African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and African American Identity in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple: A Stylistic Analysis

The objective of the paper at hand is to show Celie (Walker’s protagonist of her novel The Color Purple) as an embodiment of African American identity. The paper explicates that her identity can be explored through her use of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and departures from the Standard English. The paper aims to establish the link between Celie’s use of AAVE and her African American identity as the major themes of the novel. This is achieved with the help of stylistic analysis of the linguistic evidences from the data novel: The Color Purple basing on the linguistic categories borrowed from Tottie (2002), Rickford and Rickford (2000) and Green (2002). Therefore, the paper designing a grid of linguistic categories of AAVE from the work of the above mentioned linguists locates the examples from the novel and fully showcases Alice Walker’s protagonist Cellie whose identity is found to be marked by her exclusive and persistent use of her African American Vernacular English (AAVE).