Quote:
Originally Posted by SWTXBelle
When I was in linguistics (many moons ago) , we studied "Black Standard English Variant". I remember when the hue and cry about "Ebonics" was in the news - am now curious as to who coined the phrase. I don't much like it - "ebony" + "phonics".
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My linguistics friends are very intrigued by it.
Dr. Robert Williams coined it in the 1960s-1970s(?). More specifically:
"Ebonics, a blend of ebony and phonics, is a racially affirmative term that was
first coined in the Black Pride era to refer to the full communicative competence of African-American slave descendents (Williams 1975: vi)" (Ronkin and Karn 1999)
Ebonics is often used interchangeably with Black English. But scholars like Smith and Crozier (1998) argue that Ebonics and Black English aren't interchangeable.
I remember my first exposure was as a college fresh(wo)man as the only black person in the classroom. Of course I was made into the authority on affirmative action and all things "black." So one day the professor said "today we are going to discuss Black English or EBONICS." I immediately said "there's no such thing." And he quickly changed the topic. LOL. While I now believe there is a such thing and understand why it is studied, I wasn't about to sit through that lecture back then because I had already been subjected to a semester's worth of what my classmates felt about what they perceived to be "black stuff."
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