4. African Americans have a right to speak incorrectly if they
want to, but other people shouldn’t be forced to suffer and
listen to it. Winfrey asks for clarification: how does AAVE
cause the speaker to suffer?Overall, Winfrey’s stance is complicated by her own place in corporate
institutions, where there are gatekeeping mechanisms she subscribes to
and openly promotes. For example, she asserts that employers (of which
she is one) have the right to demand that employees represent employers
as they wish to be represented, a right which she believes extends to
language. When audience and panel members point out her fallacies in
common-sense arguments, or present counter-arguments, Winfrey has one
of three strategies:
1. She appeals to the authority of those panel or audience
members who support her position, primarily to Dr. Anderson,
the accent reduction specialist.
2. She counters with more common-sense but factually fragile
arguments.
3. Or she cuts away completely, as when an audience member
stands to admonish other African Americans to reject the idea
that they are ignorant or don’t speak right.Winfrey’s discomfort with the underlying conflict reaches its peak when
audience members attempt to use her and her language as an example of
the necessity of assimilation and the rewards which follow. It is interesting
that the African American guests who hold up Winfrey’s language as a
model never point out that Winfrey herself, like so many other African
Americans prominent in the public eye, is often heard to use AAVE
intonation when speaking with Black guests, and that she relies on AAVE
rhetorical devices on many occasions.
Winfrey would like the issue to be a simple one of grammatical
relations, which would allow her to make decisions as an employer which
would be free of racial implications. Ideally, she believes, education
should neutralize language distinctions stemming from differences in race
and class. She has the best interest of her community and people in mind,
and a clear picture of the steps necessary for African Americans to achieve