4wb

For one of the genres that I choose for my project four, I decided to use Personal and Private writing. The basis of my project was to create a website or PowerPoint to show the different appropriate of AAVE in the pop culture and media world. What I was planning on doing for this section was showing the different usage of AAVE from users on Blackplanet.com and other social networking sites. I thought that showing the actual usage etc. by people that do use it in their everyday lives would make it more clear and meaningful to the audience. When I would show a section or a couple of phrases used by persons of these social networking sites and decode it and show was the meaning of certain phrases meant in Standard English. I also would then show perhaps some AAVE being appropriated on popular pop culture websites or show a prominent figure in the media using AAVE. The point to get across is to show that AAVE is used widely in the medial and on popular websites and it is okay to speak and use AAVE. I then would like to put in just a regular conversation that I would record and show it being used in everyday life. I want to show the differences and similarities in AAVE and Standard English and how they are not so different after all.
For my second genre I was going to look at the media in television. Here I would look at shows such as BET and the cooking channel, MTV etc. I would record the different uses of AAVE since they are very wide and abundant. On my website I would show the different sites or what not with the different prominent figures in the media who use AAVE, or just example of AAVE used in those such areas. I think this will be interesting the audience because I could include a lot of games ( worksheet) and perhaps interactive things to do here. I would also make sure to show the different music influences with AAVE mainly used on MTV, which is greatly a main role in AAVE.
I think both of these genres will really show my audience that AAVE is everywhere. It is widely accepted and used and I feel that it is very “hip” and “in” to use AAVE. I think that showing its different usage in a wide variety of popular media spaces while incorporating some learning interaction, the audience can take a little bit of AAVE away with them that they did not have before.

My topic proposal for project four will be very similar to what I discussed in project two. I am going to make a power point or a webpage discussing different methods and ways with AAVE is discussed in the digital space. This time I feel like I will have more freedom and I can make it more in-depth. I would be able to look at a variety of pop culture based cites, not just blackplanet.com, which is what I would used before. I would use the bases of what I used before that it is pretty much discriminated against in the digital space, however there are many places where AAVE is accepted and appropriated.
I also want focus on more of the pop culture theme instead of the scholarly articles. I want to go on more famous and popular sites to look if AAVE is appropriated such as MTV.com and other spaces such as that. Instead of my web page or PowerPoint being directed solely toward the scholarly college persons I want to direct it toward teenagers. I want the youth to benefit from learning about AAVE because they are the ones who will affect the outcomes and difference in generations to come. I want to take advantage of all of the music that is out there and that is very popular with students and somehow incorporate it into my presentation or webpage. I want to show how features of AAVE is shown greatly in very popular and well liked music to date. Also I think I would like to go out in the actual field and document a student or students using AAVE and incorporate that into my webpage. Show how it is actually used to day and how that has changed over the past thirty years since the introduction of Ebonics as an actual Language. Lastly, even though I believe that the main focus of my project will be how current and hip using AAVE in the mainstream media is, I would like to have a small focus on how using it in the quote on quote real world affects people. How some people struggle with getting jobs, a good education, are discriminated against, etc. for using AAVE in their everyday language. I think this will be a key factor in my project and will show the other side as to why there is still that notion of discrimination against AAVE.
Overall I want to show how AAVE may be discriminated against, but it is very popular in the young generation. If you look at music or magazines AAVE is appropriated everywhere and it is almost “hip” and in style to be current with AAVE terms and usage. Knowing the meaning and phrases of Lil Wayne and TI and T-Pain alike are very important in our generation today so I want to reflect that in my PowerPoint and or webpage.

dwb3 2

After reading an article entitled “Five Easy Pieces: Steps toward Integrating AAVE into the Classroom”, I was very enlightened about the positive effects and importance that come along with incorporating AAVE into a classroom setting. The article showed how many teachers struggle to find a balance between AAVE and Standard English in the classroom. This particular article discussed a teacher contemplating over the fact should she herself be teaching her student AAVE and allow it to influence the students in her class. The author discusses how AAVE is a very controversial issue and remains an ongoing controversial issue to date. The author questions herself “what exactly is AAVE?”. The issue pending is whether or not this form of dialect should be taught and what are the advantages and disadvantages that would come along with that decision.
The key issue that is being faced here is that there is a major misconception over what AAVE actually is. The author gives a great example of how Bill Cosby, a prominent figure in the black community, is totally biased to the fact that students should be taught AAVE. The reason for such is that he, and many others, feel that it is overall just a sloppy, second rate way to speak Standard English. Bill Cosby and others alike feel that if one were to speak in this heinous language then they could never be a doctor or a lawyer or hold any type of prestigious career. The real problem here is that whole notion is a major misconception. AAVE is not a way to speak ‘sloppy’ what so ever. It is in fact another dialect. What teachers and supporters of AAVE are trying to do is allow students who speak this way to incorporate it in their school environment. They no longer want students to be seen being penalized for the way they would speak at home or in a comfortable setting. The article gives specific steps as to which a teacher should take if they choose to incorporate AAVE into their curriculum or school setting. The author strong believes that multicultural differences should be highlighted and enhanced in the classroom. This way of running the class will enrich the classrooms learning experience and depth. The strong point that is made is about the way that AAVE is actually talked about in the article. The article makes a clear point that AAVE is not slang and that misconception leads to a majority of the problems that give it a negative bias. AAVE should always be held in a positive light because of the benefits in diversity and enlightenment it gives to the classroom, and the real world. I really believe the main focus of this article was to show the importance of teaching students to use AAVE and to be supportive and caring through the process.
I believe that article made a strong argument about AAVE’s role in composition studies. It showed how some teachers are actually trying to incorporate AAVE , instead of totally dispelling it. The article allows us to see the importance of keeping a variety of dialects and languages as a backdrop of a classroom. This is because students get more experiences to the real world and diverse cultures. Overall this was article show the importance of incorporating AAVE in a school setting and the positive effects that it will have.

Annotated Bibliographies

Amanda J. Godley, Julie Sweetland, Rebecca S. Wheeler, Angela Minnici and Brian D. Carpenter. “Preparing Teachers for Dialectally Diverse Classrooms”. Educational Researcher, Vol. 35, No. 8 (Nov., 2006), pp. 30-37.

This article shows the importance of having teachers prepared when they are entering classrooms with muit-dilect students. How they need to take careful consideration and steps to accommodate all students and make sure students feel comfortable in this diverse atmosphere.



Bean Janet, Maryann Cucchiara, Robert Eddy, Peter Elbow, Rhonda Grego, Rich Haswell, Patricia Irvine, Eileen Kennedy, Ellie Kutz, Al Lehner, and Paul Kei Matsuda. “Should We Invite Students to Write in Home Languages? Complicating the Yes/No Debate.” Composition Studies 31.1 (2003): 25-41.

This article is about how people choose to speak in their native and natural dialects in particular situations. The articles references times and conditions when a student should choose to in their natural dialects or consider speaking in Standard English.


Jewett, Sarah. "If You Don't Identify with Your Ancestry, You're like a Race without a Land": Constructing Race at a Small Urban Middle School”. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Jun., 2006), pp. 144-161.

Article shows how teachers, principles, and adults alike react and handle situations dealing with different dialects and race at a particular middle school. It shows and methods different ways in which teachers and others should handle situations with different dialects and how all should be respects.


Whitney, Jessica. “Five Easy Pieces: Steps toward Integrating AAVE into the Classroom”. The English Journal, Vol. 94, No. 5 (May, 2005), pp. 64-69.

This article shows different methods and key steps to take when intergrating AAVE into the classroom. It shows the importance of not just using Standard English, but having students hold true to their roots. In doing that, it has students that have never been exposed to AAVE broaden their horizons. Importance and relevance of keeping AAVE into the classroom is expressed in this article.

dwb3

It really is amazing the things you can accomplish when you least expect it. After reading Ramsey’s “Teaching the Teachers to Teach Black Dialect Writers”, I found Ramsey’s experiences to hold true to that notion. Ramsey is a professor and is asked to teach a group of grad-students with a black dialect how to speak Standard English, or in general how to speak well. Ramsey question whether or not this is a credible course and worth its weight, hoping students do not sign up. However much interest in the class results in his teaching of it for the semester where through trials and tribulations he and his students learn the importance of the class and how much they accomplished.
Ramsey starts off the school year with having the students do general article readings. He found that found class discussions however, is where most the learning took place. He used many tools to teach these students how to speak “correctly” with much haste. Particularly the discussion of analyzing scholarly articles were most effective. At the end of the day the students and Ramsey realized that being bi-dialect was key. They found that the students need to utilize both dialects in their everyday lives. Even after all the theories that they reviewed, there was one general consensus derived by the entire class, “My students quickly saw that there were many theories, some of them foolish, most of them untried, few of them proven. In short, there were no pat answers or fool-proof methods for teaching black dialect writers”( Ramsey 198).
The article went about discussing composition studies by showing Ramsey’s approach and methodology in teaching the class and analyzing overall dialects effect on writing. Ramsey and his students decided to make the class untheoritical oriented and more practically oriented. A great tool which they used was dissecting and analyzing dialect-writer's paper. This would help the students learn and see mistakes they made in their speech or writing. The class then started to develop the idea that the class was really about how to teach writing. Ramsey often found himself not teaching problems with the dialect writer, but errors that any normal college student would face in writing. The classes goal shifted to how to write in general. It had nothing to do with dialect, just the general fact of how to write.
Ramsey found that issue of whether or not these students wanted to learn Standard English was an issue, because they wanted to learn it. These students recognized that if they wanted to survive and function in the real world, you had to utilize this way of speaking and writing.
I found the fact that these students issue with speaking in writing is not because of their dialect, but because they have a problem with writing in general was very interesting. It makes sense to me. I feel that if teachers see a student struggling in writing and they are a minority, they automatically assume it is because they have a dialect, which is inaccurate . I think because of this notion, this article effectively make an argument about a role in composition studies .

IAR 2

For this unit I decided to do an IAR analysis on Lisa Nakamuras, “Cybertyping and the Work of Race and Age in the Digital Reproduction.” I found this text very appealing and very prevalent to today’s society. There is this notion that discrimination is no longer existent. That we live in this color coded world of sunshine and flowers. The truth is, if you believe this, you are in fact very blind. This can be seen very easily when one logs on the internet.
When the internet was first “invented” let’s say, it was supposed to be a utopia for people of all age, race, sex and gender to come and be whoever they wanted to be. The magic and appealing nature of the internet was the fact that finally there was a place where people would no longer be judged on the content of external features. Sadly, like a freshly bought toy that becomes worn out, so did this dream. The internet has become a place of discrimination, a digital divide. When people log on to the internet, it is geared mostly toward white users. When we look at ads, site set up, or content used, it is drawing in that type of person. Standard English is the dominant language used on the internet, rarely do you see AAVE. What is most crucial to my point and what is most striking, is when on the rare occasion you get to see AAVE something out of the ordinary happens. Instead of the difference being celebrated and accepted amongst internet users, it is most often looked down upon. Nakumura saw this “discrimination” quite common across the board, “the internet is a place where race happens. In the early days of the Net, technological visionaries imagined the online world as a Utopian space where everything-even transcending racism-was possible. But now the internet “revolution” is over, a fact upon which nearly everyone from hackers to academics to dot com investors can agree”(Nakumaura 396). This is what I found key in this reading. That many African American people are trying to go on social networking sites or are trying to get themselves out there on the internet, and are getting shut down by discrimination. When AAVE is being used on the internet, most often you will find some arrogant person on the other side trying to bring it down. Nakumaura did recognize that there is this “digital divide” with gender, sex, and race. I truly believe the only way to completely absorb it and demolish it is for online users to keep persisting. If online users keep using AAVE and keep positive attitudes I believe that will encourage other people to use AAVE.
Overall the Nakumara reading game me an excellent basis for my paper. It really helped me see that even in the large scale world of the internet; discrimination can still be very prevalent. The point is to keep on going on using AAVE and hopefully reach a point one day when there won’t be a digital divide.

discrimination liberation

The reading that I did was on Stephen Knadlers “E-racing”. The reading was basically about how most people try to complicate the idea of race, sex, and gender on the internet creating this digital divide. Although the ones who seem to ignore this stereotype seem to be the ones who are most liberated in the end.
Stephen Knader, shows how African American women at Spelman College have decided to ignore the constraints and precautions placed on putting yourself out there on the internet. What these women do is have the opportunity to make personal blogs about themselves on the internet. They have the ability to finally express themselves and they take full advantage of it. They do not worry about factors and discrimination that usually take place in the workplace or school setting. These women still believe that you can represent yourself on these personal profile sites. He shows that these women believe that in school setting and in the work place that have to disguise their true personalities and characteristics. He shows that many African American women feel uncomfortable talking in Ebonics and just being themselves in the everyday public setting. However, with these personal profile sites, these women can express who they are. The African American women can finally show their “blackness” to the world. Knadler describes a women who feels free to describe and express who she is on the internet, “When LaChia says that she wants someone to “feel her writing,” she is saying that women’s e-spaces are not about a postmodernist play of identities, but about finding the ideal community where she no longer has to explain or apologize for her “Blackness” and where others understand her as she understands herself” (Knadler 236). Knadler then describes how these women know there are implications for what you post on the internet, “they know that there is no such thing as “free-writing” online because everything that they write has implications for how they are perceived as racial subjects. In contrast to the inhibited or silenced white woman who needs to be unshackled from her socialized restraints, middle-class African-American women often feel the pressure to code switch, to police themselves against acting “Black, Black” and to express only one part of their carefully negotiated hybrid identities” (Knadler 237).
The point is, these women still make online posts. They still voice their opinions. After all the adversity they still would make posts including AAVE features. These women truly believe the internet was a place to be free, and to ignore the haters.

DW2B

We all desire a place where we can be ourselves. Maybe not even ourselves, but something better. What if there was a place where we could have people look at us and only see what we wanted to see. Our strengths would be highlighted and our flaws would be disguised. Above all that, what if there was a place where we could enhance ourselves and give ourselves characteristics that we do not poses. There is one simple solution, the internet. There are thousands of social networking sites. One in particular is Blackplanet.com. This is a place where mostly persons of African American descent can come and meet other persons. The key principle about the site is you can show others browsing the site who you want them to see, whether or not it is really who you are. This allows many users to voice their opinions and express emotions and ways of means that they usually would not in the real world.
For example, I found that almost all of the users on Blackplanet.com dabbled in AAVE as well as rhetorical features. I found that many of the users used braggadocio and signifying when describing either themselves or just talking about things in general, “I be humble, down-to-earth, cool and collective brotha”, says one of the users from black planet. You can see in the users phrase AAVE features such as “be”. It looked as if the users were very comfortable using AAVE terminology which I usually don’t hear in a school setting or in most places. I did a course reading by Knadler entitled “E-racing”. His article supports that many people find it easy to go on the internet and use it as an outlet. It is a way to express who they are, as well as be who they want to be. Knadler writes that “ Rather than celebrating the e-space of their Web-based portfolios as utopias of alternative self-fashioning, many first-year Spelman students (who are all Black and female) re-constructed them as sites of what I call resistant memory where they might be seen, heard, and—most importantly—“felt.”’(Knadler 236) Knadler shows that African women can go on these social networking sites, such as Blackplanet.com, and have that freedom to express their individuality or be what they want people to see. When people go on Blackplanet.com or any other of these social networking sites they do not have to make excuse for who they are. They will no longer be judged. Knadler believed this. Knadler shows that finally many black women finally feel they have a place where they can speak AAVE or how they want and will not have that prejudice or discrimination placed on them, “finding the ideal community where she no longer has to explain or apologize for her “Blackness” and where others understand her as she understands herself”( Knadler 236).
I found that Blackplanet.com and they reading I did represent AAVE very similarly. Blackplanet.com actually shows how AAVE is appropriated, being used, and people actually expressing themselves. While the Knadler article shows that it is okay to use AAVE and using the internet as an outlet is a perfect solution. I found that in Knadlers article that one student wrote, “Once a net surfer has checked out my web-based portfolio, I want him or her to have a sense of who I am as a person. . . All of these works are representative of me. . . and in general are just me”(Knadler 236), I found this to be a rhetorical feature of braggadocio and found it consistent with many of the articles on Blackplant.com. Being able to voice your opinion is so important, whether you are voicing in it in AAE, AAVE, or any other form, just as long as it is being heard!

dwb2

The site I analyzed was Blackplanet.com. It is a social networking system, welcome for all but centered on the Black community. Many different users can go on the website and make personal profiles about themselves. Users can meet new people, discuss current news, talk about music, etc. It is a very popular site, with a wide variety of users and people to meet. Within the site I found many ways in which AAVE is appropriated.
The first thing I noticed when I browsed from the various profiles was the way individuals represented themselves. I found it very common that people would brag about themselves in this particular section where you give information about yourself. The personal information was boastful and a little arrogant at sometimes. Many times the information given was unrealistic and over the top. I found this to be an AAVE rhetorical feature called braggadocio.
The next thing I noticed was many users would use AAVE or sometimes considered “slang”, quite often. For example, the word “love” was spelled “luv”. The word “thanks” was spelled “thanx” on some users. I came across some sentences I thought were perfect examples. For instance, “Whut up black P, you C we did it right U know”, only assuming it could mean “ What is up, black people, you see we did it right you know?”.
I next came upon people’s user’s names which I found very interesting. Instead of using normal or formal given names, users of the site used some pretty rambunctious ones. For instance twizzmoney, moneymaking guy, nakedwithsockson, get-money-641, and The Dazzler. I found it very interesting people would pick these names over the standard Jane or John Doe.
The last thing that really stuck out was the way users of the site would talk about how bad or sick they were. They did not have the common cold or were going to jail serve a term, however they were actually “bad” and “sick”. They used semantic inversion a lot to describe themselves. For example, “I aint the average guy, im way SIKKER!”. Saying he is “sicker” could mean that he is a lot cooler.
Overall, the site is a great way to social network. I found a lot of examples of AAVE everywhere I looked, mostly semantic inversion and braggadocio.

Dw1 b

From the course text “It Bees Dat Way Sometime” the author Smitherman writes about Black English. Smitherman shows how Black English has just as many rules and regulations as AAE. Throughout the passage she shows different rules and grammatical structures for particular sentences. She also tells of ways one would speak in Black English. The main point that she tries to get across is that although Black English is different from AAE, it doesn’t make it any better or worse. At the end of the passage she quotes a poem by Langston Hughes.

The poem really resonated in my mind because it reminded me so much of my commencement speech. The whole poem was written in Black English, which was considered incorrect. In my senior commencement speech, I spoke in a manner at some points which was considered “informal”. It was looked at as an incorrect way to address a public audience. In the Langston Hughes poem there is a phrase by a man named Simple, “If I can get the sense right, the grammar can take care of itself. I have not had enough schooling to put words together right-but I know some white folks who have went to school for forty years and do not do right. I figure it’s better to do right than to write right, is it not?”. The point is, it does not matter what you are saying, as long as it has meaning. The man in the Langston Hughes poem stated it beautifully; it doesn’t matter if you can speak correct AAE English or if you are speaking Black English, as long as what is said is true to the speakers’ heart and has meaning behind it than that’s all that matters. Even though my speech was not spoken in standard AAE, it was understood and enjoyed by the public. It did not matter how I was speaking to my audience, it was the fact that me and my senior class had a connection and I could speak in a way which was comfortable to me, and I believed would get my point across in the most effective way.
After reviewing the “ It Bees Dat Way” passage, and relating it to my own experience with my commencement speech, I found an underlying similarity. When you are expressing yourself through words, all that has to be made is that connection with the listener. It does not matter how you are saying it as long as that connection is made and the point is getting across. I used everyday language that a standard teenager would use, in my speech, to connect with the teenage audience. Langston Hughes used Black English, and showed slight differences did not make a difference to the power of the passage, it still has meaning. So as long as what your saying has meaning it doesn’t matter what type of grammar you use.

Senior speech

My high school did not do a traditional graduation ceremony. We had three commencement speakers instead of one, and I was chose out of a class of over four hundred to be one of them.
Speaking in front of audiences is what I do best. Nothing thrills me more than making a crowd of people rise and fall with my words, laugh or cry depending on my diction and voice. But speaking at commencement is a challenge that I’m not sure if I can handle: over 5 thousand people, including my peers, their parents, my teachers, my mentors, not to mention the Board of Education for my city. Could I really do this? Play on the emotions of over five thousand people?
I made one crucial decision that made that answer a yes.
I was myself. I didn’t use famous quotes from celebrities long since dead, or speak with a solemn superiority, using big words that I didn’t understand to make myself look smarter. I spoke as I would speak. Because, however this was something that my classmates and I would remember for years to come, I wanted to add some sort of inspiration for the future.
I didn’t begin my speech with a quote from Bernard Shaw or Rocky Balboa like the other two speakers. I used a line filled with my usual sarcastic self-deprecation: “Senior year. When the school year was about commence, I told myself “Carrie, this year, you’re gonna be cool.”
I used the slang term “gonna” to appeal to my classmates personally, because that is how we speak together. This speech was, after all, for them. I continued, “You’ll wave at people, and they’ll notice. No longer will people ask what your name is after going to school with you for ten years. And somehow when you get invited to a party, no longer will Mike Koester ask you, “’how did you get invited?’” I used language as we use it, to do something completely different from the others. But I did not forget the fact that my speech was being addressed to five thousand people, including a prestigious Board of Education. A line that I’m particularly proud of, one that touched me, was, “…the point is to take that strength of character we have gotten here (high school) and use it to carry ourselves over obstacles in the future.” This language was meant to sound inspirational. A touch more of formality made it appear eloquent and motivational. I changed my normal word choice and fluidity of speech to address a more serious section of my speech and to impress on my audience the importance of the tasks lying ahead of us.
My use of both formal and informal language in this piece of writing shows the diversity as well as the similarity in my changes between speech patterns. While my everyday language includes slang and rather sarcastic tones, I was able to morph them into formal speech with a more sophisticated rhythm and tone of speaking and word choice.

It Bees Dat Way Some Times

IAR for : "It Bees That Way Sometimes"

A Whole New Outlook

The text was very insightful. It taught me a lot about Black Language and broke the preconceived notion I had about. What really stuck with me and resonated in my mind was the fact that Black English is not a random way to write or speak, like many people think. It has just as much structure and guidelines as White English. It is constantly evolving and changing with the mainstream twenty-first century. Having so many grammar rules, just like White English, I found it confusing to understand and learn all the Black English guidelines discussed in the text. The reading was pretty simple to understand, I think the only question I would have is how the Black English Grammar rules came about.

What is being invented in the text is the difference in the Black English grammar and White English grammar and how they are so similar all balled into one. The text shows how Black English is misunderstood, and how blacks have intense pressure to conform to White English. It shows that Black English usually is characterized as a pseudo language and has always had a bias. It then shows how Black English is an actual way to speak and has just as many rules and similar grammatical structure as White English. The author gives plenty of examples of Black English sentences and what it means in White English. Also how certain things are spoken in Black English and how a Black English Speaker would say them. A practice that could be done to compare and contrast and learn from Black English is to write a sentence in White English then translate it to Black English, or speak Black English. The arrangement in the text consists of dialects to grammar. It shows how in Black English, one speaks and how that would grammatically be written and the rules and regulations that must be followed. Basically, how something is spoken and how it is written in Black English. Also I believe biases in relation to the actual dialect. I believe that in certain cases people have a bias about personality or content of character by the way one speaks. In the text there is that underlying message that many feel Black English is not really a language , which is a bias, but on the contrary, it has just as many grammatical rules as White English. Thus, proving it is its own language, just different. The problem is that people have that preconceived notion about Black English. What the author does is set up a variety of different examples to prove the credibility of Black English. In doing so, a revision is made. The authors’ primary goal is to show that Black English is a grammatically correct way to speak and through various usages of different examples the author was very successful.

I admit that I had a preconceive notion about Black English, yet through my reading, found it is very credible and a grammatically correct way to speak, it depends on how you look at it. The author ends with a poem by Langston Hughes. What I took from the poem sums up the context of the entire text and my feelings about it as a whole. Grammar is not everything, if what your saying has meaning that’s all that matter, which is very, very true.

Cited Text: Smitherman: " It Bees That Way Sometimes"

wra

This is my first blog for my wra class