Jennifer M. Cunningham’s text “African American Language is Not Good English” is a compelling argument about how African American Vernacular English should be considered its own language rather than ‘slang’ or ‘broken English.’ Cunningham starts the text by presenting her credibility on the subject by stating that she is a linguist. She goes on to point out that languages are categorized by their grammatical role rather than their vocabulary, origins, or similarity to previous dialects and languages. She uses this as the first main point on why AAVE or Ebonics (African American Language) is not English since it follows grammatical rules of Western African languages instead of the typical Germanic structure (this includes English). She also argues that the sounds used in Ebonics are not unusual in other languages such as how many French speakers when learning English will use z sounds instead of ‘th’ sounds since they do not use that sound. In Ebonics, it replaces th sound for a d. She ends her article
by advising educators to not try and ‘correct’ these errors instead explain to the student that it would be
best if they use their Standard English in the classroom and using Ebonics in other instances because both should be seen as valid ways of communicating. I would say she expressed most of her points enough for the audience to get the message and be persuaded. She could have used the example of English borrowing words for other languages like Latin, Greek, and French to prove her point that similar
vocabulary does not mean that the two dialects cannot be recognized as two separate languages instead. She could have given more practical solutions than just leaving the audience with the message of just seeing both as their own distinct categories. She could have easily provided an imaginary scenario
and what she would have done to act as a template for what others should do in comparable situations.
