Diverging Or Converging: On African American Vernacular English

Since Labov and Harris in 1986 claimed that African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and American Standard English were no longer converging but were actually diverging, the topic how similar or different AAVE and other American English dialects are becoming has always been hotly disputed among linguists in the recent three decades. After a review into foregoing studies about AAVE and a contrast of the situations of middle-class and working-class African Americans, the author gets two findings. One is that varieties of AAVE spoken by middle-class African Americans are converging with Standard American English while varieties of AAVE spoken by working-class African Americans are diverging from Standard American English and the divergence of the varieties of English spoken by working-class African Americans is symptomatic of a split between working-class and mainstream portions of American society; the other is that social factors such as politics, economical conditions, and educational backgrounds would decide in which direction AAVE will develop, diverging or converging.Because previous studies focused mainly on grammatical and structural systems of AAVE from the perspective of historical comparative linguistics, the author attempts to examine whether this process of divergence of varieties of AAVE spoken by working-class African Americans will continue, focusing on its social factors which contribute to its divergence and the trends in the future as well. The author hopes to check in which direction AAVE will develop, diverging or converging.This paper firstly examines the relationship between the process of evolution of AAVE and several special historical events in different historical phases to check what impact these historical events have produced on the evolution of AAVE in different historical phases. Second, this paper attempts to examine these social factors of the divergent trend of varieties of English spoken mainly by working-class African Americans and, at the same time, do an analysis of these social factors. Thirdly, this paper examines three realistic situations of AAVE in 21st century in order to examine whether these sociall factors resulting in the divergent trend will change and what changes these social factors would undergo in the future. Fourthly, this paper analyzes the possibility of AAVE's maintenance with Auburger's theory of language maintenance. Finally, the paper reaches a conclusion that the divergent trend of AAVE spoken by working-class African Americans will stop and restart converging with Standard American English in one day. At the same time, this paper makes a suggestion for African Americans, especially working-class African Americans.