The Study Of Language And Political Elements In African American Vernacular English

Language itself is a very special and mysterious element in the society. When we mention some kind of race or nation, the language is an inevitable factor. Nowadays in the world we have over 6,000 languages and within them 4,200 have been recognized by the authority. The number of languages cannot be fixed because some of the languages are dying out. In this great number we can also find a great number of special phenomenons. For example, birth, death, change and revival of a language. There are many things worth studying. Now in the academic world people would like to touch some new, sometimes even sensitive areas. In the past people intended to discover the nature of language. They focused mainly on language itself. Scholars thought that people cannot distinguish the exterior relationship before knowing of the core characteristics of language. It is to say that the importance of the language nature can't be ignored. After the core of the language, people naturally go to the first exterior marker—the culture carried by the language. Language is the marker of a culture and at the same time the culture of the language can be considered to be the track in the development of a language. (Li Xiankun, 1992)Culture is a very special and typical outer phenomenon of a language. Before touching the culture, it is necessary to have a glance on some traits of language. According to Trudgill(2000), Zhu Wanjin(1992), Xu Daming(1997), and other famous social linguists domestic or abroad, we have a definition of"speech community". It means people in a group who are using a certain kind of language which is under some social rules (Zhu, 1992:32)。At meantime there is another conception which can be considered to be one aspect of"speech community"--"community language". It means a language used within a particular community, including languages spoken by ethnic minority groups. For example, in Australia, apart from English, languages such as Italian, Greek, Polish, Arabic, and Australian Aboriginal languages are community languages. (Longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics 2005:117). Throughout experts'illustration we can easily find that all of this usually happens within a group, in other words, in a"community". According to the definition put forward by the World Health Organization in 1974,"the community means a social group which is living in a fixed geography range. The people within the group are sharing the same interest; they know each other and visit each other. In the social group the social functions are under exertion, the social rules are created. Through all of the above they form a special value system and social welfare system. Each unit can be melted into a larger community by family, neighborhood, and by the former community.People in the community will have a common sense and then an awareness so-called"community awareness". Strong community awareness lessens the isolation of individuals, helps develop respect for the property of others, enhances community spirit and provides citizens with a sense of belonging. People in the same community who are sharing the same"community awareness"can be easily led to a"culture community". By quoting the definition of"speech community", a conclusion is achieved that culture means people in a social group who are sharing the"the complexity of objectives, knowledge, faith, art, morality, law, custom and the acquisition of other abilities and habits from the society"(E B Tylor, 1871 ) .Through the study on the definition, history, characteristics and other relative theories this thesis got a conclusion that as a kind of English variety, AAVE has been changed from a defected language to an independent dialect. What is more the culture produced by AAVE is leading the world's pop culture and it is spread all around the world. At the same time AAVE and its culture caused the political requirement for the raising of social position of the black group in USA. This kind of political requirement directly caused the great development of AAVE and its culture. For this reason the so-called New Negro Renaissance took place in modern American society. The new development and change didn't break away from the logical triangle consisted by language, culture and politics. It is the run of this system combined AAVE, Black culture, and African American politics.From all the above it is clear that after a"culture community", people will have an identity of the social group they belong to. In this situation people will definitely have political requirements. This is a logical chain. People won't jump this queue. Even we have exceptions it would surely come back to this chain. It is a very common rule for the development of human society.