Introducing English Linguistics

part of the country and didn’t sound like it came from somewhere in
particular, perhaps the voice from nowhere.
(Ramona Lenny, American Tongues)
To sound as though they come “from nowhere,” speakers of General
American must, for instance, make sure that their speech contains post-
vocalic /r/, so that they do not sound as though they come from the eastern
seaboard, and they must use the diphthong /a
I
/ in words such as fight and
write rather than a lengthened /a:/ (equivalent to the first vowel in father),
so that they do not sound as though they speak some variety of southern
American English. General American is simply a way of speaking that
avoids identifying the speaker with speech patterns that are stigmatized.
As a working professional, Teresa B. is in contact with many other
middle-class working professionals, both African-American and white.
Many of her white co-workers frequently comment on how “articulate”
her speech is – a kind of coded language indicating that these individuals
are conscious of the fact that Teresa B. does not speak African American
Vernacular English (AAVE) and that African-Americans are, in general,
lacking of good verbal skills: “When whites use the word [articulate] in ref-
erence to blacks,” Clemetson (2007) comments, “it often carries a subtext
of amazement, even bewilderment. It is similar to praising a female exec-
utive or politician by calling her ‘tough’ or ‘a rational decision-maker.’”
Teresa B. is acutely aware of this attitude towards her, the way that she
speaks, and AAVE in general.
Among linguists, the linguistic status of AAVE is in dispute. Some see it
as having creole origins: the product of contact between slaves speaking
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INTRODUCING ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

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The social context of English
75
mutually unintelligible West African languages and slave owners and
traders speaking various kinds of English. Others, in contrast, believe that
AAVE is simply a dialect of English resulting from contact between slaves
and slave owners in the southern part of the United States. Among the pub-
lic, AAVE has been controversial and polarizing, especially since the mid
1990s as a result of the Ebonics controversy. This controversy resulted in
1996 after the Oakland, California School Board declared that AAVE, which
they termed “Ebonics,” was a separate language, and should therefore be
taught in Oakland schools both to make students speaking it aware of its
structure and to help them learn Standard English. This decision created a
huge uproar among educators, politicians, and journalists to the point
that the Oakland School Board had to repudiate the resolution.
To understand the complex mix of attitudes and contexts that Teresa B.
must navigate when she speaks, it is useful to invoke the notion of social
networks. Milroy and Gordon (2003: 117) characterize social networks as “the
aggregate of relationships contracted with others, a boundless web of ties
which reaches out through social and geographical space linking many indi-
viduals, sometimes remotely.” Teresa B. and Michael A. have very different
social networks. Michael A.’s network is relatively closed and is confined pri-
marily to his family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers – people with whom
he interacts daily. Teresa A. has a larger circle of individuals with whom she
interacts on a much less intimate basis: she occasionally socializes with her
work colleagues, and while she resides in the city in which she was born, she
no longer lives in the neighborhood in which she was raised. She returns
home frequently for visits with family and friends but does not have the
immediate proximal ties to them that Michael A. does. She also makes fre-
quent business trips to many cities around the United States, further expand-
ing the people with whom she interacts and her geographical mobility.
Because Teresa B. has to communicate with individuals in many different
contexts, she is quite adept at style shifting: adjusting the way that she
speaks according to the social context in which she is communicating. But
she has paid a price for this linguistic dexterity. As an African-American, she
has had to deal with the controversial status of AAVE both within the
African-American community and the larger society in general. Among
African-Americans, varying attitudes toward AAVE can be found. Rickford
(2004: 199) comments that while AAVE was viewed with great pride within
the African-American community from the 1960s to the late 1990s, follow-
ing the Ebonics controversy (described earlier in this section), attitudes
toward AAVE became much more negative. For instance, the African-
American comedian Bill Cosby has made very negative comments about
AAVE, claiming, as Dyson (2005: 72) quotes him, that speakers of AAVE
“can’t speak English” and “[do not] want to speak English.” Dyson (2005: 72)
himself has a very high opinion of AAVE, arguing that it “captures the beau-
tiful cadences, sensuous tones, kinetic rhythms, forensic articulations, and
idiosyncrasies of expression that form the black vernacular voice.”
Teresa B. has been aware of her very conflicted linguistic identity from
a very young age, but as she gained more education and increasing expo-
sure to numerous different social groups, she has become acutely aware

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INTRODUCING ENGLISH LINGUISTICS
of stylistic variation – how different contexts require different uses of lan-
guage – and quite adept at style shifting. Bell (1984: 145) describes stylistic
variation as a type of intra-speaker variation because it “denotes differ-
ences within the speech of a single speaker” rather than differences
among speakers. He proposes a model of audience design to explain sty-
listic variation, a model consisting of the following individuals: speaker,
addressee, auditor, overhearer, or eavesdropper.
When speakers style-shift, Bell (1984: 160) claims, they are responding
primarily to addressees, individuals whom they are directly addressing
and who are full participants in the conversation. Secondary participants
include auditors, people who are not being directly addressed but are full