African American English and its Representation in "Do The Right Thing" and "The Wire"

This dissertation aims to delve into African American Vernacular English. It explores how this variant of the English language originated, what its main characteristics are, how its speakers conceive it, in what environment it is spoken and how it became more and more popular in non-English speaking countries. By building on exiting research that has already established what African American Vernacular English is, this study will present a research project that involved interviewing a wide range of individuals to have some insights on this complex topic. This dissertation concludes that African American Vernacular English could be considered a separate language from Standard English and for instance cannot be viewed as “bad spoken English’’, as some people have argued, because there is the confluence of various factors including culture, social context, history and ideology.