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If Black English Isn't A Language - Online Essay

If Black English Isn't A Language

In James Baldwin’s “If black isn’t a language, then tell me what is?” He talks about the use of language and how the "Black Language" is an important part of American history, and how it has evolved from experiences, necessity, and separation.
Language, it can identify us all. It’s like an ID card for people, it can define and identify us all. Different groups of people, even those who speak the same language, will speak it differently. That’s due from having different experiences, developing in different geographical settings, and from social and economic influences. That’s the roll of language, to reveal the speaker. Someone can speak the same language but speak it another way, such ...

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understand each other because they was from different tribes.
“It goes without saying, then, that language is also a political instrument, means, proof of power, and it is the most crucial key to identity: it reveals the private identity, and connects one with, or divorces one, from the larger, public or communal identity”
In a sense language tells who the speaker is, where they are from, as well as their ethnicity. By simply speaking a person can tell your background, education, wealth, self-worth and your future because that is the amount of power that language holds. It is very easy to make judgments and assumptions about someone by the way they speak.
He describes Black English as a language separately from White English being developed during the earlier American history of slavery. It was in this time that blacks started to learn how to talk to each other so the black church was started and so did "black English". Baldwin claims that Black English is a language, not a ...

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If Black English Isn't A Language. (2013, November 7). Retrieved January 12, 2026, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/If-Black-English-Isnt-A-Language/103265

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 11/7/2013 08:05:44 PM
Submitted By: shelbysomething
Category: English
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 529
Pages: 2

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