One of the most significant problems that linguists face in their attempts to describe Vernacular Black English (VBE) is the matter of fluctuating forms. It is consistently observed that speakers appear to fluctuate between a socially stigmatized variant and its presumed nonstigmatized counterpart. Fluctuations in VBE have often been viewed as a type of code-switching. From this perspective, the fluctuating variants are assigned to different systems or subsystems within a speaker's linguistic repertoire, and he simply shifts from one to another in response to some stylistic, situational, or other functional shift. Variation has been observed, however, when the extralinguistic context remains constant, and such variation cannot be classified as code-switching. Much fluctuation in VBE, then, is best described as inherently variable rather than code-switching. This means that both of the fluctuating forms are an inherent part of a unitary system. In terms of descriptions of VBE, the code-switching concept leads to a distorted view of what the dialect is actually like, because VBE is seen to be more different from Standard English than it actually is. What is needed is a grammar which can account for variability beyond traditional rule optionality. (Author/PM)