Nate Wynne

Bringing It All Together:

My Senior English Capstone Final Project Experience

A Survey of Grammatical Structures in African American Vernacular English:

An Exercise in Linguistic Validation

The last influential project happens to be the last project I did as an English major. For my senior capstone course, I had the task of creating an individualized final project, a research paper, which embodied the culmination of key skills I learned throughout my English undergraduate career. I ended up choosing to use the subject of African American Vernacular English to demonstrate the linguistic knowledge I acquired in my courses. The purpose of the paper was to argue against the notion that African American Vernacular is a grammarless, haphazard form of English. My thesis countered the popular notion by asserting: “backed by mountains of scholarly evidence, in reality, AAVE is a systematically rule-governed vernacular of English, same as every other dialect and vernacular, same as Standard Academic English.” I then cite several important pieces of evidence that supports the argument. Using the linguistic knowledge I acquired during the courses I took, I examined the vernacular phonologically, phonetically, semantically, syntactically, and, most importantly, grammatically. Ultimately, I was not seeking to advocate the use of AAVE as a replacement for Standard Academic English, but to show that claims asserting the inferiority of the vernacular are unfounded.

The final senior capstone project proved to be a great way for me to frame the scope of my studies as an English major concentrating in linguistics. For me it was an exercise in everything I have come to learn and appreciate about the English language. Linguistically describing English and how the language is used in communities, for me, ended up being an exercise in cultural and linguistic tolerance. The English language is as diverse as the people who speak it across the globe. Because of this diversity, I have come to respect the many cultural identities of those who speak English and cannot imagine belittling anyone for how they use the language. Indeed there are times and places where Standard English is an appropriate means of communication, however it should be recognized that people who speak Standard English in all contexts during their normal daily life are in the minority. Furthermore, Standard English is a marvelous variant of English, but Standard English is just that: one variant of English, not inherently better or worse than any other variant in that all variants adequately serve the speech communities who use them. Ultimately, the final senior project for my English capstone course helped solidify my knowledge of linguistics. By amassing a concise body of evidence pertaining to one vernacular of English, I now have stronger support for my understanding of the diversity of English and the legitimacy of all of its variations.

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