DOI:10.5176/2251-3566_L317.72
Authors: Sun Beiyi
Abstract: African American Vernacular English, or called Black English, is one of the varieties of American English, also it is an important part of American’s language system. In the past hundred years, although AAVE is often stamped with a degrading mark, or fallaciously recognized as a kind of slang, and subordinates to White English, AAVE carries tremendous power in shaping American culture, it exerted profound influence on the American society. Not only in the aspect of language, but also in movie, music, literature and so on. As far as whatever fields are concerned, economic, cultural or political field, American black people are gradually occupying more space. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out research on AAVE. Due to historical factors, the mainstream of AAVE is Standard American English, but it keeps the characteristics of their own original language―language in West Africa. In this paper, author is going to takes the actor’s speech in the famous African American film Crash as examples to analyze the linguistic features of AAE in terms of phonology, on the basis of fundamental theories of sociolinguistics — to some extent, languages can reflect people’s social status. Particularly in the U.S.A., various ethnic racial groups and different cultures mixed up, language in various districts has its own features. Through discussion and detailed analyses, this paper advocates that as a well-established English variety, AAVE with its unique phonetic characteristics, makes motion pictures more vivid, and holds a significant place in the study of the development of America’s multi-cultural society
Keywords: AAVE, film, phonetic features, variant, racial discrimination, social tension
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