Speaking Culture into Literature: African American Vernacular

African American vernacular is a relatively common theme among works that we have read so far in African American Literature. African American vernacular can be easily noticed because of its distinct characteristics. When reading African American vernacular, you may notice that the words are attempting to depict the way many African Americans sounded like at that time. This is done by getting rid of some words, switching around word order, or making some words have different meanings than they would have in standard English. For example the word “is” is often removed from a phrase and there is either no replacement, or there is another word such as “be” that replaces “is.” Although this way of writing technically breaks the rules of standard English, it is not considered broken English because it is its own dialect that follows set rules.

Religious African American vernacular is common among many works we have read in class. Words such as Lord are often spelled as “Lawd” and the vernacular also shows up in religious services. The religious services use a lot of call and response preaching where the preacher says something and the audience responds back. Some of this religious vernacular is expressed in “When Malindy Sings.” In this poem, Malindy is depicted as this angelic being who everyone should listen to when she sings. I think that Dunbar tries to make the connection between Malindy and a religious figure since her singing has an element of being perfect just like a god. The poem explains how Malindy “Bless yo’ soul” when you listen to her, further backing up the religious aspect. Also, when Malindy sings “Rock of ages” the poem explains that “Simply to de cross she clings.” This is so moving to the people listening that “you fin’ yo’ teahs a-drappen’.” I find it interesting how the vernacular seems to be tied into their religion and this shows in just how different a mostly African American church preaches than a white church.

Although the African American vernacular follows a broad set of rules, when reading different works it is noticeable how different the language seems from one work to the next. This shouldn’t be surprising however since there are also large differences in how standard English reads from one work to the next. In “Bound No’th Blues” there is continual use of African American vernacular in the poem, however it differs a lot from other works such as “Scotty Has His Say.” In “Bound No’th Blues” the vernacular is much weaker than in “Scotty Has His Say.” For example, in “Bound No’th Blues” the vernacular was mostly just a “ (part of word)+’ “ for example goin’ and nothin’ and the grammar is slightly changed. This is all in comparison to “Scotty Has His Say" which has strong vernacular traits. For example, the sentence “Muh brown what’s tendon’ chillen in yo’ big backyahd” has the traits of “Bound No’th Blues” and some more. It has the same traits of removing to be verbs and adding an apostrophe instead of completing the word. Along with this, the words are spelled a lot differently than they would be in standard English like “muh” and “chillen.” The different spelling of the words is mainly what sets it apart from “Bound No’th Blues.” Also, some works like “Goin’ Back” have parts which use African American Vernacular and parts which don't. This is effective in splitting up which parts of the work are narrations and which parts are spoken.

African American vernacular is also used as a form of resistance against white literary standards. Many African American authors wanted to use their own dialect instead of conforming to the white literary standards. The vernacular also allows the writers to share their language culture through writing. A lot of the readings we have done have either directly or indirectly talked badly about the white people. One of the most direct examples of this is in “Scotty Has His Say” where the dialect is aggressive at times to the white people. For example, Brown writes “Oh, dat gal is young an’ tender, So jes’ don’ mistreat huh please, Or I’ll put a sprig of poison ivy In yo’ B.V.D’s.” Here he is threatening any white person that mistreats a young lady and he is saying that he would put poison ivy in someone's B.V.D’s (an old brand of underwear). This is a very direct statement that shows how African Americans are trying to resist the power imbalance between white and black people in the south. Overall, African American vernacular is very diverse and gives a good insight into the spoken traditions of many African Americans at the time and it was also used as a form of resistance against white oppression at the time.

-Lucas