Introduction

Abstract

Goals and structure of the book What do speakers know when they know African American English (AAE)? One of the goals of this book is to answer this question by presenting a description of AAE and explaining that it is different from but not a degraded version of classroom English (i.e., general American English, mainstream English) or the English which is the target of radio and television announcers. Researchers who study the history of AAE emphasize the importance of comparing AAE to other dialectal varieties of English, especially those spoken in the United States, because AAE is likely to be more similar to other English varieties than it is to classroom English. In this book, I will compare AAE to other English varieties and to classroom English. The comparison to classroom English is important because (1) we have a clear picture of classroom English grammar, and (2) it may be useful for those in the school systems who work with speakers of AAE to see how the variety differs systematically from classroom English. AAE is a variety that has set phonological (system of sounds), morphological (system of structure of words and relationship among words), syntactic (system of sentence structure), semantic (system of meaning) and lexical (structural organization of vocabulary items and other information) patterns. So when speakers know AAE, they know a system of sounds, word and sentence structure, meaning and structural organization of vocabulary items and other information.

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