Have you ever listened to music and heard words like “trippin’” or “lit” and wondered where they come from? Most people don’t and just use it without knowing the rich history behind it. AAVE, or African American Vernacular English, is a form of language, not dialect, that is believed to originate in the Chesapeake Bay area, encompassing Virginia and Maryland. Later on, the language continued to spread throughout the southeast of America. When looking at why AAVE was created Temi Oyenuga, a writer for BLAM UK CIC, writes that “West Africans– who were enslaved in the Americas – were forced to understand English on plantations.” This later caused what can be described as a “resistance movement [where] enslaved African American[s] created a code in which they spoke that relied on the grammatical understanding they had from Africa.” One example of this code is using negative words to talk about positive things so that their white slave owners could not understand.

Evidently, this language has strong ancestral roots. But as these powerful words enter mainstream media, its context is stripped due to language appropriation. Language appropriation is when a non-Black person steals distinct words, phrases, or expressions from a language preserved and upheld uniquely for one ethnic group. Recently, AAVE has been mislabeled by mainstream White culture as “slang,” which is far from the truth. Also, the mainstream media constantly uses the words wrong. For example, I remember a period in time when many youth used the word “bussin” for a variety of instances, even when the use was unfitting. “This music is bussin’” or “This outfit is bussin’” is not the correct way to use this word. “Bussin” is used to describe delicious food. Not only are words used wrong, but they are used excessively. People will take the word “finna’” and use it in almost every sentence, eventually misinterpreting the word. In reality, it is just supposed to be used to describe something you are about to do.

Not only is the language misused, but it is constantly looked down upon by others. Many

people see black people who use AAVE as “uneducated” or “ghetto,” thus causing black people to subconsciously code-switch. Code-switching is when someone who speaks multiple forms of languages switches between them depending on the environment. Black people often have to code switch in professional situations to look educated. This switching of language leads to backhanded compliments from people who say, “You speak so well!” or “You’re so well spoken.” These may seem like compliments from afar, but in the eyes of a Black person, it is very disheartening that the only way they will be taken seriously is if they stop using AAVE.

AAVE has a deep and rich history behind it, and when people take these words and call them “slang” or “Gen-Z terms,” it completely disregards that history, as well as making the argument that it is “just words.” 

To any Black person reading this—please continue to use AAVE because it is powerful, and it is our history. To any non-Black person who started reading this article and thought it was “just words,” I hope you realize it’s not; it’s a culture.

Information retrieved from Blam UK and “The Origins of African American Vernacular English: Beginnings” by Donald Winford.