With knowledge and understanding of African American English, educators have a greater appreciation for the communication patterns and rich linguistic heritages of their African American English–speaking students. Linguistically informed educators are also better equipped to instruct African-American-English–speaking students in ways that enable them to recognize and value the rules, norms, and conventions of standardized English while also recognizing and valuing the language patterns they bring with them from home. As such, the linguistic path to justice for African Americans begins.

Much of educational literature has been devoted to understanding the concept that has come to be known as “sounding white” or “acting white,” which refers to the academic bind felt by some African Americans who fear that any attempt to do well in school is seen by other individuals as trying to act white.

When students who speak nonstandardized varieties of English perceive that their language is devalued in school and that they are not receiving appropriate feedback from educators, they may feel discouraged from continuing their education. They may also perceive that their own culture, family, friends, and even they themselves are being devalued. In turn, they may lose confidence in school and in their educators. They may even resist feeling like their language and culture are devalued in academic settings by disengaging from the standardized-English-speaking school culture and climate altogether.

Educators’ implicit and explicit reactions to African-American-English–speaking students’ language sends an important message to these students about safety and acceptance, and positive messages help students view learning as an accessible and engaging process. Language differences can add to other school stressors.

When students come to school speaking African American English, they are aware that many of their relatives, friends, and neighbors speak similarly to themselves. They may also be aware that many of their educators do not speak African American English. The message that African-American-English–speaking students may internalize from this situation is that educators expect them to learn a new way of communicating, which may be at odds with their home language and culture.

Language varieties hold inherent value as markers of culture and identity. As a result, some speakers of African American English, including students, may feel shame, insecurity, and embarrassment when they operate within a society that expects them to speak standardized English. Educators who teach African-American-English–speaking students have a special role to play in understanding these students’ personal and cultural experiences and in helping them navigate comfortably between African American English and standardized English.

Due to the history of racism and discrimination in the United States, the language patterns of African Americans often have been denigrated. African American English has been viewed as haphazard, substandard, undesirable, deviant, illogical, lazy, and broken. Yet there is no truth in such opinions about African American English or any other variety of English.

When pointing out students’ grammatical mistakes, it is important to consider whether potential errors might actually be characteristic of African American English. If so, it is important to explain the linguistic pattern to the student. This process entails teaching the student their African-American-English–influenced pattern, and while acknowledging and appreciating this language variation, showing the student how this pattern compares and contrasts with that of standardized English.

It is valuable to have educators who can discuss with students the social and cultural context of code switching and the significance of encountering multiple linguistic varieties at school.

Educators should work to create courses that teach Black English and design assignments in other courses that encourage all students to use Black English in written, spoken, and other forms. When such courses and assignments are engaged with the community, then the justice of the actual speakers of Black English is brought to bear.

the melody and rhythm of a speaker's voice may mark a speaker as African American even if all other aspects of the speaker's language sound standardized. Rhythmic patterns are often preserved in speakers who do not use many of the more socially stigmatized lexical, phonological, and grammatical features of AAE.

Many of the phonological features of AAE are shared by other varieties of American English, particularly Southern American English. Some features that are common to African American English also appear as features in the speech of younger Southern American English speakers; yet many listeners can determine if a speaker is African American after hearing just a short speech sample

Current research on AAE continues to build on knowledge of specific social groups and African American communities as well as the educational implications for AAE use on language and literacy skill acquisition.

The AAE lexicon is perhaps the feature that is best known to the general American public. The lexicon is emphasized and frequently represented in popular culture. There are also other often-unnoticed lexical differences that may have an effect on a child's understanding and success in the classroom

Black English usage varies by the age, gender, region, and social class of the speaker. Most sociolinguistic studies do not examine every given feature of Black English, nor could they, and it is difficult to make cross-study comparisons of feature use over space, time, and demographic group.

As approaches to Black English have become more diasporic in nature, definitions of Black English have now been expanded to include varieties of African and Caribbean English in particular as well as individuals who come into contact with blacks of the diaspora and acquire some of their language patterns.

The U.S. government, particularly the U.S. Department of Education, funded seminal studies of Black English in the 1960s and 1970s in order to address academic inequality. Black English was examined in contrast to SAE.

The term Ebonics was widely adopted by educators and the general public following a movement in Oakland, California, in 1996–1997 that was designed to help teachers use Black English as a way to help students acquire the language of school instruction and assessment.

African American or Black English often has been used to refer to the language features of African Americans that are most unlike Standardized American English (SAE).

A variety of terms have been used to describe English as spoken by African Americans in the United States, Black English (BE) including Ebonics, and African American Vernacular English. African American English (AAE) and African American Language (AAL) are the most encompassing terms used by educators and linguists to refer to all varieties of English used by speakers where African Americans live or historically have lived.

Though each speaker of AAVE is unique, and age, status, and contextual differences affect its use, some characteristics of AAVE have been detected across speakers and regions. Many of these characteristics reflect their African heritage, as well as their heritage in the American South. These features include distinctive phonology, or pronunciation; distinctive lexicon, or vocabulary; and distinctive syntax, especially regarding use of verb tenses and the copula (the “to be” verbs).

European-American linguist William Labov was probably the first linguist to thoughtfully analyze the grammar of AAVE in his 1965 article and more thoroughly in his 1972 book (see “Further Readings”). In both his article and his book, he urged readers to recognize AAVE as a respected variety of English, with its own distinctive grammatical rules.

During the Harlem Renaissance, many authors began to use AAVE in their writing and to show fond appreciation for it. For instance, Arna Bontemps not only used his native Creole dialect in his personal correspondence to intimate friends such as Langston Hughes, but also studied dialects in order to use authentic AAVE in his writings so that he would neither sound stereotypical nor be incomprehensible to speakers of SE.

Even after the Civil War and the all-too-brief period of Reconstruction, most writings by African Americans continued to be chiefly in SE, not in AAVE. In fact, European-American Southerners were more likely than African Americans to use a form of AAVE, typically through nostalgic stories of the good old days of plantation slavery. Typically, these narratives used highly stereotyped written representations of the phonics and syntax of AAVE, intended to portray the speakers as not only poorly educated but also unintelligent.

not all African Americans speak AAVE as a native language form, and not all speakers of AAVE are African Americans. Even among native speakers of AAVE, most African-American writers use SE in their formal writing (e.g., for publication or for business audiences), whether or not they do so in their informal writing (e.g., when texting, tweeting, e-mailing, or corresponding with family or friends). The tradition of African-American writers using SE goes back to the earliest days of African-American written literature.

Ever since, African Americans have been taught to use SE in their writing, and many schools have tried to implement policies of encouraging students to speak SE during school hours. The use of AAVE versus SE in the classroom has been highly controversial, as in the 1996 decision of the Oakland, California, School Board resolution

Unlike Gullah and other creoles, AAVE has been closely tied to SE; native speakers of AAVE and of SE have generally been able to understand one another. As soon as Southern slavery ended (1863-1865, depending on the location), African Americans were not only allowed to learn to read and write, but also actively encouraged to do so through Freedmen's Schools and other institutions.

AAVE emerged because most enslaved Southern African Americans lived in isolated housing or even isolated communities where their interactions with European Americans were limited and definitely not conversational.

Spirituals, folk songs, folktales, jokes, proverbs, and other literature emerging from the oral tradition among enslaved Southerners typically used African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), sometimes also called Black English, formerly called “Negro dialect.”

By the late 1700s, it was illegal for enslaved people to be taught to read or write in most of the states where slavery remained legal. The penalties for violating these laws were harsh, so very few African Americans learned to read or write. During this time, for the vast majority of African Americans, their literary traditions were oral, not written. Their rich literature was passed along from person to person and generation to generation through the oral tradition.