African American English and its Role in Hollywood Movies

Resumen

African American Vernacular English (hereafter AAVE), also known as Ebonics, is a
variant of English spoken in its majority by African American in the United States. This
research paper will deal with the use of AAVE in some Hollywood movies. It studies its use
by African American characters as a way to classify people into a specific social class. With
this in mind, and in order to carry out this study, three African American actors, Denzel
Washington, Morgan Freeman and Samuel L. Jackson, have been chosen. A total of eighteen
movies in which the actors play different roles belonging to different social classes, and the
specific use of English by the same African American actor, will be analyzed as a way to draw
on the association of the use of Ebonics with different roles. Results will reveal the fact that
AAVE is used as a degrading characteristic for an uneducated lower social class who belongs
to a specific race versus the use of Standard English used for the opposite purpose.