hellog〜英語史ブログ / 2021-07-09

■ #4456. 黒人英語 (= AAVE) を巡る6つの立場 [aave][creole][ame][sociolinguistics][variety][historiography]

　African American Vernacular English (= AAVE)，いわゆる黒人英語の話題について aave の各記事で取り上げてきた．AAVE の起源と発達を巡っては激しい論争が繰り広げられてきたし，現在も続いている．つまり決定的な解答は与えられていないといってよい．
　よく知られているのは，クレオール語起源説 (creolist hypothesis) かイギリス変種起源説 (Anglicist hypothesis) かを巡る対立である．これについては「#1885. AAVE の文法的特徴と起源を巡る問題」 ([2014-06-25-1])，「#2739. AAVE の Creolist Hypothesis と Anglicist Hypothesis 再訪」 ([2016-10-26-1]) などで紹介した．
　しかし，AAVE を巡る学史は，この2つの派閥の間の論争の歴史として単純にくくることはできない．ほかにもいくつかの立場があるのだ．Lanehart (1826--27) が，ハンドブックにて6つの立場を端的に解説してくれている．箇条書きで引用しよう（なお，Lanehart は African American Language (= AAL) という呼称を用いている）．

(1) Anglicist (aka Dialectologist), which purports that Africans in American (sic) learned regional varieties of British English dialects from British overseers with little to no influence from their own native African languages and cultures;

(2) Creolist, which purports that AAL developed from a prior US creole developed by slaves that was widespread across the colonies and slave-holding areas (though Neo-Creolists acknowledge there likely was not a widespread creole but one that emerged in conditions favorable to creole development);

(3) Substratist, which purports that distinctive patterns of AAL are those that occur in Niger-Congo languages such as Kikongo, Mande, and Kwa;

(4) Ecological and Restructuralist, which is a perspective within the Anglicist position that acknowledges the difficulty of knowing the origins of AAL but proposes that we can say something useful about Earlier AAL (not nascent AAL) given settlement and migration patterns as well as socio-ecological issues;

(5) Divergence/Convergence, which purports that AAL diverges and converges to white varieties over the course of its history with respect to changes in and degrees of racism, segregation, inequalities, and inequities that fluctuate across time and differs (sic) regionally; and

(6) Deficit, which purports that AAL is based on the assumption that Africans in America and their culture are inferior to whites and their language learning as a result was imperfect and bastardized.

　各々の仮説には，純粋に言語学的な知見が反映されている部分もあれば，提唱者や支持者のイデオロギーや認識論的な立場が色濃く反映されている部分もある．後者が入り込むからこそ議論がややこしくなる，というのがこの問題の抱える深い悩みである．

　・ Lanehart, Sonja L. "Varieties of English: Re-viewing the Origins and History of African American Language." Chapter 117 of English Historical Linguistics: An International Handbook. 2 vols. Ed. Alexander Bergs and Laurel J. Brinton. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2012. 1826--39.

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