Research On African American Vernacular English

Language is the significant carrier and composition of a nation. With the advancement in social status of African Americans, African American Vernacular English (hereinafter referred to as AAVE in the whole thesis), as an indispensable part of American English, has also exerted great influence on American society and even the whole world. Therefore, the profound study of AAVE is quite necessary.According to Labov (1970) and his theory of language change, the combination of interior and exterior causes propels a language to develop. The interior cause refers to changes in a language per se, while the exterior one is mainly social factors, such as education, stratum, occupation, gender, etc. Based on Bernstein’s social language code theory, speakers from the working class are inclined to employ less standard language, while the upper-middle class will apply a language converging towards the standard in progressive degree. By employing the scripts of African American movies as the corpus, the present thesis will discuss the following three questions:1. What is the influence of social factors on AAVE?2. What is the impact of different stratification on the developmental trend of AAVE?3. What is the major developmental trend of AAVE?The thesis will analyze the application, development and features of AAVE in African American motion pictures. Thus, the thesis can be divided into five parts. First, language variety, American English and its different varieties will be briefly discussed, then the development of AAVE in American society will also be expounded. Second, literature review will be conducted on African Americans, AAVE and its origin, "convergence and divergence" and language variety. Third, the theoretical framework will be elaborated by introducing the theories by Labov and Bernstein to theoretically support the discussion and conclusion of this thesis. Fourth, the analysis based on African American movies pertinent to the application, development and features of AAVE will be conducted. Finally, based on the discussion, the present thesis obtains the following major findings:speakers from working class will employ AAVE diverging from the standard American English and those from upper class will apply AAVE converging towards the standard. However, AAVE will restart to converge as a whole and every language and culture should be respected. Moreover, suggestions for future study will be provided.