Smitherman, who is perfectly capable of writing Standard English, sometimes reverts to African American Vernacular English—apparently to make a point: we find even Black students themselves with a negative image of they “[F]requently speech. They too have been brainwashed about the and of ‘inherent absolute rightness’ white, middle class dialect and do not realize that language can be/has been for Black people in America a tool of emphasis added). In this particular case, the oppression” (63, word is used inappropriately in this context; the correct word, in Standard English, they would be I find it incongruous for Smitherman to interrupt a stream of coherent their. Standard English prose with an ethnic-dialect possessive pronoun—just to make a political point. Sometimes Smitherman invents alternate simplified spellings of existing English words in an attempt to create a written form of African American Vernacular. For example, in Smitherman spells Word for the Mother: Language and African Americans, the word as (38). If Smitherman felt compelled to make the word a school skool school phonetically perfect word, she also should have created phonetically perfect equivalents for of the thousands of nonphonetic words in the English language. We all must all eventually accept the reality that English is an entirely phonetic language; sometimes not words are not spelled as they sound. Perhaps the correct spelling of the word is too school Germanic—and therefore too for comfort zone. “white” Smitherman’s African American Vernacular English is a dialect created by centuries of spoken oral tradition—there is no version of this dialect with alternate spellings for written English words—except in imagination. I have read a great deal of Smitherman’s scholarship on the dialect she usually calls I conclude that Black English. Smitherman’s
Smitherman, who is perfectly capable of writing Standard English, sometimes reverts to African American Vernacular English—apparently to make a point: “[F]requently we find even Black students themselves with a negative image of they speech. They too have been brainwashed about the ‘inherent and absolute rightness’ of white, middle class dialect and do not realize that language can be/has been for Black people in America a tool of oppression” (63, emphasis added). In this particular case, the word they is used inappropriately in this context; the correct word, in Standard English, would be their. I find it incongruous for Smitherman to interrupt a stream of coherent Standard English prose with an ethnic-dialect possessive pronoun—just to make a political point. Sometimes Smitherman invents alternate simplified spellings of existing English words in an attempt to create a written form of African American Vernacular. For example, in Word for the Mother: Language and African Americans, Smitherman spells the word school as skool (38). If Smitherman felt compelled to make the word school a phonetically perfect word, she also should have created phonetically perfect equivalents for all of the thousands of nonphonetic words in the English language. We all must eventually accept the reality that English is not an entirely phonetic language; sometimes words are not spelled as they sound. Perhaps the correct spelling of the word school is too Germanic—and therefore too “white” for Smitherman’s comfort zone. African American Vernacular English is a spoken dialect created by centuries of oral tradition—there is no written version of this dialect with alternate spellings for English words—except in Smitherman’s imagination. I have read a great deal of Smitherman’s scholarship on the dialect she usually calls Black English. I conclude that