American Black English I. Overall Current Condition; difficult to say the number

American Black English
    Good morning, boys and girls. There is an indispensable part of American English, which is American Black English. So in our today’s lecture, we may focus on some issues about it. It is extremely difficult to say how many people speak Black English because it is not clear what exactly this would mean. As we know, except for Native Americans, no one is from America. It is estimated that at least 170 ethnic groups live in the United States. (1) American black people make up about 12% of the American population, and about 80% of American black people speak Black English.
    Because of its lack of formal recognition, American Black English is often treated just as a local slang and linguistic deviation. It is only recently that it has become an area of great interest to linguists, who are keen on learning about universal tendencies in this language and studying language status, attitudes, and the importance of language. But there are still many controversies about how to describe it and how to explain its origin and development. So we will talk about it in two aspects.
    Firstly, let’s go to the origin of Black English.
    As we know in the 16th century, a lot of African black slaves were traded from Africa to Virginia in America. But the history of Black English and its genetic affiliation, by which we mean what language varieties it is related to, are also a matter of controversy.
    Some scholars contend that Black English developed out of the contact between speakers of West African languages and speakers of local English varieties. According to such a view, (2) West Africans learnt English on plantations in the southern Coastal States (Georgia, South Carolina, etc.) from a very small number of native speakers.
    But someone argued that it is an error to suppose that Black English is spoken by all African Americans regardless of their background. In fact, the English spoken by African Americans is highly as varied as the English spoken by any other racial or ethnic group. (3) Sometimes Black English is used to refer to other varieties of English spoken by Black people outside of the United States, as in the Caribbean and the United Kingdom.
    Some suggest that this led to the development of a rudimentary dialect, which was later expanded through a process of creolization. It was the slave trade that created Creole languages, which became the basis for many forms of Black English across the globe.
    Today, black people are spread all over the American’s 50 continents and most of them are the descendents of African slaves. Blacks living on islands off the coast of Georgia and North Carolina speak Gullah, which still sounds like the English of the slaves. The slave trade spread Pidgin English throughout the Caribbean Islands and the southern US and became the basis for Plantation Creole.
    A number of scholars do not accept such a scenario. These researchers argue that (4) the demographic conditions in the US and the Caribbean (where restructured Creole languages are widely spoken) were really quite different and that the conditions necessary for the emergence of a fully-fledged Creole language were never met in the US. These scholars have shown on a number of occasions that what look like distinctive features of Black English today actually have a precedent in various varieties of English spoken in Great Britain and the Southern United States.
    It seems reasonable to suggest that both views are partially correct and that Black English developed to some extent through restructuring while it also inherited many of its today distinctive features from older varieties of English, which were once widely spoken.
    Secondly, (5) the great melting pot makes American Black English approach American Standard English.
    Because of the civil war, the slaves were liberated and the life situation of black slaves was greatly improved. But after the civil war, white people still looked down upon black people and there were some kinds of segregation in American society. There was also an Americanization language movement, which was built on the " melting pot" theory.
    The melting pot idea is most strongly associated with the United States, particularly in reference to " model" immigrant groups of the past. Past generations of immigrants in America, it is argued by some, became successful by working to shed their historic identities and adopt the ways of their new country.
    A lecture, which was given by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913 can typically indicate this point of view. He said: (6) "The great melting pot of America, the place where we are all made Americans of, is the public school, where men of every race, and every origin, and every station in life send their children, or ought to send their children, and where, being mixed together, they are all infused with the American spirit and developed into the American man and the American woman. "
    After the First World War, the American government even claimed that all the immigrants, who did not speak English as their native language, to completely abandon their national language once they settled in the United States.
    So the American blacks learned to speak a form of English that sounded more like the Standard English as a way to advance them socially and economically. (7) Many southern. aristocratic boys were sent to school in England to learn "proper English" so that they would not embarrass their families by speaking Plantation Creole. (8) Some Blacks feel that they have to lose their Black accents and "talk White" in order to get good jobs and increase their social standing.
    With assimilation, immigrants lose their original cultural (and often linguistic) identity and so do their children. (9) Immigrants who fled oppression from a country devastated by war were historically adaptable to abandoning their heritage once they had settled in a new country.
    Along with the obvious melting trend of language, the difference between Black English and Standard English is becoming smaller and smaller. (10) Black English is as deeply rooted in America’s politics as it is in America’s culture.
    Above is a brief introduction about American Black English. In our next lecture, we’ll continue to analyze the distinctive features of American Black English, the influence it has exerted upon Standard American English, and the reasons why it has not been assimilated by the latter but still exists as an American social dialect. See you next time.