[Ads-l] Antedating of "Black English Vernacular"

[Gordon, Matthew]

I’m skeptical about this as an antedating of Black English Vernacular, a term that was coined to represent a particular variety of English, with the “vernacular” being chosen to reflect Labov’s view of the vernacular as a linguistic system. BEV and later AAVE came describe the dialect that previously had been labeled as Negro nonstandard English, and Black English among other terms.

Throughout the 1969 article, Wolfram uses “Black English” in reference to the dialect. The cited passage discusses a methodological challenge that stems from the social relationship of Black English to standard English as Wolfram argues that the usual means of directly probing grammaticality judgments can’t be done because of the prescriptivist influence of education and exposure to standard language ideologies. The part of the sentence that Fred elides is important to understanding the usage of "vernacular": “Most linguistically sophisticated speakers of Black English have also acquired standard English, and, in doing so, invariably have lost sensitivity to the grammatical boundaries of the Black English vernacular.” Thus, Wolfram seems to be drawing a contrast between the standard English as a literary language (or whatever term you prefer as the opposite of “vernacular”) and Black English as a vernacular language. In the article, he uses “vernacular” (without “Black English") a few other times in just this way.

Matt

From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Shapiro, Fred <00001ac016895344-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Date: Saturday, January 10, 2026 at 8:58 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Antedating of "Black English Vernacular"

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Black English Vernacular (OED 1972)

1969 Walter A. Wolfram "Social Dialects from a Linguistic Perspective" (ERIC ED032535) 41 (Internet Archive)

Most linguistically sophisticated speakers of Black English ... have lost sensitivity to the grammatical boundaries of the Black English vernacular.

Fred Shapiro

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