A study on grammatical features of Black English vernacular used in “You Got Served”

ABSTRACT

Black English vernacular is a dialect of American English which is spoken by many African Americans or Black People in the United States. Although Black English Vernacular is spoken almost exclusively by Negroes, but not all of American Negroes speak Black English. Black English Vernacular has unique features as well as features of the general system of English grammar. It has its own rules of grammar and phonology. One dominant characteristic is the amount of fluctuation in forms and constructions. The same speaker will pronounce a plural ending on one occasion and another occasion will drop it.

The objectives of this study are to find out the grammatical features of Black English Vernacular used in film and then describe the differences between the usage of Black English’s grammatical features used in film and in those in Standard English.

This study uses descriptive qualitative method because it deals with the nature of the real situation and is designed to obtain information concerning the linguistic phenomena and to answer the statement of the problems. The data are collected from the utterances of the main characters that are Elgin and David. The analysis of this study focuses on grammatical features of Black English Vernacular in film that uttered by the main character in several scenes that are in restaurant, in Basketball field, in Elgin’s house and in warehouse.

The result of this study shows that there are several grammatical features of Black English Vernacular which are constructed in “You Got Served”. They are; absence copula the verb “to be”, absence the third singular person –s, negation, verb agreement, and tenses. Furthermore, the most dominant grammatical feature of Black English Vernacular in this film is absence of copula the verb “to be”.

Based on the finding of the research, the researcher suggests to the next researcher to use more various scene in order to get all grammatical features and to analyze the other features of Black English Vernacular such as phonological and lexical aspect and also from the ethnicity, solidarity and the reason why the Black English used in their conversation.