Dear all,
Thank you for engaging in today’s discussion on African American English and it’s potential status as a language. The main concluding thoughts after this exercise are that while AAE is a legitimate variety (way of speaking English) that being are born speaking (it is a “natural language”, quoting Loida, with a set of rules), providing it with a ‘language’ status is a difficult task, as even people disagree in describing what language is in general (the thanks David Giovannetti for your words). Another important fact to recognize, as Christopher Castillo pointed out, is that our Western society, defining a language is heavily dependent on notions of power and prestige, in particular, who has the power to set the standard, the schools, colonize, and make their way of speaking ‘widespread’. AAE does not have power in our sociolinguistic reality, and is considered a ‘dialect’/less prestigious than the standard despite it having its own set of rules (a substandard way of speaking, quoting Ashley Perez). An important point referenced by both groups is the fact that AAE, or African American English(Es) (in plural) are heavily tied with identity, history, and ‘experience’; not everyone has the experience of growing up with AAE, but then again by that same argument, not everyone has the experience of growing up with the Standard (English), but with their own localized variety of English (e.g. Latino English).
African American Englishes do fulfill the rules of any other language, they are intelligible, they do communicate ideas / serve as a medium of expression, they are codified (in popular literature/ entertainment / hip hop), although not to the same extent as Standard Englishes. If we are to define it in LINGUISTICS terms, we could argue that African American English is a language with different varieties (or dialects) of it. However, we could also argue that no way of speaking (variety) is truly ever a ‘Language’, but that all ways of speaking are varieties.
Again, a line has to be drawn somewhere in order for us to be able to examine, analyze, describe, and TEACH different forms of communication and the universalities they share. Thus, deciding what is/is not a language is usually based on the idea of “mutual intelligibility” (mutual understanding) by linguists. In other words, if people can understand each despite (minor) differences then they’re probably varieties of the same language. However, “mutual intelligibility” is also often thought as a problematic concept, that it not considered in Chinese (“Mandarin” and “Cantonese” are not mutually intelligible, but still considered part of the same language), certain dialects of Dutch and German that are mutually intelligible (but considered different languages), etc. Deciding what a language is / is not is highly political and down to identity and (social and economic) power.
I hope this solves any unresolved issues some of you may have. See you next class at 10.30 sharp when we will hear Dr. Kevin Carroll from UPR speak of English language policies in the Caribbean.
World Englishes at UPRM 
1. Language maintenance to me means maintaining a language shift in a population. or even a language death through time. In other words, it is when a certain country or population maintains the use of their official language or in some cases their language which they identify with.
2. The lecture provided to us by Dr. Kevin Carroll was about the concepts of language maintenance and language threats, using specific examples applied to Spanish in Puerto Rico and Papiamento in Aruba. He talked about the historic backgrounds of these languages in Puerto Rico and Aruba and how they have maintained relevance to this day.
3. Something that I found quite interesting about Dr. Carroll’s lecture was the historic fact he mentioned about the maintenance of Spanish being owed, in part to, the successful political and social movement against the teaching of English led by Algren de Gutierrez in 1987.
4. A concept that I found challenging about his lecture was the psychological barrier he mentioned that Puerto Ricans have built against English. He further explained that what he referred to is the doubt that always comes to surface in Puerto Ricans as far as how competent we believe we are in this language. This is mostly do to the effects and trauma left by many centuries of colonization and not actually do to our English being less correct or intelligible.
5. The main topic of discussion in Dr. Carroll’s lecture is related to the concept of national identity because one of the reasons language maintained themselves over time, like for example, Papiamento in Aruba is because it is so closely tied to speakers cultural identity.
6. Another example around the world where there are tug-of-war dynamics between dominant and minority language populations is in Haiti. There is a struggle between what is considered to be the standard French and the Haitian creole.
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