Skip to main content

Methods and Design

Materials

The project will work only with the dialogue of the protagonist of Kindred, Edana Franklin, and selected sourcebooks on African-American vernacular english; the latter of which will be used to compare Edana's language to the textual characteristics of AAVE throughout the novel. The close readings of the language dana employs will be compared to the common features of AAVE and the instances of code-switching will be montitored and the context of the situation identified.

Features of AAVE

The following features will of African-American Vernacular English will be taken from Fought's Language and Ethnicity, chapter 3; African American groups.

Morphilogical and Features:

  • Existential it: AAVE speakers often use it as the empty subject where speakers of other dialects would there, as in It's some coffee in the kitchen.
  • Absence of plural -s marking: For example, four girl. Not a very common feature overall.
  • Absence of possessive -s marking: For example, at my mama house.
  • Absence of third person singular -s marking: For example, It seem like ... or She have three kids.
  • Zero Copula (either is or are): For example, She X in the same grade. The first person singular copula (I am) cannot be deleted.
  • Invariant (or habitual) be: As in Your phone bill be high, meaning "Your phone bill is usually or often high." Most frequent with -ing forms as in He be getting on my nerves.
  • Unstressed been: Similar to have been or has been in other dialects, as in I been playing cards since I was four.
  • Stressed (remote-past or emphatic) BEEN: Indicates an action that has been true for a long time or is emphatically true. For example, She BEEN tell me all that, meaning "She told me that a long time ago."
  • Completive done: an aspect marker signaling completion, as in I done already finished that. 
  • Future perfect be done: For example: I be done did your hair before you know it; meaning "I will have finished doing your hair before you know it."
  • Use of ain't for negation: For example, I ain't lying.
  • Negative concord: for example, I don't want nothing nobody can't enjoy.
  • Preterite Had: Use of had + past tense verb to refer to a simple past event, as in I had slipped and fell to mean "I slipped and fell ."
  • Steady: Used to emphasize the intense or persistent nature of an action, as in Them students be steady trying to make a buck.
  • Come: Used to express indignation, as in Don't come acting like you don't know what happened.
  • Finna: Used to mark an action that is about to take place, as in I'm finna get up out of here, meaning "I'm about to leave."\

Phonology

  • Metathesis: ask pronounced as aks
  • Vocalization or loss of postvocalic /r/: four pronounced |fou| or fo'; can also occur with intervocalic /r/ in words like hurry
  • Glide reduction of /ai/: tide pronounced [ta:d] like tahd
  • Merger of [I] and [E] before nasals (the "pin/pen merger") so that words like pin and pen sound the same
  • Merger of tense and lax vowels before /l/: so, for example, bale and bell or feel and fill sound the same
  • Frictative stopping before nasals: so that isn't sounds like idn't 

Features that seem unique to AAVE (or at least most frequent in AAVE)

  • reduction of the final nasal to vowel nasalization: man pronounced [mae]
  • final stop devoicing: so that bad sounds like bat
  • substitution of /k/ for /t/ in str clusters: so street sounds like skreet

Features shared by nonstandard dialects

  • loss of single final consonants: five pronounced [fa:], like fi'
  • Loss of /r/ after consonants: Throw pronounced [0ou] like th'ow
  • substitution of labiodentals for interdental fricatives: bath pronounced [baef] like baf
  • stopping of interdental fricatives: those pronounced [douz] like doze

Features shared by many other English dialects, possibly more frequent in AAVE

  • final consonant cluster reduction: cold becomes [koul] like cole
  • vocalization of postvocalic /l/: bell pronounced [bEU] with the [l] absent

Dialogue

All of the spoken lines of Edana Franklin will be taken into consideration in the project; however, for the purpose of brevity, the author of this project will select three to five quotations from the protagonist's dialogue for linguistic analysis. The quotations will be organized by chapter. The recorded features of AAVE will be compared to the protagonist's dialogue and from there - there will be a written analysis and discussion that will postulate how Octavia Butler establishes identity in her protagonist and how that identity relates to African American Identity.

Methods and Design