Encounters with AAE by Talinn Phillips https://padlet.com/passporter08/brxmhxip9u8a32t1 Think of encounters that you've had with Black English (maybe even your first encounter). How did you experience it? How was Black English represented to you linguistically? (i.e. did it come with positive, negative, neutral associations?) en-us 2021-10-13 18:38:19 UTC 2026-01-24 22:24:19 UTC hello@padlet.com When did I encounter Black English? passporter08 https://padlet.com/passporter08/brxmhxip9u8a32t1/wish/1814950196 I think my first encounter was probably something really terrible like watching The Jeffersons or Diff'rent Strokes or something. I encountered so few people of color as a kid. I could seriously count on one hand. So I think the media must have been my first exposure. I definitely remember The Cosby Show, which we watched regularly. I don't remember anyone really telling me anything about "black English" but I certainly remember enjoying that additional attention to rhythm and different uses of stress that make AAVE much more musical than most white Englishes. As I think about it some more, I think my earliest associations must be with Bill Cosby--Fat Albert as well. #dateyourselfwithoneTVshow]]> 2021-10-13 19:13:10 UTC https://padlet.com/passporter08/brxmhxip9u8a32t1/wish/1814950196 My parents and aunt used to take me to a Black church during Black history month to be a part of a civil rights reenactment. I was four or five years old the first time. I played the part of a slave owner's child. I grew up on a campus that had around 130 countries represented. My family tended to be language snobs, but for some reason I never connected it to race. My language snobbery was challenged in grad school. I first encountered Labov's linguistic grammatical justification of Black English in a grad school linguistics course, which created a paradigm shift in my understanding and sparked passionate debates with people I knew. I didn't know it was Labov's work at the time, but found myself always using it in the classroom. Then I encountered Smitherman's work, which somewhat argued from a different stand point, but still added a lot of nuance that I had missed. These both came together for me with the work of Shirley Brice Heath in the the Methods class I took the first semester at OU. ~Jill https://padlet.com/passporter08/brxmhxip9u8a32t1/wish/1814952285 2021-10-13 19:14:13 UTC https://padlet.com/passporter08/brxmhxip9u8a32t1/wish/1814952285 Cas https://padlet.com/passporter08/brxmhxip9u8a32t1/wish/1814962873 So... AAVE has been my life. It is the way I communicate with my family and friends, and the main way I connect with my Black students and coworkers in a predominately white context. I would get pushback from  other teachers when I first started teaching high school because I lectured my predominately black and African students using AAVE because that's how I got through to them and it was just natural for me. ]]> 2021-10-13 19:19:29 UTC https://padlet.com/passporter08/brxmhxip9u8a32t1/wish/1814962873 AAVE https://padlet.com/passporter08/brxmhxip9u8a32t1/wish/2755034345 My mother is half black, so I’ve heard bits and pieces of AAVE throughout my entire life, both from her and her side of the family, as well as the cultural stuff she showed me. Back home, the majority of my friends were black, and I guess I consider myself at least partly black, so it’s been part of my life for pretty much its entirety. My mom, sister, and I went to an AME church for much of my childhood as well. I think teachers and such may have sometimes not liked classmates and students using AAVE in my schools, but I don’t remember a huge policing of language. ]]> 2023-10-19 18:10:13 UTC https://padlet.com/passporter08/brxmhxip9u8a32t1/wish/2755034345 First BE encounter https://padlet.com/passporter08/brxmhxip9u8a32t1/wish/2755035948 My first encounter was when I worked in a middle school summer camp over the summer of 2022. Since I stepped into the training, I have noticed that the whole staff is 99% African American. And I felt like I did not grasp any information from that training. And even though at the time I have already lived in the US for 2 years, this experience reminded me of my first 3 month in the US when I struggled to understand anything in a predominantly white community. The struggle I had at the beginning was due to culture shock and not being used to the English in general, and then after I got comfortable, I encountered the predominantly black community, and I felt the same difficulty all over again.]]> 2023-10-19 18:11:19 UTC https://padlet.com/passporter08/brxmhxip9u8a32t1/wish/2755035948 My First Encounter(s) with AAVE https://padlet.com/passporter08/brxmhxip9u8a32t1/wish/2755038890 I grew up in a very white area, so I didn't have many (any??) firsthand encounters with AAVE as a child. I do remember seeing AAVE in YouTube videos of news reports that were supposed to be "funny." The news reports themselves were not meant to be humorous, but when they were posted on YouTube, the intention was that people would be laughing at the people in them and at how those people were talking. Or, if the intent of posting them on YouTube was not to treat the content as humorous, that's at least how I saw other people watching them. It was not a very respectful treatment of AAVE. ]]> 2023-10-19 18:13:22 UTC https://padlet.com/passporter08/brxmhxip9u8a32t1/wish/2755038890 Encounters with AAVE https://padlet.com/passporter08/brxmhxip9u8a32t1/wish/2755043245 Hmm...turns out southeastern Ohio is extremely white, so I didn't have many early encounters with AAVE, especially in the sense of seeing it as a unique means of communication and expression. I think, in a lot of ways, The Chapelle Show was a first window into the Black experience that challenged a lot of my conceptions. At the same time, this was hugely problematic--a bunch of white kids repeating his jokes, out of context, was a pretty gross situation, in hindsight. Probably why Dave Chapelle walked away from the show--it was cutting and critical and smart, but then its wide appeal began morphing it in culture. Again, not a great example, but it's something I think about nowadays, remembering kids at school repeating some of the most popular jokes. Um...I wish I had a better experience, but I think this might be an early exposure to a rhetoric from a uniquely Black perspective. ]]> 2023-10-19 18:16:43 UTC https://padlet.com/passporter08/brxmhxip9u8a32t1/wish/2755043245 Hard to say https://padlet.com/passporter08/brxmhxip9u8a32t1/wish/2755043403 It's honestly hard to pinpoint a time when I first encountered aave. It might have been something like the Fresh Prince of Belair or maybe the show with Urkel or perhaps the Cosby Show. 

I don't know how much i was exposed to hip hop or rap before that but those are probably close to it. I grew up in small homogenous towns my whole life and didn't have much interaction with African Americans. It was kind of a strange learning curve actually when I was surrounded by African Americans because I was worried about saying something wrong in my interactions with them. 

In my undergraduate career though I encountered some great book whose titles escape me st the moment. In my masters program I had a great peer I admired a lot. My teachers also had me read some great articles written in American American English. 

Theater in my teaching career I had great students. ]]> 2023-10-19 18:16:52 UTC https://padlet.com/passporter08/brxmhxip9u8a32t1/wish/2755043403