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Arbeitsblätter des Anglistischen Seminars Heidelberg
Contributions to the
Study of Language,
Literature and Culture
www.as.uni-heidelberg.de/ejournal/
Beiträge zur Sprach-,
Literatur- und
Kulturwissenschaft
Volume 2009: 1
(edited by Frank Polzenhagen & Daniel Williams)
Table of Contents
Lena Endres
Doom and Salvation in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”
1-22
Stefan Petri
Geräusche und Gefühle in Emily Dickinsons “I felt a Funeral in my Brain”
23-32
Ricarda Wagner
“Your left is my north”: Spatial Representation across Languages
33-50
Svenja Habermann
Americanisms and the t-Flap in New Zealand English:
A Common Feature?
51-66
Barbara Wilhelm
The History of Slavery and its Significance in the Emergence of African
American Vernacular English
67-82
Kai Egner
The Acquisition of Phonology
83-96
Frauke Sonnentag
Language Acquisition in the Womb
97-111
ISSN: 0000000
Anglistisches Seminar
Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
Kettengasse 12
69117 Heidelberg
www.as.uni-heidelberg.de/ejournal/
Contributions to the
Study of Language,
Literature and Culture
Vol. 2009: 1
Arbeitsblätter des Anglistischen Seminars Heidelberg
www.as.uni-heidelberg.de/ejournal/
Beiträge zur Sprach-,
Literatur- und
Kulturwissenschaft
Barbara Wilhelm
The History of Slavery
and its Significance in the Emergence of
African American Vernacular English
1.
2.
Introduction
History of world slavery
2.1. Definitions
2.2. Origin and causes
2.3. Historical records of slavery
2.4. Slave trade
2.5. Examples of slavery from recent history
3. History of slavery in the United States of America
3.1. Aboriginal slavery
3.2. From indentured servitude to slavery
3.3. Slaves of African descent
3.4. Treatment of slaves
3.5. Abolitionist movement and the end of slavery
4. Role of sugar in the history of slavery
4.1. Sugar consumption
4.2. Plantation system
4.3. Triangular trade
5. The significance of slavery in the emergence of AAVE
6. Conclusion
References
1. Introduction
Slavery was the institution which was probably the one to have had the
greatest bearing upon the whole history of the region which is known
today as the United States of America. The consequences of the slave
system are far-reaching and can be traced right up to the present day. The
language of the black American population today attests to the impact of
the enslavement of Africans. The so-called African American Vernacular
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English (henceforth AAVE) can therefore only be understood on the basis
of the history of the black population in the Americas.
The present study analyses both the historical backgrounds of
slavery in the United States of America and the origins and developments
of the institution of slavery in general. Commencing with some general
remarks on the history and development of slavery as a universal
institution, the main focus is on the origins as well as the historical record
and examples of slavery in recent history. This is followed by an account of
the history of slavery in the area which is today known as the United States
of America. In addition to forms of aboriginal slavery and the history
of slaves of African descent, the treatment of slaves and the movement
towards the abolition of slavery are also analyzed. Since “the origins of the
slave systems of the Americas lie in the complex story of sugar“ (Heuman
& Walvin 2003: 75), the fourth chapter deals with the role of sugar in the
history of slavery and the plantation system in particular. Finally, the paper
also explains the significance of slavery in the emergence of AAVE.
Without the transatlantic slave trade, the vernacular of the blacks today
would never have arisen. AAVE is “inextricable from the complex social
structure and political history of people of African descent“ (Rickford &
Rickford 2000:ix) and can therefore only be analysed against the setting
of the history of slavery.
The present study is based on the most recent publications but also
incorporates older but nonetheless crucial articles concerning the topic of
slavery or AAVE.
2. History of World Slavery
Slavery is a universal phenomenon. The institution of slavery certainly
already existed before any written record, and evidence of slavery can be
found in nearly all cultures or continents. It was a commonplace institution
long before the Europeans began to enslave Africans. Slavery characterised
the ancient civilisations of Greece and Rome. It was “ubiquitous in
medieval Europe, and it existed throughout Africa on the eve of European
maritime incursions“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 76). Even today there are
an estimated 27 million victims of slavery worldwide (Dodson 2005). The
word slave in the English language originates in the Middle English term
sclave and can also be found in Old French (esclave), Medieval Latin and
Slavic (sclavus) (Encyclopedia Britannica online 2008)
2.1. Definitions
The Oxford English Dictionary (online 2008) defines the word slavery as “the
condition or fact of being entirely subject to, or under the domination of,
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some power or influence“. The Encyclopedia Britannica (1974: s.v. slavery)
defines a slave as “one who is owned by another and deprived of most or
all rights and freedoms, hence the term chattel slave, denoting personal
property at law. The slave is dependent on the whim of the owner, who
may generally force him to any service and, at least in principle, may
usually even dispose of his life.“
2.2. Origin and causes
“Explanations of the origins of slavery are [...] speculative“ (Encyclopedia
Britannica 1974: s.v. slavery). Although it was probably unknown during the
hunting and food-gathering stages of civilisation, the institution of slavery
emerged when tribes reached the pastoral stage and increased during the
agricultural stage (Encyclopedia Britannica 1974: s.v. slavery).
The absolute authority over, and the severe exploitation of other
persons can only originate in human depravity and in the attempt to
enhance the personal gains of the ruling people. In order to pursue their
own interests, people have developed an extreme selfishness and hardness
with which they distinguish between those who are worked for and those
who have to work and who are deprived of their personal freedom (Copley
1893: 12). Although liberty is the birthright of every human being, there are
five main reasons for becoming enslaved. Firstly, people have been
condemned to labour on account of their crimes. Secondly, people taken
as captives in war have been detained and employed as slaves in public or
sold to individuals for their private use. Moreover, debtors have sold
themselves to their creditors or they have been enslaved as a result of
treacherous behaviours. Children who were born of parents in a state
of slavery could also end up as slaves (Copley 1893: 20). As these reasons
already suggest, the status of a slave was usually not assigned to
individuals born into a society, but reserved for members of other societies
(Austen 1998: 370).
2.3. Historical records of slavery
The first written record of slavery can be found in the Bible. Slavery
probably existed before the flood (Copley 1893: 22), but the first evidence in
the Bible can be found in the life of Abraham, where repeated references
are made to servants who were his property or bought with his money (cf.
Genesis 17:23).1 The first record of slave transportation can be found during
the time of Ishmael, a son of Abraham, who carried on an extensive slave
trade with Egypt (cf. Genesis 36:12-36). One of the most famous pieces of
1
Abraham is said to have lived in the period between 2000-1850 BC (Rienecker 1994:
20).
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biblical evidence of slavery is the history of the Israelites who had to work
as slaves in Egypt (cf. Exodus 1-12). The Hammurabi Code represents the
first record of a concept of slavery. This Code dates back to about 1800 BC
and originates from Babylonia. It defines a “concept of chattel slavery that
served as a way of classifying the lowliest and most dependent workers in
society“ (Isaac 1998: 94). One of the salient features of this status was the
fact that once they were owned, slaves could be sold or inherited – a feature
which would reappear throughout the ages in all cultures.
2.4. Slave trade
The forced movement of people usually accompanies slavery. Even long
before the European expansion, transportation of slaves was practised in
most parts of the world on a large scale. A Slave trade existed not only
in early Greece or Rome, but also in ancient Babylonia. The slave-trade
routes in the Old World linked markets in the Mediterranean with more
provincial markets in the north and south. In the middle of the fourteenth
century, the slave traffic already flowed mainly from south to north.
On account of the transatlantic slave trade it can be said that slaves
of African origin were already present on the Columbian voyages. Instead
of imposing slave status on victims of war or prisoners, European slave
traders sent merchant ships to buy people on the African coast. One reason
for this was epidemiology: Africans had better protection against tropical
fevers than Europeans and could expect to live longer. The situation on the
ships on which the slaves were transported was “probably too horrible to
fully convey in human words“ (Davis 2006: 92). Mortality rates, mostly
because of dehydration, averaged around 15 per cent, but could easily
range to 33 per cent or even more (Davis 2006: 93). The Atlantic slave trade
was the biggest and longest, but also the most awful traffic in the history of
human migration. Like slavery, the slave transport was suppressed
through legally and politically ascribed sanctions.
2.5. Examples of slavery from recent history
When the plantation system began to decline and slavery was abolished in
the ancient European colonies, the universal institution of slavery did not
stop. Female slaves were and still are traded to Middle Eastern countries
and kingdoms and sold into sexual slavery.
A more recent example from German history during the era of
National Socialism shows that forced labour, i.e. slavery, was a fundamental component of Hitler’s domination of Europe. Since more than 13
million Germans were drafted out of industry and agriculture into the
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armed forces, the labour gap was filled with Jews, Gypsies, prisoners of
war and other inmates of the concentration camps.
The work in corrective labour camps of the Soviet Union must also
be taken into account, as well as every kind of child labour, which exists on
a large scale in many parts of the world even to this day (Dowd 1998:
297ff.). Although outlawed in most countries today, slavery is, nonetheless,
practised in secret in many parts of the world – with outright enslavement
still taking place in parts of Africa, the Middle East and South Asia (AntiSlavery Society 2003).
3. History of slavery in the United States of America
3.1. Aboriginal slavery
Slavery already existed on a small scale in aboriginal North America.
Slavery “was not a general institution in the Americas before the arrival
of Europeans, [but] it certainly existed in some regions“ (Encyclopedia
Britannica 1974: 860). Once the Europeans arrived, aboriginal slavery
changed dramatically. Since there was always a shortage of labour
throughout the European settlement of the Americas, the Spanish intruders
first endeavoured to use Native Americans as labourers. Furthermore,
the Amerindians began to sell their war captives to the Whites instead of
torturing, adopting or keeping them. Soon afterwards, the Europeans
began to enslave Amerindian prisoners, either for domestic use or for
foreign export during the 17th century. Many of them were also exported
to off-shore colonies, especially to the so-called sugar islands of the
Caribbean. After the introduction of black slaves from Africa, the exploitation of Amerindians did not stop. Both forms of servitude “existed side
by side“ (Encyclopedia Britannica 1974: 860). Amerindian labour, however,
proved itself “notoriously reluctant or unable to work at what white
settlers required“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 78). In the 1550s, enslavement
of Native Americans was effectively ended, but survived in frontier regions
where settlers could operate outside the law (MacLeod 1998: 295). Both
Spanish and Portuguese settlers knew by this time that other peoples,
namely Africans, had “proved their worth as slaves in the sugar industry
of the Atlantic islands“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 78).
3.2. From indentured servitude to slavery
The first Africans were treated as ‘indentured servants’ and were “typically
bound to work for a master for seven years“ (Davis 2006: 127). The lives of
these indentured servants did not differ significantly from the lives of most
slaves. After their time in bondage, they were given the use of land and
supplies by their former masters. In addition to African slaves, poor
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Europeans were brought over to America as ‘indentured servants’. Black
and white indentured servants worked alongside each other.
The transformation from ‘indentured servitude’ to racial slavery
happened gradually. This can be seen for example with the situation in
Virginia, where there were no laws regarding slavery in the history of the
state. To understand this “shift to a sharp and almost unbridgeable
separation between black slaves and poor whites, one must look at AngloAmerican demography and the changing sources of [...] labour supply“
(Davis 2006: 132). In the 15th and 16th century, England’s population grew
faster than the English economy, and therefore the government aimed at
getting rid of the “so-called dangerous classes“ (Davis 2006: 132) by
importing them to the colonies in the New World. They had contracts from
five to seven years and could be sold and resold during this period. Some
of these ‘indentured servants’ later even acquired their own farms and
servants, but were usually not very successful in their enterprise.
In general, however, the European organisers made no effort to
impose slave status on victims of war, or prisoners. Instead, they chose the
relatively expensive alternative of sending merchant ships to buy people on
the African coast (Klein 1998: 32).
3.3. Slaves of African descent
African slavery already existed when Europeans made their first maritime
contacts with West Africa. African slaves had been transported to the
Mediterranean, and between the eighth and fifteenth century, slave trade
from Africa expanded to the Red Sea. There were many slave-trading
systems within Africa as well. With the arrival of a European trading
presence on the African west coast, the trade system changed fundamentally. The Portuguese were not looking for slaves, but rather for other
valuable commodities, such as gold. They encountered local slave trading
practices and in order to get the commodities they were looking for, they
“had to buy slaves from Africans“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 77).
A large-scale transfer of Africans did not happen until the sugarplantation system was established on African off-shore islands in the
middle of the 16th century. Since the treatment of Indian slaves was very
harsh, a Spanish nobleman approached the Spanish king, Charles I, with
the proposal that “each Spanish settler should be permitted to bring over
a certain number of black African slaves“ (Encyclopedia Britannica 1974:
860). This proposal was accepted in 1517 and gave way to a prevailing
enslavement of Black Africans.
The first huge wave of slaves arrived with the establishment of the
sugar plantations. Soon after, black slavery “seeped into all corners
of economic and social life throughout the settled Americas“ (Heuman &
Walvin 2003a: 2). Slaves were seen as the “natural and obvious means
72
of labour“ for different crops and “were available [...] to undertake any
form of manual labour required by the slave-owning classes“ (Heuman &
Walvin 2003a: 2). Black slavery, therefore, was a common “feature of life in
the pre-modern Atlantic economy“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 2).
More than 12 million Africans are said to have been forced into the
Atlantic slave ships. Only about 10.5 million Africans survived the journey
to the Americas2. Although African slaves had been bought and traded by
Europeans prior to the European colonisation of the Americas, it was the
Portuguese settlements in Brazil and the accompanying rise of the sugar
industry after 1560 that “revealed the value of African labour“ (Heuman &
Walvin 2003a: 4).
The voyage across the Atlantic Ocean usually took a month to Brazil
and about two months to the West Indies or North America. Most of the
slaves, however, had already been enslaved between six and twelve
months in Africa (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 8). In the course of time, slave
traders decided on the ideal size and shape of slave ships. The average
mortality rate was of “7.5 per cent for a voyage of thirty to fifty days in the
later stage of the slave trade“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 8). In general, the
slave traders tried to preserve the lives and health of the slaves since they
were considered“ a valuable investment“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 9).
3.4. Treatment of slaves
On large plantations, slave overseers were authorised to whip and brutalise
non-compliant slaves. There were so-called ‘slave codes’ which authorised
the use of violence. In addition to physical abuse and murder, the
psychological pressure was very high since slaves were at constant risk of
losing members of their families (Berlin 2003: 175ff.).
Because the slaves were the legal property of their owners, it was
not unusual for enslaved black women to be raped by their owners or
members of their owner’s family or their owner’s friends. Children who
resulted from such rapes were slaves as well. This destroyed the black
families because the family was considered the basic unit of social
organisation under the institution of slavery. Slave captains sometimes
even took privately owned girls or boys on board their ships, and the fact
that sexual exploitation was involved may easily be surmised (Postma
1990: 137).
Not all the slaves did “accept their fate passively, although their
resistance was against insurmountable odds“ (Postma 1990: 165). In many
households, the treatment of the slaves depended to a huge degree on the
slave’s skin colour. Generally, slaves were considered legal non-persons
except if they committed crimes:
2
It must be noted that information concerning the actual number of African slaves
varies. These figures are taken from Heuman & Walvin (2003a: 4).
73
slaves are rational beings, they are capable of committing crimes;
and in reference to acts which are crimes, are regarded as persons.
Because they are slaves, they are incapable of performing civil acts,
and in reference to all such, they are things, not persons .
(Catterall 1926: 247)
Moreover, women and men had equally labour-intensive work. While men
mostly worked on the large plantations, typical jobs for women were
cooking for the slave master’s household as well as for the slaves
themselves, sewing, midwifery, and also pruning fields and comparable
agricultural work. Slave women were “critically important“ since they
came to be valued both at work and for their “reproductive potential“.
Therefore, they were “doubly valuable (and exploited) as workers and as
mothers to a new generation of slaves“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003c: 155).
In general, “slaves were seen and treated as objects of potential
economic utility“ (Postma 1990: 227). Their work involved much more than
only working in the fields. They could be found everywhere in the
Americas, from the simplest of labours to the most skilled of crafts.
3.5. Abolitionist movement and the end of slavery
The abolitionist movement began as early as the middle of the 18th century.
Between 1780 and 1804, all the Northern states passed emancipation acts
and banned slavery. This prohibition, however, did not always mean that
the slaves were freed. The gaining of freedom was rather a gradual
emancipation. This northern movement took place amid strong support for
slavery amid white Southerners, who profited greatly from the system
of enslaved labour.
In January 1808, Congress banned the importation of slaves. This
meant that any new slaves in the United States would have to be
descendants of those who were currently in the U.S. The internal slave
trade continued to exist and prosper.
It was the American civil war which finally led to the end of chattel
slavery in the United States. During this time, many slaves sought refuge in
the Union territory, wanting to be declared “contraband“.3 Many of them
also joined the Union Army and fought against the Southerners. The
abolition of slavery became an official war goal when Abraham Lincoln
passed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.4 With the Northern victory
in the Civil War, the slave-labour system was abolished in the South and
the large southern plantations became much less profitable.
3
4
The term “contraband“ describes runaway slaves encountered by Union soldiers
(cf. Wikipedia 2008: sub Contraband).
Information concerning the Emancipation Proclamation can be taken from
Wikipedia (2008: sub Emancipation Proclamation).
74
The American Colonisation Society shipped many ex-slaves and
free blacks who volunteered back to their homes in Africa.
With the addition of the thirteenth amendment, slavery was constitutionally prohibited in the United States and it was then that the last forty
thousand slaves were freed in the state of Kentucky (Coulter 1926: 268ff.).
4. Role of sugar in the history of slavery
In their Slavery Reader, Gad Heuman and James Walvin state that “the
origin of the slave systems of the Americas lie in the complex story of
sugar“ (2003b: 75), and indeed, slavery on this scale would never have
existed if the sugar plantations had not been created.
4.1. Sugar consumption
World sugar production shows the most remarkable upward curve of any
major food on the world market over the course of several centuries. The
English soon became the biggest sugar consumers in the world. In 1000 BC,
only few Europeans knew of the existence of sucrose, or cane sugar.
However, from 1650 onwards, sugar began to change from a luxury and
rarity into a commonplace. By 1800, sugar had become a necessity in the
diet of every English person, and 100 years later, sugar was supplying
nearly a fifth of the calories in the English diet (Mintz 1986: 5ff.).
For the first time in the cultivation of sugar, slavery became
important as the European crusaders took over the sugar plantations of the
eastern Mediterranean. There were immense sugar plantations in the
regions which are today known as Palestine, Cyprus, Crete, Sicily and later
even in Spain and Portugal. Soon, the Mediterranean sugar industry
declined because of the rise of a new, competing sugar industry on the
Atlantic islands (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 76).
This consumer revolution can be considered as being “at the heart
of [the] Atlantic slave system“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 9) because the
Europeans consumed the crops from the slave plantations in enormous
volumes. Before European immigrants replaced them in the late nineteenth
century, “it was African slaves who enabled this consumption revolution to
occur. Without that labour, most of America would never have developed
at the pace it did“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 9).
4.2. Plantation system
The development of the sugar industry began with the Portuguese and
Spaniards, changing the character of European sugar consumption forever.
75
Sugar cane was first carried to the New World by Columbus on his second
voyage in 1493. The first slaves were imported there soon after the sugar
cane.
The island plantations of sugar were the invention of Europe, or
rather overseas experiments of Europe. Many of them were extremely
successful. At the time that the Portuguese and Spaniards set out to
establish a sugar industry on the Atlantic islands, sugar was still a luxury
in Western Europe and was used only as medicine or as a spice (Mintz
1986: 30).
The movement of the industry to the Atlantic islands occurred
when European demand was probably growing. The development of the
sugar industry, first in Brazil, and later in the Caribbean, with “its labourintensive plantation system of production, forced Europeans to look
elsewhere for labour“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 1). This is why they
turned their interest to Africa and soon “acquired an appetite for Africans
as slave labourers“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 2). The “demand for labour
in the Americas“ was always “the engine which dictated the rise and
direction of the Atlantic slave trade“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 5).
Although slaves were crucial in the production of sugar, there were still
free wage earners.
4.2.1. Plantations and capitalism
While capitalism in Europe drew its workforce from free but landless
people, the Caribbean colonies gained their workforce from massive
populations of similarly dispossessed persons. Nevertheless, these
labourers were enslaved, i.e. had no right to own their bodies or their own
labour. Since the workforce of the free proletarians differed immensely
from the enslaved labour force, it is commonly agreed that the plantation
system does not belong to the economic system of capitalism. Nevertheless,
the plantations were necessary for economic activities, and they generated
huge profits. The plantation system can be regarded as an important step
towards capitalism, but not capitalistic in itself (Mintz 1986: 54ff.).
Both Europe and the enslaved labourers were dependent upon each
other: on the one hand, the Europeans had to consume sugar in order to
keep the plantation system alive, but on the other, this sugar could only be
produced with the help of enslaved Africans and a prospering slave trade.
4.2.2. Situation in North America
While the plantation system brought “profitable cultivation to vast reaches
of the Americas“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 80), the situation in North
America was slightly different. The English settlements in the Chesapeake
region also employed slaves from the earliest days, but the slaves there
“did not become vital until much later“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 80).
76
Tobacco, rather than sugar, changed everything. With the booming exports
of tobacco, the number of African slaves increased.
Most popularly, North American slavery is associated with the
cotton states. Cotton, however, was the most valuable export only at
the end of the Civil War. Moreover, the cotton planters faced a different
situation from the situation of the planters of sugar or tobacco. By the time
cotton was the most prominent crop, the planters did not need any
transatlantic slave trade since the slave population in North America
was already self-sustaining. An internal slave trade existed, “with slaves
moving from the eastern slave states towards the south and the advancing
western frontier“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 81).
In the course of time, the sugar production grew steadily and in
1625, Portugal was supplying nearly all of Europe with sugar from Brazil.
When the Dutch were pushed out of Brazil, they moved their money,
expertise, technology and slaves from Brazil to the West Indies. This
enabled British and other settlers in this region to buy African slaves. With
the help of the Dutch, the English were able “to brush aside the fading
power of Spain in the Caribbean“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 79). Soon
after, England was able to drive Portugal out of the North European trade.
From this time on, two so-called ‘triangles of trade’ grew.
4.3. Triangular trade
Atlantic slavery is a very complex historical issue since its range and
impact across both time and space was enormous. It mainly involved three
continents: Africa, Europe and the Americas but it also “had economic
consequences much further afield“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 1). Although
it was an extremely complex trading system, it can be viewed as a
‘triangular trade’.
The first and more important trade triangle existed between Britain,
Africa and the Americas. African slaves were imported to the New World
where they had to work on plantations, especially on the huge sugar
plantations. These slaves were bought in different coastal regions. The
European slave traders were dependent on African middlemen and dealers
who brought the slaves to the coast. One should not forget that it was
Africans who controlled the slaves until they were sold and went on board
the slave ships (Heuman & Walvin 2003a: 7). From the Americas, the
tropical commodities (above all sugar) were transported to the mother
country Britain and the rest of Europe. From there, the finished goods were
sold back to Africa.
The second, less famous trade triangle emerged between New
England, Africa and the West Indies. Rum was transported from
New England to Africa. Slaves were again imported from Africa to the
77
West Indies and the West Indies supplied New England with molasses5
with which to make rum.
It was mainly the two islands of Jamaica and St Dominique that
came to dominate the Atlantic sugar industry and consequently also the
slave trade.
On the European side, the Atlantic slave trade was dominated by
English and French slave ships. Nevertheless, slaves were employed in
every region throughout the Atlantic economy.
With the end of the slave trade to the British colonies in 1807, and
the abolition of slavery between 1834 and 1865, the dominance of sugar
shrank. This led to huge demographic consequences: new labourers were
needed on the plantations and some of the freed slaves went back to Africa.
Now, there were other areas, however, which supplied Europe with sugar
and where often the workforce of slaves was needed as well. The
conclusion can therefore be drawn that sugar has been one of the massive
demographic forces in world history.
5. The significance of slavery in the emergence of AAVE
Most African Americans “do talk differently from whites and Americans
of other ethnic groups, or at least most of [them] can when [they] want“
(Rickford & Rickford 2000: 4). During the last decades of research into the
study of African American Vernacular English, no agreement has been
found on whether AAVE derived from a creole or whether it developed
from an English base. The creolists’ statement is that a significant number
of Africans who arrived in the United States between the seventeenth
and the nineteenth century went through processes of pidginisation,
creolisation, and perhaps even decreolisation in acquiring English. The
dialectologists, on the other hand, state that the Africans learned the
English of British and other immigrants rapidly and directly, without any
intervening pidgin or creole stage (Green 2002: 9f.).
Both statements, however, depend upon the question of how many
blacks there actually were in a community. Moreover, the question must be
raised as to whether the slaves had already learned a creole in the holding
forts on the West African coast (Rickford & Rickford 2000: 133).
In general, it is agreed that most of the slaves, not only those who
worked as house slaves, had direct contact with their masters. Since slaves
and slaveholders spoke different languages, a massive communicative
problem arose.
While most other immigrants were able to continue to speak their
ancestral language in ethnic ghettos, slaves were not treated as ‘normal’
immigrants. Instead, they were treated as human cargo and also often torn
5
Molasses is “a dark viscous syrup obtained during the refining of sugar“ (Collins
English Dictionary 2006: 1048).
78
from their native communities and immediately isolated from others who
shared not only their culture, rites and customs, but also their language.
Slaves were not transported in coherent linguistic communities. The slave
traders engaged this practice in order to minimise the occurrence of revolt.
The linguistic dimensions of this action, however, continue to have
consequences for many black speakers today.
Moreover, it was illegal to teach slaves to read and write, and most
of them therefore had no access to literate standard English. This explains
the fact that there is a lack of valid diachronic data.6
Looking at the situation of black language acquisition from a
diachronic point of view, the following observations can be made: during
the 17th century, black indentured labourers worked alongside white
indentured labourers. The Africans in the colonies all worked beside
mainly English and Irish people. Many blacks learned their English by
communicating with other labourers and consequently from speakers of
non-standard English. In the 18th century, more slaves of African origin
arrived in the colonies. Blacks acquired their English from other blacks
during this time. It was then that the first comments and examples of black
speech could be found. From the 19th century onwards, African-American
Vernacular English spread westwards and finally reached the North during
the “Great Migration“ (Rickford & Rickford 2000: 131-141).
The linguistic consequences drawn from these diachronic data are
biased. On the one hand, creolisation can be expected in states where the
black population was the overwhelming majority. On the other hand,
blacks probably had a good chance of learning English as a second or
foreign language elsewhere.
Dialectologists and creolists have come to no conclusion and will
probably never reach one since there is not much evidence available.
What is certain is that the unique black-American English ‘dialect’,
which arose during the time of the enslavement of Africans in the colonies
in the Americas, continues in the vernacular of the slaves’ descendants to
this day.
6. Conclusion
Slavery has existed in one form or another ever since. Slavery in the United
States of America “rested upon a basic contradiction“ (Parish 1979: 1): on
the one hand, slaves were seen as property, but in everyday life, on the
other hand, it was impossible to deny the slave’s humanity. Moreover,
transatlantic slavery was the harshest, longest and most awful in world
history.
Although the transatlantic slave system may seem to have
originated in the initial European dealings with Africans on the African
6
The only source of diachronic data are the so-called ex-slave narratives.
79
West coast in the fifteenth century, that “episode provides only one piece of
a historical jigsaw puzzle“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 81). The rise and fall
of earlier European slave systems, European expansion and the internal
history of Africa also contributed their part. However, if there is one
overriding factor which changed both the direction and velocity of Atlantic
slavery, it was surely the establishment of the sugar plantation, the remarkable profits and the enormous consumption generated by the produce of
those plantations for Europe itself. “With sugar and the plantation securely
in place, both African slave labour and the plantation proved their
importance and value” (Heuman & Walvin 2003b: 81f.).
Slaves could be found everywhere, undertaking various forms of
work. There was a great variety of slave labour and there were also major
differences within the slave experience. In general, however, “slavery was
designed not for the benefit of the slaves, but for others“ (Heuman &
Walvin 2003c: 160). Slaves were seen as “beasts of burden [...] to be used
[...] for purposes [over] which they had little control“ and as a “labouring
task force which tamed and brought to profitable cultivation huge swathes
of the Americas“ (Heuman & Walvin 2003c: 160).
Without the transatlantic slavery system, an African-American
Vernacular English would never have arisen. Since this vernacular is
inescapably linked with the history of slavery, the social and political
history of Africans has to be taken into account when dealing with AAVE.
Therefore AAVE, which continues in the speech of many blacks, attests to
the existence of this “dark chapter of American history“ to this day.
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Note
This paper was prepared during the course “African American Vernacular
English” (HS Sprachwissenschaft; winter term 2007/08) held by Prof. Dr. Beat
Glauser.
Barbara Wilhelm (7. Fachsemester – Anglistik / Germanistik / Pädagogik) may be
contacted via <[email protected]>.
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