DW3a

For this writing assignment I chose to read “Expository Writing Patterns of African American Students” by Arnetha Ball. She starts out by giving a great example of how AAVE is discriminated against in the academic setting; she uses the child who wrote a creative story with the word “ain’t” in it and was deducted due to it. She then goes on to say, “Yet, within some classrooms, the everyday language of AAVE speakers is "judged uneducated, sloppy, and ugly, or believed to be a debased form of so-called correct English” which reinforces the words of the younger student.
Ball went on to study four individuals, two male and two female, three of the four described themselves as being bidialectal. They spoke AAVE occasionally but for the most part they spoke and wrote in mainstream Standard English. While one said that he spoke AAVE during most settings. She emphasized how each of them were very skilled in switching between dialects based on the level of formality needed in the discussion. Five text samples were taken during this one year research study, and they were analyzed for AAVE features. She notes that AAVE features such as rhythmic language and repetition could be appropriately used in such academic writing settings. Ball analyzes a text from an essay about Emerson and Malcolm X, and explains how the writer uses the inclusive “we” and speaks directly to his audience with “you”. Ball concludes that the student effectively incorporates traditional African American discourse into his paper.
I agree with the things Ball has said and her examples are very concise and appropriate. She indirectly compares the use of AAVE of a fifth grader to the traditional African American discourse of a senior in high school, and how one can be acceptable while the other is not seen as acceptable in academics. The older student does not use words associated with AAVE, but ideas and other features, which make the AAVE harder to spot therefore apparently making it easier to accept. She proves that AAVE can be incorporated into compositional writings.
When the students were allowed to choose their own topic, they exhibited a heightened sense of personal authority, “This was evidenced by a more frequent use of AAVE idioms, double negatives, and questions embedded in sentences without using question inversion.”
Bell’s paper does make an effective argument about AAVE in compositional studies. It shows that in some cases AAVE is used and is accepted when it is not as obvious, but it is not accepted by professors when the AAVE is more obvious, such as specific words that the fifth grader used.