Is there such thing as correct english? : variation and correctness in AAVE

Abstract

African American Vernacular English, AAVE, Ebonics, Black English, African-American Language, Spoken Soul, we have different ways of naming it, although throughout this paper, we will label it as AAVE: a dialect born from Standard English and various West African Languages which has always been in the centre stage of correctness as compared with Standard English. The reason for this is that people tend to think that what is popular, what is formal and what is learnt is more correct than what is not. This paper aims to show how complex AAVE can be as a language in order to reinforce the idea that there are actually various paths which can lead us to ‘correct’ English. This is done by presenting both linguistic and sociolinguistic features of AAVE, and by analyzing The Help, film adaptation of Kathryn Stokett’s novel, to demonstrate that social interaction has to be taken into account when talking about correctness.