Definition of African american english

African American Vernacular English (AAVE) – also called African American English, Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular (BEV) and Black Vernacular English (BVE) – is a variety (dialect, ethnolect and sociolect) of English, particularly American English; it is sometimes called Ebonics. Its pronunciation is in some respects common to Southern American English, which is spoken by many African Americans in the United States and by many non-African Americans. There is little regional variation among speakers of AAVE. Several creolists, including William Stewart, John Dillard, and John Rickford argue that AAVE shares so many characteristics with Creole dialects spoken by black people in much of the world that AAVE itself is a creole. It has been suggested that AAVE has grammatical structures in common with West African languages, but this is disputed. Speakers of AAVE are typically bidialectal. As with all linguistic forms, age, status, topic and setting influence its usage. There are many literary uses of this variety of English, particularly in African-American literature.