This again, much like the page on America between the wars, is not a history lesson, nor in this case is it a linguistics lesson. However for those who are reading the first letter from Celie to God and wondering, what on earth she means, I have compiled a few notes on Black American Vernacular, the form in which Celie both writes and speaks.

There are a few noticeable traits of Black American Vernacular, or B.A.V., and one is the use of the double negative. Examples of this are: "But I don’t never git used to it" or "I don’t have nothing." You should not assume that just because Walker has chosen this, she does not know how to spell correctly. Like all of her language in the novel, it is this way in order to give Celie a distinctive voice and it also adds a certain authenticity to her work, writing mostly as a poor, uneducated black woman from the American South.

Secondly, you may notice that the ‘copula’ or ‘joining’ word is missed out. You will notice this more as you read the novel, but good examples are: "And she clean" instead of "she is clean" or "she pretty, he tell me" instead of "she is pretty, he tell me." A good point to realise is that just because Black American Vernacular chooses to take away the copula, it does not make it wrong or inferior. By our standards we judge it to be grammatically wrong, because we all adhere to the rules of Standard English, the established British dialect. This is the attitude of Darlene in The Color Purple who feels that Shug Avery will be offended at Celie's dialect.

Yet, B.A.V. is a rich and wonderful dialect and though it seems the ‘inferior’ dialect by omitting the copula, could our language be judged to be wrong for adding it? Even as we say this, there are occasions in Standard English where the copula is omitted and it is perfectly legitimate. Such is the case in questions. An English speaker might say, "She, clean? I do not believe you."

Another trait of B.A.V. is the dropping of the present tense letter ‘s’ in sentences such as "Nobody fight for Shug" instead of "fights." Also present is the use of "us" instead of "we" such as in the sentence "by the time us finish our house it look like it can swim or fly." Another device is the use of "be" as in "I be" or "you be" or as in the sentences "Miss Celie, if you kill Albert Grady be all I got left."

Pidgin English
Spoken by Joseph, the missionary party’s African host in letter sixty-one. Pidgin English is a mix between two languages, one of them being English that is used to communicate between two parties who do not know each other’s native tongue.

Again, it is important to stress that neither Black American Vernacular nor Pidgin English are inferior dialects. They do however have no formal code, but as language and identity go very much together in life, the use of all these different languages in the novel communicates Walker’s attempt to raise awareness of diversity. In doing so, she shows us that no one language is better or worse than another.

Written by Matthew Kane [2001]

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