Vernacular Style of English Use in The Pariah (2011) Movie as The Portrayal of African American Identity

This research is aimed at identifying linguistic patterns representing the vernacular style of African American identity used by the characters in the Pariah (2011) movie. The movie Pariah (2011), which portrays a black lesbian teenager (Alike), displays a middle-class family whose parents’ marriage crumbles. Experiencing a dysfunctional family and heartbreak, Alike starts her journey to be a lesbian. This black lesbian identity corroborates the African American stereotype as Tyree (2011) has examined. Fortifying this stereotypical identity of the movie characters, this research employs Green’s (2002) set of vernacular patterns, grouped into sound patterns, word and phrase patterns, and sentence patterns. The result shows that the characters in the movie speak exactly the vernacular style of AAVE. The simplicity found in their utterances clearly indicates its stereotype of African American identity. Thus, this movie reflects the African American community with their particular culture reflected in their use of specific language variety.