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Habitual be
Habitual be:
Habitual be is the nonstandard use of an invariant be in African American Vernacular English and Caribbean English to mark habitual or extended actions in the present tense, instead of using the Standard English inflected forms of be, such as is and are. This usage leads to sentences like:

"I be singing" instead of the Standard English "I sing."

"The coffee be cold" signifies the coffee is always cold, whereas "The coffee is cold" would mean the coffee is cold right now.
I be thinking the fact that this term exists is just another reason that AAVE be a totally legitimate dialect of English.
AAVE is a dialect of English because it is a way that English is spoken. Whether or not it's 'legitimate' is a value judgment made on an individual or societal level that is unconnected to the question of whether it is a dialect.

What you have to be careful about with terms like this is that anything can have a term coined to describe it. I like the examples of 'dishpan hands' and 'ring-around-the-collar'. Simply naming a phenomenon converts it into a 'thing' in one's mind, reifying it. The existence of the term itself makes the idea easier to grasp and can lend legitimacy, hence the old saying that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. The reverse can be true. Many a social condition has been turned into a social concern by appending the words 'problem' or 'question' (e.g. 'The Jewish Question').

All terms like these do is make ideas that are easier for our silly little symbol manipulating brains to wrap themselves around, whether or not those ideas reflect reality.

Posted at 3/24/2010 7:51:26 PM by Joe


 
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