Table of Contents

1.  Introduction  1

2.  Background Knowledge on AAVE  3

2.1  Definition, Origin, Speakers of AAVE and Attitudes Towards It  3

2.2  Overview of the Most Important Features of AAVE  7

2.3  Hip Hop and AAVE  11

2.4  The Research Question  13

3.  Materials and Method  14

3.1  The Artists  14

3.2  The Song Selection  16

3.3  The Method  16

4.  Results and Discussion  20

4.1  Results  20

4.2  Discussion  23

4.  Conclusion  28

  Abbreviations  29

  Works Cited  30

Appendix   30

1. Introduction

This thesis investigates the use of African American Vernacular English in contemporary music. AAVE is an ethnic variety spoken by many, though not all, African Americans living in the United States. This dialect does not have one name only, but is also called “Negro dialect,” “Nonstandard Negro English,” “Black English,” “Black Street Speech,” “Black Vernacular English,” “Black Vernacular English,” or “African American English.” I would like to add that some terms are historical. It is crucial to know that researchers call it differently because to a large degree it depends on the time he/she conducted research on this topic. Today, the dialect is either called African American Vernacular English or African American English.

The words “contemporary music” in the title refer to Hip Hop. This music genre was chosen to be investigated because out of the music genres African Americans are involved in, it is the one that generates most of the sales and is the most popular one. The rappers which are going to be analyzed in this thesis use many of the features of the African American vernacular. Given the huge number of AAVE features, only one of them will be analyzed, the copula verb to be, which in the following will only be called “the copula.” According to Wolfram, the copula is “one of the most often described structures of AAVE” (2008: 517). For this reason, the copula might be an interesting feature to look at. When researchers examined AAVE in the past, they did not necessarily take music as a source of data, but rather spoken language. One has to know that language in music is a different genre of language use, which differs from the usual use of the language. Music can be considered an artistic expression, but not “real” speech. Nevertheless, as music has always been and presumably will always be a big part in African American culture, it should be possible to recognize features of AAVE and use music as a reliable source. In the analysis conducted in this thesis, the use of the copula will be examined by having a look at the lyrics of three famous rappers from the US: Tupac, Jay-Z and 50 Cent. Even though the three of them can be assigned to “gangsta rap”, they all differ from each other. They all started their careers in different decades, come from different cities and have a different style of rapping. What they have in common is that they are African American rappers from a lower class who grew up in poverty

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and have become successful musicians. The similarities make it possible to compare the three of them and choose a representative corpus for Tupac, Jay-Z and 50 Cent for the analysis. The differences give rise to diachronic conclusions about their use of copula deletion as well, as they had their climax of success in different decades. This means that we can have a look at how the three rappers changed their use of copula deletion in the course of their careers. In the end, the analysis will show that there can be found similarities as well as differences between the rappers. We will see that Tupac and Jay-Z increased their use of copula deletion, whereas 50 Cent decreased it. We will also see that, on average, the rappers analyzed in this thesis have increased their use of copula deletion over the course of time (from their first to their last album).

At the end of the thesis, the question of whether Hip Hop music can be a reliable source of AAVE language will be answered. We will find out that Hip Hop music is not necessarily a good source because language in music is too creative and too dependent on rhythm.

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2. Background Knowledge on AAVE

In the first part of the thesis, the theoretical background of AAVE is going to be specified. At first, it has to be made clear what AAVE is, where its origins lie and who its speakers are. Likewise, it is important to consider other issues linked to the current research status of AAVE, such as its role in the classroom or in professional settings, as well as attitudes of the general public towards it. In section 2.2. an overview about the most important phonological, grammatical and lexical features is given with a focus on the copula. In addition, the copula’s origins and its development is going to be pointed out. Subsequently, Hip Hop music and its link to AAVE speakers is going to be discussed in 2.3. Finally, in 2.4 the research question of deletion of copula be in Tupac’s, Jay-Z’s and 50 Cent’s lyrics is going to be explained.

2.1 Definition, Origin, Speakers of AAVE and Attitudes Towards It

In this section, an overview about important background knowledge about AAVE is given. Part of this section will be a definition of AAVE as well as the description of its potential speakers. Also, it is necessary to show where the origins of this dialect might be. Moreover, other research topics, such as how AAVE is treated in the classroom and professional settings, and attitudes towards it in the general public are dealt with in this section.

Green defines AAVE as follows: “African American English refers to a linguistic system of communication governed by well defined rules and used by some African Americans (though not all) across different geographical regions of the USA and across a full range of age groups” (Green 2004: 77). She makes clear AAVE has rules and consequently is a widely recognized system of speech that has syntactical independence. One of the most important information Green provides in this quotation is that AAVE is related to the ethnicity of its speakers. We deal with a “ethnic variety,” which basically means that it consists of “linguistic features which reflect the regular interactions people have - those they talk to most often” (Holmes 2008: 184). In this quotation, Holmes assumes that people with e.g. the same ethnicity tend to have the most interactions with each other. The fact that AAVE is an ethnic variety should not be misunderstood. Not every American with African

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roots automatically speaks this variety, nor is it impossible that someone with European or other roots can adopt this dialect. It is often claimed that about 80 percent or more of all African Americans are able to speak this dialect. However, Rickford says that this is rather a “guesstimate” (Rickford 1999: 9) than a number that could be proved by serious studies. It is very hard to identify the speakers for two main reasons. The first one is that it is difficult to tell at which point you are a speaker of AAVE. It is not possible to say which of the many features of AAVE you have to use to be an ordinary speaker of this variety. The second reason refers to the fact that many African Americans use AAVE alongside Standard American English (SAE) or some regional standard. There might be speakers who exclusively speak the standard, even though they are able to use AAVE. Some of them might use both dialects, depending on the context of the speech situation, e.g. some might rather use AAVE when talking to someone with the same complexion while tending to SAE when talking to an European American (Rickford 1999: 10). Last but not least, there is a group that exclusively speaks AAVE, who are, by the way, often said to originate from lower classes. As we can see, there are difficulties in stating who is a AAVE speaker or not. Generally, one can say that such speakers often come from urban areas and use it in informal contexts. One also has to keep in mind that there might be variation by age and gender. The question of who the speakers of AAVE are is a major interest in current research.

Another interesting topic is the origin of AAVE. There is only a limited amount of data available on the early stages of the language of Africans in America, i.e. the language of slaves brought to the colonial United States and the following development of the language. For this reason, there is no definite answer that can be given on the origin of AAVE, but several hypotheses were offered by Wolfram and Schilling-Estes (2006), which I am going to present in the following section. The four hypotheses the authors name are Anglicist Hypothesis, Creolist Hypothesis, Neo-Anglicist Hypothesis and the Substrate Hypothesis. The Anglicist Hypothesis, sometimes called Dialectologist Hypothesis, maintains that AAVE does not derive from African languages to any respect, but only from English spoken by European Americans. According to this theory, English was the main factor that influenced the language of Africans in America. During the

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