Is it true that AAVE is spoken in federal government in the US?

[Molly]

"shops and businesses in the innner cities across the US are staffed with people who speak AAVE. You hear it spoken in supermarkets and in the offices of city, state and federal government."

http://www.antimoon.com/forum/p165977.htm#165977

Is it true that AAVE is spoken in federal government in the US?

[Jamie (K)]

The short answer is yes, but it depends on what you mean by AAVE. You will hear African American Vernacular English in both the state and federal governments, but you're unlikely to hear anyone gangsta rapping in there.

First, you should know that in the US it's relatively rare to meet a black person who doesn't have an African American accent, so that even if they're speaking standard English, they will exhibit the phonological features of AAVE. If they don't, you start to wonder about the circumstances of their upbringing -- where they grew up, who raised them, who their friends were, what kind of school they went to, etc. Most black Americans who don't know how to speak AAVE nonetheless have the accent.

If you go into a post office or social security office, you'll usually run into a situation where black employees speak or don't speak AAVE to each other, as they choose, but will speak standard English with an AAVE accent when they talk to someone at the counter or to a manager. They will even switch out of AAVE at the counter to speak to a person who can only speak AAVE. Often the manager never speaks AAVE but will speak AAVE-accented standard English.

In this video of a TV show, you'll hear the plaintiff, the defendant and the judge all speaking AAVE-accented standard English that is typical of what you would hear in American government offices. The judge is a real (retired) judge.


Many whites would think this kind of English IS AAVE, but it's not really.

The AAVE spoken in government offices or in private businesses can range from standard English with a few AAVE dialect features, all the way to very heavy dialect, but as I mentioned, the people usually switch in and out of the dialect depending on the task at hand and whom they're speaking to. They will all write in the nearest approximation of standard English that they are able to produce.

Much as some academics might make publishing careers for themselves by writing about dialect discrimination, and much as it may happen in isolated cases, hiring in the US public and private sector is mainly about productivity and friendliness. Since most American dialects are understandable to all Americans, employers don't care that much about the dialect of a person's spoken English. Most of them would rather have a hard worker who is friendly and helpful to customers and speaks AAVE than hire a surly white person who speaks standard English but doesn't work hard and has an attitude problem. Almost any time there is a claim that someone was fired solely due to dialect discrimination, speaking a foreign language, etc., there were other factors involved, such as poor literacy, poor productivity, abuse of customers, harassment of other employees, etc. Language discrimination is often used as a red herring in a case about other problems.

[Molly]

[Jamie (K)]

[Molly]

[Yankee]

[Jamie (K)]

[MrPedantic]

It occurs to me that 77+ ESL teachers, lying idle in Bilbao, might well appreciate the chance to email 20 or 30 broadcasting schools each and report back on the results; quite possibly within the hour.

Just a suggestion.

MrP

[Molly]

[Molly]

.
Flame edited out-- MM
.

[Molly]

Does such a thing as a "non-standard accent" exist in the UK?

[MrPedantic]

.
Flame response edited out-- MM
.

[Molly]

(Teachers)..."can help their students understand that the difference between the Standard English dialect spoken in Boston and the Standard English dialect
spoken in Atlanta can be explained by differences in regional norms for language use. The difference between Standard English in Baltimore
and vernacular English dialects in Baltimore (e.g., African American Vernacular English and urban Appalachian English) is explained by different
social norms."

http://www.cal.org/resources/Digest/digest_pdfs/0104-hazen.pdf

Are teachers actually doing that, in the US? If not, why not?

[Molly]

.
I don't really like to have my time wasted like this-- MM
.

[Jamie (K)]