phonological process, which is the deletion and insertion rule in the word ever in “I clean Miss Walters‟ top to bottom ever
3
four weeks”. Minny uses the linguistic features to show her identity as a speaker of African American Vernacular English
and to show her identity as a housemaid, She cannot necessarily eliminate the linguistic features of African American Vernacular English to impress Miss Celia.
It is called intergroup distinctiveness. In this case, Miss Celia worries that Minny does not want to be the maid because the windows of Miss Celia‟s house are too
high to be cleaned. Many maids have refused to work in Miss Celia‟s house
because it is too big and too far from down town. Minny knows Miss Celia‟s
worry that she is going to refuse it as the other maids has done. Then, Minny says she does not afraid of windows because she wants the job too. It means that
Minny knows the code even though Miss Celia does not directly utter her worry. Miss Celia is the white master who often uses the linguistic features of
African American Vernacular English. She uses ai n‟t as the negator that is
common on African American Vernacular English. Those uses of a in‟t can be
seen in “It ain‟t working out too good.” Stockett, 2009:37 and “That‟s just lard,
ain‟t it?” Stockett, 2009: 51. She also use set down instead of sit down as in “Set down
and I‟ll bring you something” Stockett, 2009:38. Next is she uses real as the intensifier as seen in
“I was real glad to get the recommendation from Missus Walters
” Stockett, 2009:39 and “Cause I don‟t sleep real well at night.” Stockett, 2009: 58. She also deletes be in because so it becomes cause in
“Cause I don‟t sleep real well at night.” Stockett, 2009: 58.
There are two possibilities Miss Celia uses the linguistic features, first is to show casual attribution. She is the white master and Minny is the black
housemaid. When Miss Celia firstly meets to Minny, Miss Celia tries to adapt to her new maid, Minny by using some linguistic features of African American
Vernacular English can make Miss Celia easily accepted by Minny. Miss Celia never has a maid before and has been rejected by the other housemaid over and
over again. Second possibility is because she comes from a slum named Sugar Ditch. She is considered as a white woman but poor. She does not attend higher
school as other white ladies can attend in Jackson, Mississippi.
3. A white master and a white master.
Not all linguistic features of African American Vernacular English occur in the conversation of a white master to a white master. However, there is only
one linguistic feature that is used by white characters in novel, which is y‟all.
“I‟m going to the powder room. Y‟all watch her in case she collapses dead of hunger” Stockett, 2009:8.
“You just tell Raleigh every penny he spends on that bathroom he‟ll get back when
y‟all sell this house.”Stockett, 2009:10. John M. Lipski stated that
y‟all is believed to derive from „plantation creole English‟ and y‟all is considered as casual or colloquial speech Benjamin,
1993: 24. Due to intense communication with the black housemaids, y‟all is not
only used by the African American Vernacular English speakers. In African American Vernacular English
y‟all is the result of the deletion process of vowel u: in you all. The
y‟all used by the white master can be considered as the lexical borrowing.
The borrowing process is a linguistic attempt to take one or some vocabularies from other language or dialect then are adapted to their language.
The borrowing is caused due to some factors as stated in Hoffman‟s An Introduction to Bilingualism,
“maybe influenced by laziness, fatigue or some form of emotional stress which makes the bilingual forget the correct term” Hoffman,
1991: 102. If people can speak in some languages bilingual or multilingual, it means they have wider vocabularies, grammars and pronunciations in their mind.
These people have a tendency to use the vocabularies, the grammar, or the pronunciation in any situation, whether they are aware to use it or not. The factors
can be also to share interest, to entertain or to show intimacy between the interlocutors Hoffman, 1991: 103.The bilingual or multilingual aware to use a
certain language in a certain situation because they know the interlocutor can speak the same language or they want to show their language abilities. However,
they can be unaware to use certain language because they are too lazy to recall their memory about a certain term or forget the right term. Therefore, they borrow
one or some linguistic features of a certain language. Miss Hilly is the antagonist character in the novel, she who refuses the
equality between the black people and the white people a powerful woman in the Jackson society. Her husband is a candidate for the local senate and Miss Hilly is
the President and Chairman of Appropriations of Jackson League. Miss Hilly and her family are respected by Jackson society because they are strong in politics.
However, when Miss Hilly and her friends are having a bridge club day, Miss Hilly still uses
y‟all when she talks to other white ladies. The strategy used is
broken language. Miss Hilly is not a speaker of African American Vernacular English but she borrows
y‟all. The reasons why she uses it can be analyzed by Hymes‟ component of communicative events. Participant, Miss Hilly is having a
conversation with her white friends. Miss Hilly has a close relationship with her white friends and they are equal in social status. Every white lady has their own
black housemaid which means they have contacted intensively and have been familiar with the linguistic features of African American Vernacular English that
are spoken by their black housemaids. Besides every white lady also respects Miss Hilly or even idolize her. Therefore, when Miss Hilly borrows
y‟all, it does not necessarily make Mi
ss Hilly‟s status lower or become inferior in front of her white friends. The setting is also in informal situation, there is no limitation to use
Standard English or any other variety. It is shown that the intense communication between a white master and a
black housemaid can lead to a borrowing process and can influence the white master to use the linguistic features of African American Vernacular English in
front of the other white masters.
.
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CHAPTER V CONCLUSION
This research was aimed to answer two problems: 1. What are the linguistic features of African American Vernacular English, 2. What are the causes of two
different cultural communication among the characters in the novel. In order to know the first problem about the linguistic features, there were
three features of African American Vernacular English that essential to be analyzed. Those are syntactical features, phonological features and lexical features. Each of
African American Vernacular English speakers in the novel also shows different total usage of the linguistics features, Aibileen shows 294 in syntactical, 52 in
phonological and 35 in lexical. Minny shows 83 in syntactical, 12 in phonological, and 14 in lexical. All those features found in the novel were compared to Standard
English in order to see the differences between these two varieties of English. For syntactical features, African American Vernacular English speakers tend
to have some differences from Standard English speakers. Those differences include the use of copula, the use of be, multiple functions of a, the verbal tense marker, the
noun marker, the pronoun marker and the negation. African American Vernacular English speakers tend to show different usages
in the use of copula, those are including the absence of the copula, the use of copula ‘s following first-person singular pronoun I, the use of singular copula to use with
third-person plural personal pronoun, the use of plural copula with third-person singular pronoun, and the use of singular copula following plural noun. In the use of
be, African American Vernacular English speakers use be to indicate future and to replace copula. They also use a for multiple functions, a functions as to infinitive, a
functions as preposition of, a functions as preposition at, a functions as an auxiliary have. For verbal tense marker, they also show some differences to Standard English
speakers, such as the absence of suffix –s in third-person singular present tense, the
adding of suffix –edd in the irregular verb, the use of present tense to state past tense
verb, the use of past participle verb to indicate past tense verb, the absence of auxiliary havehas had in the perfect tense, the use of done to indicate a completed
action, the use of gone to indicate gone and the use of to be + on to indicate future. The nouns in African American Vernacular English are also marked differently, they
add suffix –s to irregular plural noun and mass noun and they omit the article. The
pronoun markers are dissimilar in the generalization of subject pronoun as possessive pronoun, the use of object pronoun them to indicate the, the absence of relative
pronoun and the use of pronoun they as the existential locative marker. In making negative statement, they prefer to use
ain’t, they also use double or multiple negation, and they use
ain’t but or don’t but to indicate only. The phonological features on how the African American Vernacular English
speakers pronounce the words are not similar to Standard English speakers. There are three phonological processes found in the novel, the assimilation process in
