and conjecture that dialects should be disregarded altogether in hopes that they will disappear.  This sort of approach, however, would be an injustice to Black students, because again and again teaching with dialect awareness has been proven more effective than teaching using traditional methods.  In a study conducted by Hanni Taylor, black students were separated into two groups, one taught the differences between Ebonics and Standard English, the other taught using conventional methods.  The first group showed a dramatic decrease in the use of Ebonics features (-59 percent) while the second showed a slight increase (+8.5 percent).  In a separate study, conducted by Kelli Harris-Wright, fifth and sixth grade students taught using a comparative approach similar to the one described above made bigger relative gains on reading tests every year than students taught with a traditional approach that “devalued the skills they [learned] at home”.

According to linguist John Rickford, the advantages to teaching with this type of contrastive approach, in which dialect is acknowledged and used to teach Standard English, is likely to have positive effects on both students and teachers.  Rickford asserts that acknowledgement of the dialect will “correct erroneous perceptions of the dialect as evidence of laziness or cognitive deficits”, while reducing black student resistance to the Standard and showing that knowledge of the vernacular is not a weakness but a strength.

Because of the importance of maintaining Ebonics as a marker of culture and identity, it is imperative that the dialect is acknowledged as more than just a perversion of Standard English.  At the same time, educators must address the dialect and provide speakers with knowledge of Standard English in order to guarantee them equal learning and employment opportunities.  To approach this issue in the most effective way, a respect for Ebonics must be taught alongside Standard English in the classroom. Teacher attitudes and the educational system itself must be continually revisited in order to work towards a more just perception of the linguistic differences between groups.  At the same time, a mere acceptance of the presence of Ebonics in the classroom and in society will do little to raise the floor beneath the dialect’s speakers.  In order to make lasting changes, students and educators alike must recognize the way social and political conditions influence perception of status once and for all.