ROMÂNIA

MINISTERUL EDUCAŢIEI NAȚIONALE

UNIVERSITATEA „VASILE ALECSANDRI” DIN BACĂU
Facultatea de Litere
Str. Spiru Haret, nr. 8, Bacău, 600114
Tel./ fax ++40-234-588884
www.ub.ro; e-mail: litere@ub.ro

LUCRARE DE
DISERTAŢIE

Coordonator ştiinţific
Lect.univ.dr. Nadia Morărașu

Absolventă
Viviana Bursuc

Bacău
2019
 ROMÂNIA
MINISTERUL EDUCAŢIEI NAȚIONALE
UNIVERSITATEA „VASILE ALECSANDRI” DIN BACĂU
Facultatea de Litere
Str. Spiru Haret, nr. 8, Bacău, 600114
Tel./ fax ++40-234-588884
www.ub.ro; e-mail: litere@ub.ro

A Register Perspective on
Black English Text Varieties

Coordonator ştiinţific
Lect. univ. dr. Nadia-Nicoleta Morărașu

Absolventă
Viviana Bursuc

Bacău
2019

1
 ROMÂNIA
MINISTERUL EDUCAŢIEI NAȚIONALE
UNIVERSITATEA „VASILE ALECSANDRI” DIN BACĂU
Facultatea de Litere
Str. Spiru Haret, nr. 8, Bacău, 600114
Tel./ fax ++40-234-588884
www.ub.ro; e-mail: litere@ub.ro

Declaraţie

Subsemnata, Viviana Bursuc, prin prezenta declar pe proprie răspundere că lucrarea de

disertaţie cu titlul A Register Perspective on Black English Text Varieties este rezultatul
muncii mele de cercetare, este scrisă de mine şi nu a mai fost prezentată niciodată parţial sau
integral la o altă instituţie de învăţământ superior din România sau străinătate.
De asemenea, declar că toate sursele utilizate, inclusiv cele de pe Internet, sunt indicate
de mine în lucrare, cu respectarea strictă a regulilor de evitare a plagiatului.

Bacău, 20.06.2019

Absolventă
_________________________
(semnătura în original)

2
 CONTENTS

Argument 4

I. What is Black English? 5

I.1.Definition of terms 5
I.2.Historical background 6
I.3. Development of Black English 8

II. Present-day features of Black English 11

II.1. Phonetic and phonological features 11
II.2. Lexical features 13
II.3.Grammatical features 16

III. A Register perspective on Black English texts 19

III.1. Characteristics of of Black English speech in literary and 19
musical literary texts
III.2. A Register analysis of Black English in poems and lyrics 24

Conclusions 36

Bibliography 38

Web sources 40

3
 Argument

Everywhere we go in this world, we can meet people who can speak at least a few
words in English. It is spoken as a first or native language on at least four continents of the
world. English is, without question, the closest approach to a world language today.
As a former student that majored in English I was interested in discovering more about
the English language, about its varieties and development. I chose the subject of A register
perspective of Black English text varities because I find it interesting and consider that Black
English reflects a part of the American civilization and speech.
Black English is a variety of English spoken in America and is the subject of many
controversies, the problem being that of whether considering it a language, a dialect or simply
slang talk. This language variety known as Ebonics is nearly as old as Standard American
English but it has often been considered as defective, it has never been standardized and has
always had lower status compared to Standard American English.
The four chapters of this paper deal with aspects of Black English regarding its history
evolution, features, stylistic and register analysis.
The first chapter begins with a definition of the term Black English and the
controversies which still exist about this term and continues with some information about the
history of the language and its early forms, evolution through time.
The second chapter presents the features of this variety compared to those of Standard
American English, in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar.
The third chapter illustrates a stylistic approach to a variety of Black English texts. At
the same time, the chapter presents the expressive use of Black English in literature and music
illustrated with significant examples.
Finally, the fourth chapter deals with the definition of the term register and the types
of register identified as well as an analysis of a variety of texts. The texts that I have chosen to
analyse are rap song lyrics and a corpus of poetry which belong to Tupac Amaru Shakur, a
well-known gansta rapper that influenced many groups of peopleuntil his death in 1996.
All these chapters encompass the most important aspects that are linked to the title of
my paper.

4
 I. What is Black English?

I.1.Definition of terms
According to Stanley M. Novak,1“there is a language variety called Standard British
English (SAE) whose independence from Standard British English is approximately as old as
that of the 13 American colonies from Britain. Standard American English is the medium in
which most public communication in the United States occurs, it is the formalized,
standardized language in which people are educated, informed, entertained and governed.”
However, there are also nonstandard dialects of English distributed by region, social
class and ethnicity that are used in informal contexts and referred to as colloquial language.
African American as a distinct language variety is as old as Standard American English, but it
has often been classified as defective, and has always had lower status compared to Standard
American English.
Preceding the 1950s, the common term for African Americans was Negro, and the
language varieties spoken by this group were named Negro English. When the term Black
became accepted for African Americans in the 1950s, the language terms changed, resulting
in the technical Black English Vernacular (BEV) as named by William Labov in 1972 and the
well-known Black English. From the 1960s up to the present, African American has become a
more accepted term than Black, and the name for the language variety used by African
Americans is African American English or African American Vernacular English (AAVE).
Ebonics, a very controversial neologism, was elaborated by Robert L. Williams during a 1973
conference in St. Louis, Missouri, “Cognitive and Language Development of the Black
Child”. It is formed from the words “ebony” (a synonym for black) and “phonics” (referring
to speech sounds) and this word refers specifically to an African Language that has mixed
with English, resulting in what the African American people speak in the United States.2

1
Stanley, M. Novak, American Shileboleth: Ebonics, 2000, p.50.
2
Williams, Robert L., Ebonics: The true language of Black folks, 1975, pp. 20-30.

5
 I.2. Historical background

History relates that around 1619, during the slave trade, ships gathered slaves not just from
one nation but from many nations. They were all Africans who spoke different languages.
These Africans spoke Yoruba, Hausa. Then, they were separated and traveled with people
they could not understand. When they were brought to the New World, they were obliged to
learn some kind of English to communicate with their masters. The form of English which
they learned was “pidginized”3 and this became so well established as the principal means of
communication between Negro slaves in the British colonies that it was passed on as a creole
language that succeeded generations of the New World Negroes, for whom it was their native
language.
One example of what the New World Black English may have been like can be obtained
from the speech of a 14 year-old Negro boy, portrayed by Daniel Defoe in The Family
Instructor.4 It is important that the African American boy, Toby, speaks a pidginized type of
English to his master, even though he says that he was born in the New World. An extract of
this speech is:
“Toby: Me be born at Barbados.
Boy: Who lives there Toby?
Toby: There lives white mans, white womans, negree mans, negree womans, just so as live
there.
Boy: What and know God?
Toby: Yes, the white mans say God prayers - not much know God.
Boy: And what do the black mans do?
Toby: They much work, much work, no say god prayers, not at all.”
Although the boy master’s English is non-standard (black mans) it is different from the
speech of the Negro boy.
The idea of how widespread a pidginized form of English became can be traced back to
the language of the coastal plantations in the Dutch colony of Surinam, in South America.
An example of conversation in the local African-English dialects includes sentences such as:

3
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/pidginization, 17 May 2019.
4
Defoe, Daniel, The Family Instructor, London, Forgotten Books, 1st of February, 2018

6
Me bella well – I am very well; You wantee siddown pinkininne? – Do you want to come to sit
down for a bit?; You wantee gowaka longa me? – Do you want to take a walk with me?.
In these sentences, the use of the double vowel in wantee is the same as in Defoe’s
example makee. Also, the speaker, Toby, uses me as a subject pronoun. In the first Surinam
sentence, there is an example of a construction that has no equivalent to the Standard English
verb to be. Toby would have probably said No weary since the verb be in the first sentence
was a past tense marker (as it is the present day West African English) the sentence therefore
meaning I was born in Barbadoes.
In the last sentence5, a reflex of English, along,is used with the meaning of Standard
English with. It can be considered accidental or not that in the Gullah dialect spoken by the
Africans along the South Carolina plain, the phenomenon repeats itself, eg.: Enty you wantuh
walk long me?/ Do you want to take a walk with me?. Some speakers of the Gullah dialects
still use me as a subject pronoun,eg.: Me kyaan bruk-um. – I can’t break it., and the enclitic
final vowels survived in Gullah constructions like yerry, yeddy – to hear.
Some examples of Negro dialect that was spoken in the American Colonies show it to be
very similar to the one given by Defoe for the West Indies and by Herlein for Surinam.
In John Leacock’s play, The Fall of British Tyranny6 the conversation between the
kidnapper and Cudjo, one from a group of Virginia Africans, is presented as:
“Kidnapper:... what part did you come from?
Cudjo: Disse brack man, disse one, disse one come from Hamton, disse one come from
Nawfolk, me come from Nawfolk too.
Kidnapper: Very well, what was your master’s name?
Cudjo: Me massa name Cunney Tomsee.
Kidnapper: Colonel Thompson?
Cudjo: Eas,massa, Cunney Tomsee.”
As we can see, the enclitic vowels (e.g. disse) and the subject pronoun me are important
features of the Negro Dialect. In the sentence Me massa name, Cunney Tomsee (My master’s
name is Colonel Thompson.), the verb to be and Standard English possessive suffix -s are
missing. Coincidentally, Cudjo’s construction is very similar to sentences like My sister name
Mary, which are used by many African Americans today.

5
Novak, Stanley M., American Shibboleth: Ebonics, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, 2000.
6
Leacock, John, The Fall of British Tyranny, Creative Media Partners, LLC, 2015, Philadelphia.

7
 The only possible explanation why this pidginized English was so popular in the New
World, with separated varities resembling each other, is that it was not born in the New
World, but originated as a lingua franca in the trade markers and slave factories on the West
African Coast. It is possible that the colonial rules of mixing slaves of various tribes forced its
adoption as lingua franca.7

I.3. Development of Black English

Starting with the 18th century, some changes took place in the New World African
population and these also affected their language behaviour. First of all, the number of black
people born in the New World began to exceed the number of the ones brought from Africa.
In the process, pidgin English became the creole mother tongue of the new generations,
and in some areas it remained to the present day.
In the British colonies, the English of the uneducated black people and the dialects of
both the educated and the uneducated white people were very similar to each other (in
vocabulary at least) to allow the speakers of both dialects to communicate with each other
although the whites still considered the black English to be broken, corruptor emphasizing
their mental limitations.
Another change that took place in the New World Black population especially during the
18th century was the social cleavage of the New World, generations of black people born into
unprivileged field hands and privileged domestic servant.
This difference in privilege meant, not freedom instead of bondage, but freedom from
degrading kinds of labour, access to the house with its comforts and civilization and the
chance to communicate with the white colonists, opportunity to imitate their behaviour (ever
their speech). In few cases, privilege included the chance to get an education and, very rarely,
access to wealth and freedom.
In both the British colonies and the United States, the Black population belonging to the
privileged group were able to acquire a standard variety of English than a black of the
working class, and the few who managed to acquire a decent education became speakers of
standard and often elegant English.

7
J. M. Dillard, All American English, New York, Vintage Books 1976, p.200

8
 This situation remained unchanged through the Civil War. Caroline Gilman’s in
Recollections of a Southern Matron8 presents the difference between field-hand creole
(Gullah), and domestic servant dialect evident in a comparison of the gardener’s “He tief one
sheep – he run away las week, cause de overseer gwine for flog him” with Dina’s. “Scuse me,
missis, I is gitting hard a hearing, and yes is more politer dan no.”9A more important contrast
between the speech of educated and uneducated black people is observed in a novel written in
the 1850’s by an African American who travelled through the slave states. In chapter XVII,
the conversation between Henry, an educated black traveler, and an old “ aunt” goes as
follows:
“Who was that old man who ran behind your master’s horse?
Dat Nathan, my husband.
Do they treat him well, aunty?
No, chile, wus an’ any dog, da beat’ im foh little an nothin’
Is uncle Nathan religious?”
“Yes, chile, ole man an’ I’s been sahvin’ God dis many day, fo yeh baun! Wen any on’
em in de house git sick, den da sen foh ”uncle Nathan”, come pray foh dem; ”uncle
Nathan” mighty good den!”10

After the Civil War, with the dissolution of the plantation system and the increase in
education for poor as well as black affluent the old field creole English began to lose its main
characteristics, and assimilate the features of the white dialects and written language.This
process of assimilation did not go just one way, because it is believed that the speech of many
whites has been influenced by the speech of black people.
The proportion of American Negroes who speak a standard variety of English has risen
from a couple of privileged house slavesand free ones to people numbering hundreds and
perhaps even millions. However, there is still a considerably number of American black
people, larger than the number of standard-speaking Negroes, whose speech may be non-
standard. This may be due to the influence of the non-standard dialects of whites with whom
they have come into contact, but also influence from the older Negro field hand speech that
remained.

8
Gilman, Caroline, Recollections of a Southern Matron, Harper & Brothers, 82 Clift-Street, New York, 1938,
p.254.
9
Idem, p.254
10
Martin R. Delany, Blake: or; The Huts of America, Beacon Press, 2016, pp. 30-50.

9
 One major change that has occurred in the American black dialects during the century
has been the complete loss of both functional and lexical vocabulary. This process began to
unfold before the Civil War, the dissolution of the plantation system accelerated this process
considerably, even in South Carolina and Georgia.In the process, characteristics of the black
language that were common in the attestations of slave speech; such as: been for marking past
actions (with no pronouns for subject and object), a single subject pronoun form (him or he)
for masculine, feminine or neuter in the 3rd person sg. –um (or –am) as third person (all
genders and numbers) object suffix, became very rare even in the non-standard speech of
black people born after Emancipation.

10
 II. Present-day features of Black English

II.1. Phonetic and phonological features

Black English (B.E) and Standard English pronunciation are sometimes very different.
People often consider important such differences in pronunciation or accent, so the study of
phonology is an important part of sociolinguistics.
When two consonants appear at the end of a word (for example st in test) they are
reduced: the final t is erased. This is present in every variety of English including standard
ones. In Black English, the consonant assemblage is reduced variably (it does not occur every
time) and systematically.Sociolinguists have indicated that the frequency of reduction can be
expressed by a rule which takes into account a number of interesting facts.The frequency of
reduction depends on the environment in which the sound occurs. The following two factors
have been found to affect the frequency of reduction in consonant clusters:
a. If the next word begins with a consonant, it is more likely to reduce than if the
next word begins with a vowel. For example, reduction is probably to appear in
west side (becoming wes side) than in wes end.
b. A final t or d is more probably to be deleted if it is not part of the past tense –
edthan if it is (the past tense –edsuffix is pronounced as t or d or id in English
dependong on the preceding sound). For example, reduction will mostly appear in
John ran fast (becoming John ran fas) than John passed the teacher in his car.
The written symbol th can represent two different and distinct sounds in English: both
a voiceless sound as in thought, thin and think and a voiced sound as in the, they, that. In
Black English, the pronunciation of this sound depends mostly on where in a word is found.
At the beginning of a word, the voiced sound in that is mostly pronounced as de, dey,
dat. Black English shares this characteristic with many other nonstandard dialects, including
the East Coast of US and Canada. Less likely in Black English is the pronounciation of the
unvoiced sound as t. In conclusion, thin can become tin bu rarely does. This is a very usual
feature of Caribbean creoles in which think is pronounced as tink. When the th sound is
followed by r, it is possible to pronounce the th as f as in froat for throat in Black English.

11
 Within a word, the voiceless consonant, as in nothing, author or either is pronounced
as f. Black English speakers will say nufn, nothing and ahfuh author. The voiced sound within
a word, may be pronounced v. So brother becomes bruvah.
At the end of a word, this pronounced f in Black English. For example, Ruth is
pronounced Ruf; south is pronounced souf. When the preceding sound is nasal (n or m) the
this pronounced as t as tent for tenth; mont for mouth.
The sound l and r, when they do not appear at the beginning of a word l and r often
undergo a process known as vocalization and are pronounced as uh. This is present in a post
vocalic position (after a vowel).
Foe example, steal, sister, nickel become steauh, sistuh, nickuh. In some varieties of
Black English (Southern US) r is not pronounced after the vowels o and u. The words door
and doe, four and foe, sure and show can be pronounced the same.
When a nasal (n or m) follows a vowel, speakers of Black English sometimes
eliminate the nasal consonant and nasalize the vowel. The nasalization is written with a tilde
(~) above the vowel.
In many instances of English including standard instances, the vowels I in pin and E in
pen sound different in all words. In Black English these sounds are combined before a nasal
(n or m). So in Black English, pin or pen are pronounced with the same vowel. Most Southern
instances of English megr these vowels too, so this is a distinctive feature of Black English in
the northern US.
Some vowels like the one in night and my, about or cow are named diphtongs. In
Black English the vowel in night, in or in my is not a diphtong. When pronouncing the words
with this diphtong, Black English speakers do not move the tongue to the front top position.
My is pronounced ma as in he’s over at ma sister’s house.
Black English is different from other varieties in the placement of stress in a word. So,
if words like place, hotel and July are pronounced with stress on the last syllable in Standard
English, in Black English the stress may be placed on the first syllable so that it becomes po-
lice, ho-tel and Ju-ly.

12
 II.2. Lexical features

It is difficult to say how many people speak African American Vernacular English
(AAVE) because it is not clear what this means. Some speakers use some special aspects of
phonology (pronunciation) and lexis (vocabulary) but no grammatical features are associated
with the variety.
Many sociolinguits retain the word AAVE for varieties which are marked by the
certain grammatical features.AAVE speakers compare the variety with something they refer
to as Talking Proper. At the same time, these speakers also express positive attitudes towards
AAVE on a variety of occasions and may also observe the innappropriate use of Standard
English in certain situations.11
It is very important to remark that not all Negroes speak Black English, just as not all
Spanish people speak with a Spanish accent. There is no genetic benesis for the special nature
of this dialect; it is a cultural behavior pattern which is transmitted by tradition. There are a
variety of Negroes whose speech is much different from others of the same region and social
class and there are many whose speech can be recognized as Black only by a couple of
differences in pronunciation and vocal quality. It is named Black English, because very few
people use it who are not Negroes.
Some explanations for the special character of Black English lie in its linguistic
history, which is connected to that of the history of American English. Several features are
identified to African languages from the Caribbean Creole languages. In this case, it is certain
why some features of this dialect are special.
Black English is similar with other dialects of American English in terms of features,
but not identical with them. Kurath, one of the most famous American dialectologists
states:“By and large the Southern Negro speaks the language of the White man of his locality
or area and of his education...As far as the speech of uneducated Negroes is concerned, it
differs little from that of the illiterate White, that is, it exhibits the same regional and local
variation as that of the simple white folk.”12According to him, Black English is similar to the
other White Southern dialects. And this can be examplified by the fact that there are some
nonstandard that use a negativized auxiliary before a negative indefinite in declarative
sentences. For example, the construction Didn’t nobody do it, is equivalent to the Standard

11
http://w.w.w.une.edu.au/arts/LCL/index.sthml> accesed 10.04.2019.
12
Kurath Hans, A Word Geography of the Eastern US, University of Michigan Press,1949, p.57

13
English sentence There isn’t anybody who did it. This type of construction would be used by
Black English and Southern White nonstandard speakers, but not by the Northern nonstandard
White speech. Black English is much closer to Southern than Northern nonstandard dialects.
Although social class is a very important social factor that correlates with speech
differences there are other social variables which intersect with class in an important way. For
example, inside the different social classes of Negroes, it is observed that females approach
the Standard English norm more than males do. This observation is consonant with the
observation that the Negro male departs more from the norm of middle class behavior than the
female.
Racial isolation is the other factor which intersects with social class to justify the
speech differences in the Black community. It is of great importance in the acquisition of
language.Age was also connected to the differences in speech behavior. Adults in general use
socially disgraceful features less than young people. In fact, it seems that children rather than
adults are the principal agents of the language system.
In terms of the ritualistic uses of language in the Black community, it is also remarked
that it is teenagers (particularly males) who are responsible for carrying on the tradition of
ritualistic language. Language rituals like sounding (the game in which another person is
insulted), signifying (the ritualistic game of insulting another person directly) and rapping (a
fluent and lively way of talking characterized by a high degree of personal style) illustrate
definite models of age grading.13
Although Black English has some special lexical items, the things people know from
rap and hip-hop and other aspects of popular Black culture is slang, young people’s
vocabulary which is almost by definition subject to rapid change, and which crosses over or
diffuses to other ethnic groups, becoming an icon of youth culture itself. The core of Black
English, that part that is shared amongst many age groups and that link more powerfully to the
language’s origins in the creole speech of slavery, is the phonology and grammar. The single
mistake people make about Black English is talking about it as careless or lazy speech, where
anything goes. As in the case of all spoken languages, Black English is very regular, rule-
governed, and systematic.14

13
Wolfram, Walt and Fasold R. W., The study of social dialects in American English, Prentice-Hall, 1974, pp.
70-100.
14
Rickford R. John, African American Vernacular English, Cambridge University Press, 1973, pp. 122-128.

14
 Black English is not separated in terms of vocabulary from other varieties of English.
However, Black English speakers use words which are not found in other varieties and use
some English words in ways that are different from the standard dialects.
A couple of words used in Standard English have their origin in Black English or in
the West African languages that contributed to Black English’s development.These include:
banana (Mandingo), yam (Mandingo), gumbo (Western Bantu).
An analysis of Black English vocabulary might proceed by observing that words can
be seen to be composed of a form (sound signal) and a meaning. In some cases both the form
and meaning are taken from West African sources. In other instances, the form is from
English but the meaning appears to be extracted from West African sources.
Some instances are ambiguous and seem to implicate what Frederic Cassidy called a
multiple etymology (the form can be identified in more than one language):
E.g. West African Form + West African Meaning:
Bogus fake/fraudulent; boko-boko, deceit, fraud;
hep, hip, well informed, up-to-date;
English form + West African meaning:
cat, a friend, a fellow; -kat (a suffix denoting a person);
cool calm, controlled;
dig to understand, appreciate, pay attention;
bad really good.
In West African languages and Caribbean creoles a word which means bad is often
used to mean good, or a lot, intense. For example, in Guyanese Creole me laik am bad, yu
noo, means I like him a lot.
Another interesting set of vocabulary items are called loan translations or calques. In
such cases, a complex idea is expressed in the West African language by combination of two
words. In Black English these African words appear to have been translated directly and the
same concept is expressed by combination of English items:
bad eye = nasty look/ Mandingo, nye-jugu, hateful glance
bad eye = greedy/Ito anya, uku covetous (lit. big eye).

15
 The analysis of Black English vocabulary must take into account the many recent
innovations which occur in this variety and which have a tendency of spreading rapidly to
other varieties of English.

II.3. Grammatical features

Although there is fluctuation between Standard English and Black English forms, it
does not mean that Black English is not an unworthy equal to Standard English. It has its own
pronounciation and also grammatical patterns.
The form berepresents a grammatical category which is unique to Black English.It is a
form which is parallel with creole does be used in the Gullah off the coast of south Carolina
and Georgia, or in Barbados, Trinidad and Guyana.
In the sentence Sometime he be playing and sometime he don’t, be refers to an activity
which repeats at various intervals. It would be incorrect to use it where a momentary activity
is indicated, thus it would not be used in a sentence like He’s playing right now or He playing
right now.15
Standard English used the conjugated be verb (called a copula) in many different
sentences. This may occur as is, ‘s, are, ‘re. In Black English this verb is not included. The
constancy of inclusion has been shown to depend on a multitude of factors. Here are some
examples:
1) In future sentences with gonna or gon:
Example: I don’t care what he say, you __ gon laugh.
.........as long i’s kinds around he’s gon play rough or however they’re playing.
2) Before verbs with the –ing or in ending (continuous):
Example: I tell him to be quiet because he don’t know what he __ talking about.
I mean, he may say something’s out of place but he __ cleaning up behind
it and you can’t get mad at him.
3) Before adjectives and expressions of location:
Example: He ___ all right.
And Alvin he ____kind of big, you know?
She ______ at home. The club _____ on one corner the Block is on the other.

15
Dillard J. M., All American English, New York, Vintage Books 1976, p. 230

16
 Standard English varieties mark subject predicate grammatical concord in the present
tense.If the subject is third person singular (he,she,it or name of a person) an –s appears at the
end of a regular verb (e.g. John walks to the store). In AAVE the verb is very rarely marked
as such. When regular verbs appear with –s marking they often carry special meaning.
Standard English also has agreement in a variety of irregular and frequently used verbs such
as has vs. have and is vs. are, was vs. were. In AAVE these differences are not always
present.
‘’Some linguists think that the absence of the third person singular –s forms, as in the
sentence He act like a big dude can be traced to a similar phenomenon characterizing some
Caribbean Creole languages.
Other linguists, primarily dialect geographers, point out that there are parts of the
southern United States where this feature characterizes Whites, and that it can be related to a
dialect area which originated in Southern England.’’16
The verb in AAVE is used without any ending. As in the case of the English creoles,
there are some separate words that come before the verb which show when or how something
occured. These are called ‘’ tense/aspect markers’’.
Past tense can be conveyed by the surrounding discourse (with the help of adverbials
like: last night, three years ago, back in the days,or by the use of actions (e.g. them) or by the
use of on ending as in Standard English. The repetition with which the -ed endings appears
depends on a number of factors including the sounds which follow it.
Past events are presented by placing been before the verbs. Speakers of Standard
English present perfect with the have or has deleted. However the AAVE sentence with been
is very different from the Standard English present perfect. This can be seen by comparing
two sentencs such as the following;
Standard English present perfect: He has been married.
AAVE been: He been married.
In the Standard English version the implication is that he is no longer married. In the
AAVE sentence the implication is the opposite: He is still married.
Sentences that are similar to Standard English perfects such as presented above can be
conveyed by the use of done in AAVE. For example, the standard sentence He has eatin his

16
Idem, p.231

17
dinner can be expressed as He done eat his dinner. It indicates a completed or emphatic
action.
Future events and the action that has not yet occured are marked by gon or
gonna.Besides using the verb with the ending –ing or –in to convey that an event is in
progress, AAVE has a couple of words which add particular nuances. For example, if the
activity is intentional, the sentence could include the word steady. This can be used to mark
actions that often occur habitually or repeatdly are marked by be in AAVE as in He be
working all the time.
AAVE has many ways of representing negation. Like a number of other types of
English, AAVE uses ain’t to negate the verb in a simple sentence. AAVE also uses ain’t in
Standard English sentences which use haven’t.For instance, Standard I haven’t seen him is
similar to AAVE I ain’t seen him. Unlike most nonstandard varieties of English speakers of
AAVE sometimes use ain’t for standard didn’t as in the examples:
I ain’t step on no line.
I said, I ain’t run the stop sign, and he said, you ran it!
As the sentence above shows, AAVE allows negation to be marked in more than one
position (so called double or multiple negation). In this instance, AAVE is similar to French
and a number of other languages and a number of English creoles. Certain types of nouns
require negative marking in negative sentences. As the negation must be expressed with
indefinite nouns (anything, anyone), this is a form of agreement marking (I ain’t see
anything).
AAVE also has a distinct negative construction which linguists call negative inversion.
An example from Tom Morrison’s Song of Solomon follows: “Pilate they remeMbered as a
pretty woods-wild girl that couldn’t nobody put shoes on.’’
In this instance a negative auxiliary (couldn’t) is placedin front of the subject
(nobody). Some other examples illustrate this:
“Ain’t no white cop gonna put his hands on me
Can’t nobody say nothing to dem peoples!
Wasn’t nobody in there but me an’ him.’’17

17
http://w.w.w.une.edu.au/arts/LCL/index.shtml, accessed 7.05.2019.

18
 III. A Register Perspective on Black English

III.1. Characteristics of Black English speech in literary and musical literary

texts
Because of the special history and acculturation of the Africans in the British colonies
in North America, the literary tradition of African Americans is most significantly appraised
in the context of the tension between their attitudes toward their African and European
cultural legacy on one hand, and their oral and literary heritages on the other.
American writers with an African descent need to adjust to the dual tradition, oral and
literary, African and European, male and female, inherited as part of their North-American
legacy and in which they participate in search for status, power and identity.
The earliest representations of Black speech in literature appear in the works of white
writers, beginning with travel books in the 18th century and colonial plays and novels. Stephen
Leacock’s play, The Fall of British Tyranny; or American Liberty Triumphant was published
in 1776, the year of the Revolutionary War. In the following fragment, Cudjo, who escaped
from American slavery, is being interviewed by Kidnapper18:
“ Kidnapper: Very well, did you all run away from your masters?
Cudjo: Eas, massa Lord, el’ry one, me too.
Kidnapper: That’s clever,they have no right to make you slaves. I wish all the Negroes
would do the same. I’ll make’em free – what part did you come from?
Cudjo: Disse brack man, disse one, disse one come from Hamton, disse one come
from Nawfolk, me come from Nawfolk too.
Kidnapper: What’s your master’s name?
Cudjo: Me massa name Cunney Tomsee.”
Cudjo’s language includes features that are either rare or non-existent in the speech of
African Americans such as the use of the verb come for past tense ( instead of came) and the
use of me as subject and possessive pronouns (instead of I and my). These instances are more
frequently found in Caribbean Creole English.
From the 1700s up to the present, some White writers put African American
vernacular of one kind or another in the mouths of their Black characters. These include some

18
Leacock, Stephen, The Fall of British Tyranny: or, American liberty triumphant, a tragi-comedy, Philadelphia,
printed by Styner and Cist, in Second-Street, Near Arch-Street, 1776, p. 50.

19
of the most important names in American literature, such as Edgar Allan Poe (The Gold Bug.
1843), Herman Melville (Fleece’s speech in Moby Dick, 1851), Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle
Tom’s Cabin, 1851-1852), Joel Chandler Harris (Uncle Remus, 1880), Thomas Nelson Page
(In Ole Virginia, 1887), Mark Twain (Jim’s Missouri Black dialect in Huckelberry Finn),
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the wind, 1936).Some of them (such as Thomas Nelson Page)
have been criticized for their stereotypical portrayals of African Americans.
Speaking of Black poetry, Henderson, a Howard University theorist and spokesman
for the Black Arts Movement of the 1970s, noted that:“whenever Black poetry is most
distinctly and effectively Black, it derives its form from two basic sources.Black speech and
Black music”. Reffering to Black speech, he continued by saying that:“Poets use Black
speech forms consciously because they know that Black people do not talk like white people.
They know that despite the lies and distortions of the ministrels....there is a complex and rich
and powerful linguistic heritage whose resources have scarcely been touched that they draw
upon...For there is the tradition of beautiful talk with us – this tradition of saying things
beautifully even if they are ugly things. We say them in a way which takes language down to
the deepest common level of our experience while hinting still at things to come. White
people and many academicians call this usage slang and dialect; Black people call it Soul
Talk.”19
The Afro-American art and letters during the 1920s was dominated by the versatile
Langston Hughes, who is considered the famous poet of black America.This period is known
as the Negro Renaissance, Harlem Renaissance, and New Negro movement. It was the period
in which Harlem was was the national stage for the rise of such artists as Claude McKay, Jean
Toomer, Countee Cullen, Bill Robinson, Josephine Baker, Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington.
Many artists of that period like Hughes, inspired themselves from Africa and Afro-
American folklore for a sense of tradition. Hughes’ first book of verse, The Weary Blues
(1926), focuses on the night life of Harlem cabarets and captures the sounds and slight of the
Jazz Age.Besides introducing Jazz and Blues rhythms into poetry, Hughes accepted the world
as his audience, but mostly, his subject was the black urban working class. His music
represented the sound of Lenox Avenue in New York, Seventh Street in the District of
Colombia, and South State Street in Chicago. His language has been roughtly called
Harlemese: vibrant, rhythmic, direct, racy, urban black speech.Many of Hughes most read

19
Houston A. Baker, Jr. , Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory, University of
Chicago Press, 2013, pp. 80-81.

20
pieces, such as The Negro Speaks of Rivers, were designed in Standard English. But he often
used the vernacular to bear witness that life for Black masses “ain’t been no crystal stair”.
In 1920, he wrote “Mother to Son”, one of his most loved poems and a piece that, as
an African American journalist put it, would not feel the same in Standard English20:
“Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair:
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor –
Bare.
But all the time.
I’se been a climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes going in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
‘ Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now –
For I se still goin, honey,
I’se been climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.”
The overall effect comes from the sustained metaphor of the woman’s movement on
the stair, despite its difficulties, from the warm conversational tone (well, son, I’ll tell you:
don’t you fall now – I’se still goin’, honey) with which she illustrates her combination of
admonition and encouragement, and from the simple words and phrases (often beginning with
and) in which her message is enveloped.

20
Langston Hughes, The Collected Works of Langston Hughes: The poems (1921-1940), University of Missouri
Press, 2001, p. 200

21
 Although the audience of the poem is the speaker’s son, Hughes is speaking on behalf
of all oppressed people, who must triumph. Unlike many of the dialect writers of the 19th
century, Hughes is prudent in his representation of black pronunciation (climbing and other -
ing words are represented as climbin, but Andis not an, with is not wid, and boards is not
boa’ds). This allows his readers to easily follow the poem. The strong black vernacular effect
derives almost entirely from grammatical features, skillfully represented: ain’t for hasn’t, the
double negative (ain’t been no light) and a couple cases of non-standard verb agreement you
finds instead of you find and I’se instead of I’m. Unless it embodies contemporary usage that
is no longer in use, however, the use of I’ve may have been a transference of dialect writing
rather than an authentic representation.In Black speech, accent is crucial to meaning as the
words themselves. The rhythm inflection and rhetorical style are part of the message’s
creation.
The most famous Black novel written in Black vernacular is The Colour Purple
(1982)21 which earned its author, Alice Walker, a Pulitzer Prize. The theme is a rephrasing of
Jamie Crawford’s dreams in Hurston’s romance of what a black woman must be.The
idiomatic effect is carried by the grammar, including omitted is, unmarked past tense (die,
scream), double negativs (don’t say nothing) and invariant be:
E.g. “My mama dead. She die screaming and cussing. She scream at me. She cuss at
me. I’m big. I can’t move fast enough. By time I git back from the well, the water be
warm. By time I git the tray ready the food be cold. By time I fit all the children ready
for school it be dinner time, he don’t say nothing. He sit there by the bed holding her
hand an cryin, talkin bout don’t leave me, don’t go. She ask me bout the first one.
Whose it is? I say God’s. I don’t know no other man or what else to say.”
The virtually uninterrupted vernacular flow (the protagonist Celie writes to God) in
this novel is quite effective. By permiting Celie recount her experiences in what Stephen
Henderson named the language of feeling, Walker allows her Black readers to develop an
emotional kinship with the testimony.
Zora Neale Hurston, born in Florida a black township, typed expressions like the
following ones into the pages of her novels Their Eyes were Watching God (1937)22: “ ...ah,
yeah, she’s too smart tuh stay round heah. She figgers we’se jus’uh bunch uh dumb niggers so
she think she’ll grow horns. But dat’s uh lie. She’ll die butt headed.” Black vernacular is

21
Walker Alice, The Colour Purple, Harcourt, 2006, p. 10.
22
Hurston Neale Zora, Their Eyes were Watching, Little Brown Book Group, 1937, pp. 20-50.

22
illustrated here through lots of features: one can observe the replacement of the vowel o at the
end of the word into uh in to which appears as tuh; re in final position becomes ah in heah
(here), just like in brother which becomes bruvah; the use of se for the contracted form ‘re
(are) of the verb be: we’se.
Another interesting factor is the use of uh in black vernacular in place of article a (a
bunch appears as uh bunch) but also in place of the preposition of: “bunch uh dumb niggers.”
An aspect of consonant cluster simplification is the fall of t in final position: jus’ for just.The
signature of grammatical agreement between subject and predicate is lost, she think instead of
she thinks. This is a common aspect of Black English, like the conversation of Standard
English th to Black English t or d in word initial position. When this voiced it becomes d, like
in dat for that.
Music which relies on non-standard English (popular music, jazz, blues, soul and
rhythm, blues) was also embraced by the mainstream despite its being generally been
ridiculed by the dominant culture. Middle America has often been scorned by those who
speak jive, in the same breath and with the same enthusiasm that it has sculptured to black
sounds a la Bessie Smith and Ray Charles (both of whom were not concerned with
conjugating verbs correctly than with capturing people’s souls). The idea of soul, as a legacy
to which black people could develop an affection, reached heights in 1960 (when Negroes
became soul brothas and sistas’) and found a savior in James Brown.
Americans of all colours went wild for the outrageous performing phenomenon who
developed the attitude and unspooled dialect. Makers of black music have always defined
themselves, with the help of Spoken Soul, in terms of who they were to become once they had
reached the others side. Black folk always used their music to project themselves into a place
where they are free.
Mahalia Jackson, recognized as the world’s most famous gospel singer, recorded I will
Move on up A Little Higher in 1947. The song analysis the belief that black folk will shed
earthly constraints and be greatly rewarded on that great gittin’up morning.There are
powerful Christian ideas and the singer expressed them will all her might. The phrase getme a
crown, for example, conveys a sense of entitlement and self-righteouness that the standard
English (I’m going to get a crown for myself) cannot.

23
 There are many black singers, like Nat King Cole and Sam Cooke, who composed
exhilerating music in “proper” English. Lauryn Hill’s Lost Ones on the other hand, a mixture
between hip-hop and reggae tue did some serious radio rotation in 1998:
“ you might win some but you really lost one
you just lost one it so silly how come
when it’s all done did you really gain from
what you done done, it so silly how come.”
Her use of dialect features, such as the completive tense (done done) and the deletion
of conjunctive s (it so silly) are natural, accepted and appreciated elements of a linguistic
convention that sustained the soul.
To conclude, a lot of Black poets, fiction writers, playwrights and musicians made use
of the rich and powerful linguistic heritage in their texts, designed a voice that was,
linguistically speaking, distinctively Black.

III.2. A Register analysis of Black English in poems and lyrics

Language varies depending on the situation in which it is used, and these varities of
language are referred to as registers. The concept of register is subordinated to the bigger
concept of language variation in applied linguistics and was used to refer to variation in
connection with the use of language, functional varities.
Registers are characterized by the fact that they are rapidly recognisable, have a
functional basis, are identified on different levels of generality (from general register like
textbooks, academic prose to more specific ones like research articles) and are based on
samples of texts that are selected to represent the register.
The texts selected for my analysis are the songs and volume of poetry interpreted and
written by Tupac Amaru Shakur.Tupac Amaru Shakur was born on 16th of June 1971 in New
York. The son of Afeni Shakur and Billy Garland, he left his mother’s house at the age of 17.
He started his career with a television show in the late 1980s, as a dancer and actor.
His sincerity in speaking about his real life and hard childhood made him a hero for a
lot of people.He put himself into every character: the gangsters, the pimps, the crack dealers
and street kids. Tupac’s “thug poetry” as it was called became important because he shared
stories that millions of other poor black youth could relate to. Tupac’s songs broke all typical

24
Rap stereotypes, for example: misogyny, Homophobia, Hyper-Masculinity, Glorifying of
drugs and crime and Worship of money.
2Pac’s Dear mama is among the most popular songs of all times. The subject of the
song is that 2Pac wants the listener to think of how much sacrifices a mother goesthrough in
any circumstances to provide for her children and see them succeed: “Ain’t a woman alive
that could take my mama’s place.” The primary audience is represented by Tupac’s mother
Afeni Shakur and also others that could face the same difficulties he went through:
“Now ain’t nobody tell us it was fair
He passed away and I didn’t cry, cause my anger
Wouldn’t let me feel for a stranger
They say I’m wrong and I’m heartless, but all along
I was lookin for a father he was gone.”23
Analysing the lyrics we find out that Tupac’s life was not the easiest growing up and
that his mother had a huge impact molding the person he would later become:
“I hung around with the Thugs and even though they sold drugs
They showed a young brother love
I moved out and started really hangin’...”24
The speaker establishes credibility by using first person by admitting all the awful
things that he did and things that happened between him and his mother revealing his honesty:
“When I was young me and my mama had beef”, “I needed money of my own so I started
slangin’”.
The tone of the piece is very sentimental showing the rapper’s love and appreciation:
“ But the plan is to show you that I understand
You are appreciated.”
As literary devices, Tupac uses alliteration and assonance in his verses, the song being
written in the form of a letter to his mother: “Suspended from school and scared to go home I
was a fool with the big boys, breakin all the rules”; “They say I’m wrong and I’m heartless
but all along I was lookin for a father he was gone”.

23
https://genius.com/2Pac-dear-mama-lyrics , retrieved on 21.06.2019
24
Idem, retrieved on 21.06.2019

25
 The song is written in first person. By addressing himself as the song progresses he
creates a feeling of him telling a story rather than singing a song:
“I moved out and started hangin’
I needed money of my own, so I started slangin’.”
The author mainly uses pathos in the song. By admitting that he was not the greatest
son, he gets personal with the listerners and relates to the audience who may be facing the
same problems. He shows his sensitive side to the listener: “I hung around with the thugs and
even though they sold drugs they a young brother love.”
Dear Mama was not the only song written and interpreted by artist Tupac which
received major acclaim. Tupac Shakur was an artist who worked in a range of verbal media
and was fluent in registers created to communicating with a vastly different audiences. He
was an amateur poet and platinum selling rapper when he died, but his fame was most visible
in his work as a rapper in which he used African American Vernacular English (AAVE)
linguistic features. Tupac Shakur as fluent in the language of the street and the language of
poetry and used each of them for different artistic purposes and to reach different audiences.
When Tupac Shakur was shot on Friday, Sepatember 13, 1996, he was 25 years old
but had already acquired an impressive artistic resume. He produced six solo rap albums,
recorded over 30 singles, acted in movies and left many unpublished rap songs. His
unpublished work included a number of poems that were published by his mother in 1999 as
The rose that grew from concrete. Many of these were slightly different in tone, topic and
forms from Tupac’s raps:
“Did u hear about the rose that grew
from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature’s law is wrong it
learned2 walk without having feet.
Funny it seems but by keeping its dreams
It learned 2 breathe fresh air
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else even cared.”25

25
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the -rose-that-grew-from-concrete-2/ retrieved on 22.06.2019

26
 The poem emphasises the ways that someone can achieve greatness coming from a
place that is not recognized as great. In the poem Tupac uses a rose, the symbol for beauty,
love and nobility, but also caution because of its thorns. The rose correlates with people and
how beautiful people are and how even in their imperfections can be loved. The rose that
grew from concrete, something hard that provides nourishment, a man made cement that it is
not appreciated and people walk all over it. The concrete here represents the ghettoor any
place regarded as a place where nothing good comes out. This poem represents Tupac’s life in
the way that he came from a place that meant nothing to society, a place that does not provide
love and nourishment to the people that inhabit it. Tupac is the rose who comes from this
place and was able to come out of it and make a good living.
Even in Tupac’s life people always doubted him and labelled him as a thugbecause of
his background and place where he came from.
In the poem when he says “Proving nature’s law wrong/ it learned to walk without
having feet”. This just proves the fact that even though society has guidelines for what
greatness is and comes from, you can always prove it wrong by getting through the hard times
and all hardships.
Funny it seems but by keeping its dreams it learned 2 breathe fresh air emphasizes on
the fact that you have to follow your dreams in everything you do. Tupac believed in
following your dreams and this poem clearly stressess on this fact.
Although many fans and critics have praised the poems for their insights and
freshness, African American young people did not rush to buy the text. The fact that the same
artist elicited such different responses from his audience is interesting. Perhaps the answer for
this phenomenon could be the notion of keeping it real present in every Tupac’s song.
The notion of keeping it real or realness is a chant in the African American black
working class community. In talk, performance, song and any form of communication, inner
city African Americans express a preference for realism. People who keep it real evade from
deception, fakery and lies and have realistic expectations for life in the hood (neighbourhood).
For the poor inner city youth (PIY) realness means living complex lives that involve
struggling for resources, being suspected for criminal behavior by the police, the struggles and
pain of street life in the hood, the loyalty of your homies (a person from one’s neighbourhood,
a black person) and other strange values to local culture. Gangsta rappers, like Tupac Shakur,
keep it real by telling stories of this life without embellishments and in the language of the
streets.

27
 Tupac considered being real to bbe a very positive and personal characteristic. In the
rap Dear mama he praises his mother for staying real.
In the song Changes on his Greatest Hits album he affirmed it takes skill to be
real.The use of AAVE is highly present in Tupac’s songs as well as inner city slang, referring
to their craft as slangin’ (Dear Mama). On the other hand poor inner city youth are implicated
in a related folk tradition, that of rhymed couplets that deliver witty, scandalous, colourful
comments and ritual insults that pass between friends who compete for verbal insults. PIY are
the heir of the African American oral tradition, that includes boasts, toasts, tall tales and
adventure narratives. Gansta rap with its language and content deeply rooted in Black
historical and evryday experiences resonates more with the youth in place of print poetry.
The poems collected in Tupac Shakur’s The rose that grew from concrete show
Tupac’s ability to access the world of poetry and its linguistic resources, with language and
forms. Tupac revealed his brilliant ability in both AAVE and SAE using each dialect
appropriatelyin the artistic register.
The rap lyrics of Tupac’s songs from various albums: Good life, Letter to the
president, Life goes on, Temptations, Brenda’s got a baby, Dear Mama, How long will they
mourn me, Heartz of me, Heaven ain’t hard to find, Definition of a thug nigga’ represent the
different themes one finds in Tupac’s raps like protest, defiance, description of the thug life
and empathy with women:
“I was so money orientated, initiated as a thug
Fiendin' for wicked adventures, ambitious as I was
Picture a nigga on the verge of livin' insane
I sold my soul for a chance to kick it and bang
Now tell if I'm wrong
But sayin' "Fuck the world" got you deeper in my songs
Drinkin' 'til I earl, spendin' money 'til it's gone
It's the good life, maybe niggas got it goin' on....”26

“I hear Brenda's got a baby

But, Brenda's barely got a brain
A damn shame, the girl can hardly spell her name
(That's not our problem, that's up to Brenda's family)
26
http://www.genius.com/2pac-good-life-lyrics retrieved 22.06.2019

28
 Well let me show ya how it affects the whole community
Now Brenda really never knew her moms and her dad was a
Junky, went in death to his arms, it's sad 'cause I bet
Brenda doesn't even know
Just 'cause your in the ghetto doesn't mean you can't grow (you can't grow)...”27
AAVE features included in Tupac’s songs are:
1. copula suppresion:A nigga tired of feelin sad – How long will they mourn me
2. future/ prospective gonna:This is how we gonna do this -Temptations;We’re gonna
clock this now -Life goes on
3. Ain’t:There ain’t nothing left to sell- Brenda’s got a baby; It ain’t easy trying to raise
a man-Dear Mama
4. 3rd person singular regularization:Girlies was laughing – Trapped; Tears is rollin
down – Keep Ya Head Up
5. contextual plurals:Thoughts in my mind was the nine and better life; Damn homies is
dissin’ you – Trapped
6. contextual possessive:Tears in everybody eyes;Niggas cried to mourn a homie
homicide – How long will they mourn me
The AAVE or SAE features could be chosen in any appropriate environment. For
example, the future intentional gonna, gon’ or a (as in I’m ‘ ago now) is in opposition to SAE
be going to / will/ shall. When ain’t was used in a sentence containing another negative, the
expression was included both in the ain’tcategory and in the multiple negative category.
Profanities that were included were: shit, damn, fuck, motherfucker and bitch.
All these AAVE features that appeared in Tupac’s speech and raps contribute to the
overall vernacular texture of these two registers.
Other AAVE features from Tupac’s speech include:
1. Cuz we know they got talent (auxiliary suppression)
2. We got the ways to make them use their talents to maximum effect (auxiliary
suppression)
3. Cuz we Bin beat these muthafuckaz (remore phase Bin)
4. So if I don’t be one hundred percent pure hearted, I’m going to lose (habitual be)28
5. They be puttinng me on the phone with they kids (habitual be)29

27
Ibidem retrieved 22.06.2019
28
https://www.vibe .com – Vintage (1996); Kevin Powell Interview Tupac

29
 6. I be torn apart but I have to serve it like a trooper (invariant be)30
Other AAVE features present in Tupac’s rap:
1. What the fuck I’m fightin for? (non-inversion for question formation)
2. Damn, why they take another soldier. (auxiliary suppression)
3. Smokin blunt after blunt and steady drinkin. (steady as habitual marker)
4. Tell me Lord, why you take big Kato? (auxiliary suppression)
5. Ah, Suge what I tell you nigga? (auxiliary absence)
Tupac used more AAVE features in his raps and speech than in his poetry:
1. “Can You See the Pride in the Panther
As he grows in splendor and grace
Topling obstacles placed in the way,
of the progression of his race.

Can You See the Pride In the Panther

As she nurtures her young all alone
The seed must grow regardless
of the fact that it is planted in stone.

Can You See the Pride In the Panthers

as they unify as one.
The flower blooms with brilliance
and outshines the rays of the sun.31

2. “In the event of my Demise

when my heart can beat no more
I Hope I Die For A Principle
or A Belief that I had Lied 4
I will die Before My Time
Because I feel the shadow’s Depth
29
https://www.escobar300.wordpress.com – Tupac Vibe Magazine April 1995 (Interview in prison).
30
https://2paclegacy.net- 1996-09-04, Tupac Interview About Death Row East (MTV Video Music Awards.
31
https://www.mypoeticside.com/show-classic-poem-26961- Can You See the Pride in the Panther.

30
 So much I wanted 2 accomplish
Before I reached my Death
I have come 2 grips with the possibility
and wiped the last tear from My eyes
I Loved All who were Positive
In the event of my Demise.”32

Tupac, probably, chose to use AAVE features to engage the poor inner city youth
community on two levels: linguistic and psychological. The AAVE characteristic and street
culture metaphors made it easy for black youth to understand the content of the raps. From a
psychological point of view, the choice of AAVE speech created the songs and their
narratives seemed real to the poor inner city youth. Part of the linguistic realness of the rap
songs is the shifting of the style and code changing capabilities Tupac demonstrates.
The linguistic collection of a AAVE speaker includes the skill to span a continuum
from the broad vernacular which includes a powerful infusion of AAVE features through
speech that mixes AAVE with AAE characteristics to a code that is SAE. Tupac displays
linguistic versatility in AAVE by adjusting the level of AAVE features from rap song to rap
song depending on the topic and mood of the rap and the addressee of the lyrics. In rap songs
in which the protagonist was angry and defiant, Tupac used a large percentage of AAVE and
foul language, although in raps like Brenda’s got a baby and Dear Mama the protagonist is
reflective and deferential, the lyrics are more subdued and have fewer AAVE and foul
language.
The absence of AAVE features in all of Tupac’s poetry suggests that he intentionally
excluded all of AAVE characteristics from his work and that he was aware of the different
socio-linguistic arenas which he dealt with.
The structures, vocabulary and themes all attest to his desire to be part of the literary
culture. In this poetic culture realness was less important than in the world of poor inner city
youth. In fact, poets often celebrate fantasy, imagination and idealism, all themes that are the
oppossite to the notion of realness. An example of idealism is Tupac’s poem And 2omorrow:
“ Today is filled with anger
Fueled with hidden hate

32
https://www.mypoeticside.com/show-classic-poem-26961- In the Event of my Demise-Tupac Shakur

31
 Scared of being outcast
Afraid of common fate
Today is built on tragedies
which no one wants 2 face
Nightmares 2 humanities
and morally disgraced
Tonight is filled with rage
Violence in the air
Children bred with ruthlesness
Because no one at home cares
Tonight I lay my head down
But the pressure never stops
gnawing at my sanity
content when I am dropped
But 2morrow I change
A chance 2 build anew
Built on spirit intent of heart
and idealsbased on truth
And 2morow I wake with second wind
And strong because of pride
2 know I fought with all my heart 2 keep my dream alive.”33

In this poem, Tupac describes the hope and pride that will give him an energy and
keep his ideals alive despite the hate and anger caused by his outcast status as a young black
man. The hopeful protagonist dropps his anger and looks to a promising future. This fits the
traditions of reflective and romantic poetry in which the protagonist strives toward a noble
resolution of the psychic and emotional conflict.
Most of the poems in the third section of The rose that grew from concrete are
romance poems which celebrate young love and use imagery that is in conflict with the urban

33
https://genius.com/2pac-and-2morrow-poem-annotated retrieved 22.06.2019.

32
landscape of Tupac’s reality. They present in some cases, a yearning for an ideal world. The
titles of these poems reveal the themes presented: Nothing can come between us, My dear one,
Things that make hearts break. The love poems reveal Tupac’s sensitive side, his yearning for
love and expression of it, friendship and religion. These feelings were in conflict with the
harsh social reality of life in the hood for the young black people Tupac addressed in his raps.
Tupac saw these realities, including oppression, poverty and racism. However, in the poems
that appear in the final section of the poem collection a more realistic portrayal of the world is
revealed. An example of this is the poem Liberty Needs Glasses:
“ Excuse me but Lady Liberty needs glasses
And so does Mrs. Justice by her side
Both the broads R blind as bats
Stumbling thru the system
Justice bumped into Mutulu and
Trippin’ on Geronimo Pratt
But stepped right over Oliver
And his crooked partner Ronnie
Justice stubbed her Big Toe on Mandela
And liberty was misquoted by the Indians
Slavery was a learning phase
Forgotten without a verdict
While Justice is on a rampage
4 endangered surviving Black males
I mean really if anyone really valued life
And cared about the masses
They’d take’ em both 2 Pen Optical
And get 2 pairs of glasses.”34
This poem cites several injustices that Tupac considers to be indications of racial
hatred and oppression that are a part of the real world. The imprisonment of Nelson Mandela,
America’s treatment of the Native Americans and injustices against black males in the United
States are the problems Tupac examines. However, the poem reveals a religiosity that is
34
https://genius.com/2pac-liberty-needs-glasses-annotated retrieved 22.06.2019.

33
characteristic of poetry in general, reflecting an inborn modernism. In this poem and others
Tupac pleads for justice worldwide while in his raps he is focused on the injustices in the
Black community. The poems How can we be free and The Promise also found in the final
section of the poem collection, repeat the theme of Liberty needs glasses.
In the final poems in the book, Tupac is faced with two realities of the Thug life that
his raps explain, the nihilism of a no-win situation and the inevitability of an early death. The
poem No win35 portrays a protagonist who is cornered, frightened and alone, with manhood
called into question. The protagonist is forced to retaliate and even prepared to kill,but he
does so knowing he is in a no-win situation. The final poem In the event of my demise is a sad
prophecy of Tupac’s death (I will die before my time...).
Although there are clear similar points between the poetry Tupac produced and lyrics
of his raps, in the latter a radical change of focus, themes, language and rhetoric occurs: a new
identification with the inner city youth and the issues,behaviors that define it.
In his raps, Tupac operationalized the concept of realness linguistically and culturally.
The linguistic realness is achieved by a multitude of means including: adressing the audience
directly, the depiction of violence and oppression the black youth experiencein the hood,
advertising the unruly philosophy that seems authorized in these circumstances and valorizing
the defiance and physical courage that are characteristic of true masculinity in the hood.
The difference in texture, realism and focus between the poems and the raps is evident
from the comparison between the poem In the event of my demise and the rap How long will
they mourn me. Both works deal with death: imagined death in the poem and real death in the
case of the song, as Tupac says in the second line This is for my nigga, Kato. It is an eulogy
and message for all those who lived the thug life. While the poem In the event of my demise is
short, subdued and contemplative, the rap song How long will they mourn me is long, defiant
and angry. The poem is a model of SAE expression and control, verbal economy, the rap uses
AAVE features. In the poem Tupac uses no profanities, while in the rap song he emphasized
his outrage using twenty profanities, including 8 f -words.
As a poet, Tupac Shakur displayed a brilliant understanding of the formal poetic
register. The artist had two distinct audiences for each category. In his formal poetry, that of
The rose that grew from concrete, his aim was to reach the broad audience of the SAE
speaking culture. He wanted to express the same message as in his rap songs but using a
different dialect. Probably the reason why this set of poems did no gain recognition among the

35
Idem, retrieved 22.06.2019

34
inner city black youth is that the group failed to accord him realness in this register. His lyrics
were aimed at a different audience to whom the concept of realness was essential. The
suppression of AAVE features in this register would have made the success of his rap career
impossible. Each of these artistic styles, of rap and poetry, was dependent on the context in
which the artist placed himself, he was on the street and in the street, but there was more to
him than that.
In his raps, Tupac presents the linguistic sophistication that is typical of the AAVE
speaker. His style shifted in his grammar while keeping possession of the phonetic
characteristics and tonal semantics of the AAVE speaker. In the raps that presented the thug
life Tupac accesses his AAVE competence most, while in the raps like Dear Mama and
Brenda’s got a baby in which he shows reverence to black mothers including his, his style-
shifted towards the SAE category of his linguistic continuum.
In conclusion, Tupac Shakur was a remarkable linguistic artist, who through his use of
both AAVE and SAE dialects managed to represent both registers flawlessly.

35
 Conclusions

Black English is still considered today as a controversial matter. As the Linguistic

Society of America makes it known, this variety, named Ebonics, African American
Vernacular English,Vernacular Black English and other names, is systematic and governed by
rules like all natural speech varities.
All human linguistic systems, spoken, signed and written are regular. The systematic
and expressive nature of the grammar and pronunciation patterns of the African American
vernacular has been established by many scientific studies over the years.
Characterizations of this variety as slang, mutant, defective, ungrammatical is highly
untrue. African American Vernacular can be characterized by the following principles:
1. It is a subsystem of English with a distinct set of phonological and syntactic rules
that are similar to the ones of other dialects.
2. It incorporates many rules of Southern phonology, morphology and syntax.Black
people have exerted their influence on the dialects of the places where they lived.
3. It shows evidence of derivation from an earlier Creole that was similar to the
Creole of the present day in the Caribbean.
4. It has a developed system, quite different from other English dialects, showing a
continuing development of semantic structure.
For the beginning of this paper, I considered it necessary to talk in the first chapter
about the definition of term Black English and his history through the years. The historical
background reveals information about the evolution of Black English.
Black English started to develop in the 18th century with the bringing of the African
people in the colonies. In time the number of black people born in the New World began to
exceed the ones that were brought from Africa. In the process, Pidgin English became the
creole mother tongue of the new generations, and in some areas it remained to the present
day. Another major change that has occured in the American black dialects during the century
was the complete loss of both functional and lexical vocabulary at the beginning of the Civil
War that shaped the final form of the language later known as Black English.
In the second chapter,I deal with the various Present day features of Black Englishor
African American English Vernacular, the vocabulary, pronunciation changes that further
shape the formation of this variety of language. It is very difficult to identify how many

36
people speak African American Vernacular English (AAVE) because it is not exactly clear
what this means. Some speakers use various aspects of phonology (pronunciation) and lexis
(vocabulary) but no grammatical characteristics are associated with this variety. It is very
important to observe that not all Negroes speak Black English. There is no genetic basis for
the special nature of this dialect, but it is considered to be a cultural behavior which is
transmitted by tradition. The speech of some Negroes is much different from others of the
same region and social class and there are many whose speech is recognized as Black English
only through some differences in pronunciation and vocal quality. It was named Black
English because few people use it who are not Negroes.
The third chapter outlines the idea that the literary tradition of African Americans is
most significantly appraised in the context of the tension between their attitudes toward their
African and European cultural legacy on one hand, and their oral and literary heritages on the
other. The earliest representations of Black speech in literature appear in the works of white
writers, beginning with travel books in the 18th century and colonial plays and novels and later
on in music.
For analytical purposes, the last chapter presentsan analysis of rap songs and also
poetry belonging to the rap artist Tupac Amaru Shakur. I chose songs like “Dear Mama”,
“Brenda’s got a baby”, “How long will they mourn me”and the collection of poems “The
rose that grew from concrete” which I used as a basis for my analysis. In his raps Tupac
presents the linguistic sophistication that is typical of the AAVE speaker. His style shifted in
his grammar while keeping possession of the phonetic characteristics and tonal semantics of
the AAVE speaker. In the raps that presented the thug life Tupac accesses his AAVE
competence most, while in the raps like Dear Mama and Brenda’s got a baby in which he
shows reverence to black mothers including his, his style-shifted towards the SAE category of
his linguistic continuum.

37
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