This paper examines the importance of teaching about non-standard dialect awareness in English departments, focusing on African American Vernacular English (AAVE). The paper asserts that it is the job of teachers to present students with appropriate knowledge about language and to raise awareness of nonstandard dialects, rather than perpetuate…

A study analyzed the features of nonstandard English spoken on television during the hours when children are most likely to be watching. A grammatical analysis of the speech of 150 television characters revealed that, in general, television presented a homogenized version of nonstandard English. The relative frequency of usage of nonstandard…