Talk:African-American English

Pop culture

I'm removing

== In popular culture ==

* The (1980) comedy film Airplane! has scenes of jive talk with subtitles. Al White is Second Jive Dude and Barbara Billingsley is Jive Lady translator.

because it doesn't increase the reader's understanding of AAVE. If there's some other reason to include it, do please explain. -- Hoary (talk) 16:59, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. These "in popular culture" sections are a bane to quality, and especially irrelevant when it comes to language related articles. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 19:37, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi "bane to quality": I find this kind of comment very snobbish and rather puerile. An article should help to understand the subject. To the non technical person like myself, an example is worth many words. As a matter of fact, before watching the film, I was ignorant of the existence of AAVE, and jive, for that matter. Also, if you had the patience to follow the link, you would discover that there are two links back to this article, under the word "jive". I expect you think that the article on "Airplane!" and films in general are probably a "bane to quality" of wikipedia. From the height of your teaching experience, please justify the sentence "it doesn't increase the reader's understanding".Ziounclesi (talk) 09:36, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

We deprecate "Trivia" sections in articles, but, having mentioned it on this talk page, I have to say I think the Airplane scenes sheds a bit of light on how AAVE has been perceived. So can I work it back in under "Cultural references"? Itsmejudith (talk) 19:00, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I suppose I should've been clearer. We deprecate trivia sections because they're poor ways of including information. I'm hesitent to mention Airplane, in part because it doesn't actually feature AAVE but a crude mockery of it but also because I'm not sure where it would go in the article. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 23:55, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

No, that was fine. There's been a tension for a long time over this article - which first drew my attention to it - over whether it is a linguistics article about AAVE or an article about the status of AAVE. It really has to be a bit of both, the straight linguistic description that it already does reasonably well, plus an amount of sociolinguistics. Mockery is, whether we like it or not, an aspect of the sociolinguistics. Another aspect is the straightforward opposition to use of the dialect on the part of Bill Cosby and others, and the defence and promotion of the dialect ("ebonics"). I'll have a look at where I think more sociolinguistic info can be put in, and suggest here on the talk page before editing. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:17, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to see sound sociolinguistics about AAVE: a summary of the sociolinguistic work that's been done on it (and there has been a lot of this). By contrast, cobbling together quotations (however uninformed, bizarre or unintentionally ludicrous) by Cosby and others into a "sociolinguistics" section of the article risks a charge of "original synthesis". -- Hoary (talk) 14:34, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Ziounclesi: I expect you think that the article on "Airplane!" and films in general are probably a "bane to quality" of wikipedia. I can't speak for Aeusoes1, but I do not think this. ¶ please justify the sentence "it doesn't increase the reader's understanding". Let's take a look at this "it": The (1980) comedy film Airplane! has scenes of jive talk with subtitles. Al White is Second Jive Dude and Barbara Billingsley is Jive Lady translator. I see nothing in that which increases understanding. If you do, what is it? Or should we actually write "One editor of this article had never heard of AAVE till they saw the movie Airplane"? ¶ This has nothing about a snobbish attitude toward Airplane: I have a pile of DVDs of "blaxploitation" films; most, perhaps all, have a lot of AAVE. I could list them, but I don't think doing so would have any explanatory value. ¶ Furthermore, Aeusoes1, who knows more about AAVE than I do, says Airplane (which I haven't seen) actually doesn't have AAVE. If it indeed doesn't, then this description of it is wrong and potentially misleading. ¶ Now, it's imaginable that the representation (whether faithful or false) of AAVE within Airplane does show something significant about certain attitudes toward AAVE. If so, what is it? -- Hoary (talk) 14:34, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

That's a good question, Hoary, and you've articulated my second concern better than I did. If we contextualize the Airplane! reference into a broader scope of social commentary, then it's more appropriate. We've done that a bit with the Cosby quote, and I suspect that many university libraries (if my own local university is any indicator) have lots of information on the sociolinguistics of AAVE, especially in a teaching context. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 21:53, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

A good first stop would be the relevant chapter(s) of Lisa J. Green's African American English: A Linguistic Introduction (CUP, 2002; ISBN 0-521-89138-8). I have a copy (and recommend one to anybody who doesn't) but lack the time to work with it any time very soon. Plus I always have difficulty summoning the patience needed for even a dispassionate summary of the stupid notions that pervade "popular attitudes" and newspaper punditry. -- Hoary (talk) 01:30, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I added an item to the to-do list. I'll see if I can get that text. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:45, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I've incorporated Green's discussion of mass media portrayals into the article, though I imagine there can be more added to it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 01:41, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Somehow I don't seem to be able to get the message across: history and phonetics are fine in a book, but an article about a language with only written examples is rather poor. Have you ever thought that the IPA is a poor substitute for an audio samlpe? This is a hyperlinked world with access to images, sound and video. This article does not even have a link to Media Wiki sources. I represent the casual reader who does not mind all the politically correctness (call it AAVE if you like), but find it wierd that 9 articles out of 10 on wikipedia itself will refer to it as "jive" and some editor "deprecates" a link to a source of examples (the above quoted film). So, leaving out any personal considerations, I have two suggestions:

• find some audio or video examples (if you don't like Airplane, you can point out it is a bad example). Find some good films. Are there no blues singers who sing in AAVE?
• work on the backlinks to articles that lead here. (no dead ends, please, and no bots replacing jive with AAVE through wikipedia (maybe Aeusoes1 can write the pronounciation for AAVE)).Ziounclesi (talk) 16:29, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure about non-linked references, but as far as what links here, compared it to what links to Jive (dialect), it seems like 9/10 articles isn't a thoroughly vigorous study. Audio samples would be nice, but just as all audio samples, they would have to be free license. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 19:21, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I represent the casual reader who does not mind all the politically correctness (call it AAVE if you like): Are you implying that use of the term "AAVE" is "politically correct"; and if so, do you mean to say that various aspects of this article, including the use of the term "AAVE", are left-wing evasions of obvious truths? If not, what do you mean? -- Hoary (talk) 23:24, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

im sory hoary, but it seems as though you are not a casual reader, you use the word bane, and imply, evasion, and much more, you sound like a prude. It's pre-grads like you that want to sound fancy and therefore destroy the quality of wikipedia because nobody can actually connect to what is on the site. Wikipedia is useless thanks to pricks like you. Thanks.

Sociolinguistic aspects

Itsmejudith, I'd like to address the item you added in the to do list back in January. I've edited the "Social context" section (which is where sociolinguistic aspects would go) to make the positive-negative views more overt, though it was mostly a matter of reshuffling information that was already in the article. I'm not sure if I've done it to your (or anyone else's) satisfaction or what you mean by "weight"

I'm also sure that the second paragraph, which details more of the studies done on AAVE and scholarly opinions regarding it, can be beefed up considerably. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 01:45, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely fine by me. Many thanks for your efforts. In fact I was wondering whether the article was ready for Good Article? The only glaring thing is that we should avoid references in the lede. And we have a good many references and perhaps could do without some, while adding others as you say. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:00, 8 March 2010 (UTC)