Promoting preservice special education teachers’ acquisition of morphosyntactic patterns in African American Vernacular English

Language Use in African American Communities: An Introduction Sonja L. Lanehart, Jennifer Bloomquist, and Ayesha M. Malik PART I. ORIGINS AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES The English Origins Hypothesis Gerard Van Herk The Creole Origins Hypothesis John R. Rickford The Emergence of African American English: Monogenetic or Polygenetic? With or Without Decreolization? Under How Much Substrate Influence? Salikoko S. Mufwene On the Origins of African American Vernacular English: Beginnings Donald Winford African American English Over Yonder: The Language of the Liberian Settler Community John Victor Singler Documenting the History of African American Vernacular English: A Survey and Assessment of Sources and Results Edgar W. Schneider Regionality in the Development of African American English Walt Wolfram and Mary E. Kohn PART II. LECTS AND VARIATION The Place of Gullah in the African American Linguistic Continuum Tracey L. Weldon and Simanique Moody Rural African American Vernacular English Patricia Cukor-Avila and Guy Bailey African American English in the Mississippi Delta: A Case Study of Copula Absence and /r/-Lessness in the Speech of Black Women in Coahoma County Rose Wilkerson African American Voices in Atlanta William A. Kretzschmar African American Language in Pittsburgh and the Lower Susqueshanna Valley Jennifer Bloomquist and Shelome Gooden African American Phonology in a Philadelphia Community William Labov and Sabriya Fisher African American Language in New York City Renee A. Blake, Cara Shousterman, and Luiza Newlin-Lukowicz African American Vernacular English In California: Four Plus Decades Of Vibrant Variationist Research John R. Rickford The Black American Sign Language Project: An Overview Joseph Hill, Carolyn McCaskill, Robert Bayley, and Ceil Lucas The Sociolinguistic Construction of African American Language Walt Wolfram PART III. STRUCTURE AND DESCRIPTION Syntax and Semantics Lisa J. Green and Walter Sistrunk The Systematic Marking of Tense, Modality and Aspect in African American Language Charles E. DeBose On the Syntax-Prosody Interface in African American Language James A. Walker Segmental Phonology of African American English Erik R. Thomas and Guy Bailey Prosodic Features of African American English Erik R. Thomas PART IV. CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND DEVELOPMENT Language Acquisition in the African American Child: Prior to Age Four Brandi L. Newkirk-Turner, RaMonda Horton, and Ida J. Stockman The Development of African American English through Childhood and Adolescence Janneke Van Hofwegen Development of Variation Lisa J. Green and Jessica White-Sustaita Narrative Structures of African American Children: Commonalities and Differences Tempii B. Champion and Allyssa McCabe Some Similarities and Differences between African American English and Southern White English in Children Janna B. Oetting Contemporary Approaches and Perspectives for Assessing Young and School-Age AAE Child Speakers Toya A. Wyatt PART V. EDUCATION African American Language and Education: History and Controversy in the Twentieth Century Geneva Smitherman Managing Two Varieties: Code-switching in the Educational Context Monique T. Mills and Julie A. Washington Balancing Pedagogy with Theory: The Infusion of African American Language Research Into Everyday Pre K-12 Teaching Practices Sharroky Hollie, Tamara Butler, and Jamila Gillenwaters History of Research on Multiliteracies and Hip Hop Pedagogy: A Critical Review K.C. Nat Turner and Tyson L. Rose African-American Vernacular English and Reading William Labov and Bettina Baker Dialect Switching and Mathematical Reasoning Tests: Implications for Early Educational Achievement J. Michael Terry, Randall Hendrick, Evangelos Evangelou, and Richard L. Smith Beyond Bidialecticalism: Language Planning and Policies for African American Students John Baugh PART VI. LANGUAGE IN SOCIETY African American Church Language Charles E. DeBose The (Re)turn to Remus Orthography: The Voices of African American Language in American Literature James Braxton Peterson African American Language and Black Poetry Howard Rambsy II and Briana Whiteside African American Divas of Comedy: Staking a Claim in Public Space Jacquelyn Rahman The Construction of Ethnicity via Voicing: African American English in Children's Animated Film Jennifer Bloomquist SWB: (Speaking while Black or Speaking while Brown): Linguistic Profiling and Discrimination Based on Speech as a Surrogate for Race in International Perspective John Baugh PART VII. LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY Racializing Language: Unpacking Linguistic Approaches to Attitudes about Race and Speech Kate T. Anderson African American Standard English Arthur K. Spears African American English in the Middle Class Erica Britt and Tracey L. Weldon African American Women's Language: Mother Tongues Untied Marcyliena Morgan Black Masculine Language David E. Kirkland Hip Hop Nation Language: Localization and Globalization H. Samy Alim African American Language and Identity: Contradictions and Conundrums Sonja L. Lanehart

This guide accompanies the following article : Erik R. Thomas, ‘Phonological and Phonetic Characteristics of African American Vernacular English, Language and Linguistics Compass 1/5 (2007): 450–475. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749‐818X.2007.00029.x Author’s Introduction African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and, more generally, African American English (AAE) are the most heavily studied group of dialects in North American English. Much of the enquiry has focused on morphosyntactic variation, but a significant amount has dealt with phonological and phonetic variables. Linguistic variables that can set AAE off from local European American varieties (EAE) in a given community span every realm of phonology and phonetics. Consonantal variables such as non‐rhoticity, consonant cluster simplification, and th‐stopping have attracted a great deal of attention. These variables usually involve phonological alternations, but phonotactic constraints also occur. Vowel variables, such as the degree of fronting of the goat vowel, are gaining some attention, mostly to address how closely local AAE varieties approach local EAE forms. Prosody has received some study and voice quality a small amount. Study of these variables is used to address several theoretical and applied issues. Among the most important theoretical issues are the Creolist/Anglicist controversy, over the origins of AA(V)E; the convergence/divergence controversy, over whether AAVE is becoming more or less like EAE vernaculars; and, recently, the uniformity controversy, concerning the degree of uniformity or diversity within AAE across the United States. Applied issues have focused largely on educational policy: whether or not AAE variants hinder learning for African American schoolchildren and to what extent AAE variants can be incorporated into classroom instruction. The Author Recommends Bailey, Guy. 2001. The relationship between African American and White Vernaculars in the American South: A sociocultural history and some phonological evidence. Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English . ed. by Sonja L. Lanehart, 54–92 (Varieties of English around the World, General Series, 27). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Bailey provides a table with 45 phonological and phonetic variables known to be correlated either with AAE (for the majority of them) or with Southern White Vernacular English, giving an approximate date for each one. He focuses on the history of AAE in the South, explaining how agriculture and the expansion of slavery were interconnected in the antebellum South. He also lists some corpora of African Americans’ recordings of historical value. Fridland, Valerie. 2003. Network strength and the realization of the Southern Vowel Shift among African Americans in Memphis, Tennessee. American Speech 78. 3–30. http://americanspeech.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/78/1/3?maxtoshow=&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=Fridland%2C+V&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT This study was the first systematic community investigation into vowel shifting in AAE. Fridland finds that African Americans in Memphis showed nearly all of the vowel shifts comprising the ‘Southern Shift’, although usually not to the most extreme degrees found among whites in Memphis. Younger whites seemed to be pulling back from the extreme forms, while young African Americans did not show an analogous development. She relates the findings to social network patterns. Green, Lisa J. 2002. African American English: A Linguistic Introduction . Cambridge, UK/New York: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 4, Phonology of AAE, pp. 106–33. This chapter provides an overview and some detail about many of the important consonantal variables relevant to African American English. Some of these variables, such as r ‐lessness, are well‐studied, while others, such as /skr/ for /str/, are lesser known. In addition, there is a discussion of Green’s work on the intonation of yes/no questions in AAE. Labov, William, Paul Cohen, Clarence Robins, and John Lewis. 1968. A Study of the Non‐Standard English of Negro and Puerto Rican Speakers in New York City . Report on cooperative research project 3288. New York, NY: Columbia University. This investigation is a classic study and one that helped launch the intensive analysis of AAE that has followed in the years since its publication. It examined a range of consonantal variables: r ‐lessness, /l/deletion, substitutions for /θ/ and /ð/, and consonant cluster simplification. It also established methods for analysing each of these variables. Emphasis was placed on the role of social networks in the degree to which variants associated with AAE occurred. Pederson, Lee A., Susan Leas McDaniel, Guy Bailey, Marvin H. Basset, Carol M. Adams, Caisheng Liao, and Michael B. Montgomery. (eds.) 1986–1992. The Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States , 7 vols. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Volume One, Handbook. Volume Six, Social Matrix. Volume Seven, Social Pattern. The Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States (LAGS) is an unfortunately neglected treasure trove of information about AAE in the South. Phonological, phonetic, and lexical incidence variables are all included, along with morphosyntactic and lexical ones. Information can be found about phonetic variation for all vowels and most consonants. Volume 1 provides descriptions of each subject who was interviewed. Volumes 6 and 7 provide breakdowns by social groupings, including race, for a very large number of variables. The main stumbling block for most potential users is that the presentation style is somewhat opaque. Users have to refer to the introduction to each volume to understand what the tables and maps represent and to see the total number of subjects included in each cell in the tables. The rather daunting layout was a consequence of the need to compress huge amounts of data into the most concise format. Nevertheless, it is well worth a researcher’s time to learn how to use LAGS. Thomas, Erik R. 2011. Sociophonetics: An Introduction . Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave. Although its analyses of AAE are limited to a few illustrative examples, this book should be crucial for future studies of AAE because it demonstrates how to analyse phonetic variables using current techniques from experimental phonetics. It covers both production and perception, and methods for examining segmental, prosodic, and voice quality variables, as well as ways of relating them to cognition. Numerous variables in AAE are unstudied, but this guidebook opens the door to analysis of them.

Foreword by William Labov Preface Acknowledgments Part 1. Orientation 1. Some Common Misconceptions about African American Vernacular English 2. Language and Race: Some Implications of Bias for Linguistic Science Part 2. The Relevance of African American Vernacular English to Education and Social Policies 3. Why What Works Has Not Worked for Nontraditional Students 4. Reading, Writing, and Rap: Lyric Shuffle and Other Motivational Strategies to Introduce and Reinforce Literacy 5. Educational Malpractice and the Ebonics Controversy 6. Linguistic Discrimination and American justice Part 3. Cross-cultural Communication in Social Context 7. The Politics of Black Power Handshakes 8. Changing Terms of Self-reference among American Slave Descendants Part 4. Linguistic Dimensions of African American Vernacular English 9. Steady: Progressive Aspect in African American Vernacular English 10. Come Again: Discourse Functions in African American Vernacular English 11. Hypocorrection: Mistakes in the Production of African American Vernacular English as a Second Dialect 12. Linguistic Perceptions in Black and White: Racial Identification Based on Speech Part 5. Conclusion 13. Research Trends for African American Vernacular English: Anthropology, Education, and Linguistics Notes Glossary References Index

African American Vernacular English (AAVE), which is defined by Geneva Smitherman (1977: 32) as 'European-American speech with Afro-American meaning, nuance, tone, and gesture', has been investigated from various perspectives. Some scholars have focused on the status of AAVE, whether it is a(n African) language or a variety of American English (e.g. Baldwin 2002); others have concentrated on its origins, whether AAVE is derived from a prior Creole, as can be inferred from titles such as 'The Creole Origins of African-American Vernacular English: Evidence from Copula Absence' (Rickford 1998), or whether the variety evolved internally from what Poplack and Tagliamonte (2001) call 'Early African American English', which seemingly diverged from mainstream varieties under conditions of community cohesion and segregation from the dominant white society (Kamwangamalu 2003); and still others have been concerned with the issue whether AAVE is suitable or unsuitable for the schooling of African American children (Ramirez et al. 2005).

More than 80% of African Americans in the United States of America speak the dialect African American Vernacular English (AAVE) (Green, 2002); however, misperceptions of AAVE may have a direct impact on African American students’ equitable access to education in United States public schools (Beneke et al., 2015). African Americans are disproportionality over-represented in special education in disability categories that require subjective clinical judgements, including specific learning disabilities. Numerous factors may contribute to this phenomenon, including the subjective process for special education referrals (Herzik, 2015) and teachers’ biased perceptions of cultural differences, including students’ use of AAVE (Gupta, 2010). The need for educators to build cultural competence and gain knowledge about cultural communication patterns like AAVE is discussed. The purpose of this research study was to investigate the special education referral process amongst teachers, administrators, and support personnel for third graders who communicate using AAVE in writing. A mixed method concurrent design was used for this study (Creswell et al., 2017). Results suggest that vignettes written in AAVE were referred for evaluation 6.5 times more frequently than vignettes written in MAE. Referrals were only made by general education classroom teachers and speech-language pathologists. Educators listed a variety of reasons for making decisions regarding referral to special education, including diversity, dialect, and AAVE. Implications include the need to develop a more complete understanding of choices made for a special education referral that may impact AAVE speaking students and disproportionality in special education.

This study provides milestones for phonological development in African American English (AAE) speakers who are learning Mainstream American English (MAE) as a second dialect. The Dialect Sensitive Language Test (DSLT; H. Seymour, T. Roeper, & J. G. de Villiers, 2000) was administered to a nationwide sample of typically developing children ages 4 through 12: 537 speakers of AAE as a first dialect and 317 speakers of MAE as a first dialect. DSLT items tested all consonant segments and many clusters of MAE in initial and final position. The age at which each dialect group reached 90% criterion for each segment in each position was compared. Several phonetic elements that are contrastive between the dialects (i.e., differentiate the dialects) in word-final position were found to be similar in the 2 groups in word-initial position. Only /eth/ was contrastive in both positions. We confirm the later acquisition of certain phonological segments and structures by AAE speakers compared to MAE speakers and report their earlier mastery of other elements of MAE phonology. Both segmental and phonotactic development show different trajectories for AAE and MAE. Thus, initial diagnosis of impairment for AAE children should focus only on mastery of noncontrastive segments and structures that share a similar developmental profile for the 2 dialect groups.

Foreword

ABSTRACTThe nature of inequality within African American communities is a well-studied phenomenon that continues to yield new insights into how human beings interact in broad terms. Work relations, housing inequity, occupational unevenness to discourse following the end of the “Race Era,” racism, and inequality have all encouraged numerous discussions about African Americans. The literature addressing African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and racial inequality does not focus on the way in which the use of dialect within AAVE reveals critical issues of power and oppression. In other words, scholars have not used dialect as a means of tracing historical oppression. Using principles of critical discourse analysis as a lens, this article outlines the way in which African American English as a communicative event gives insight into the socioeconomic, historical, cultural, and political context in which people and communities are situated. Using the Northern city of Chicago as a case study, I demonstrate that Blacks in the largest city in the Midwest use a rural Southern style dialect in the speech performance of AAVE because of historical social isolation and a legacy of segregation. The way in which people speak illumines a vast interconnectivity of history, culture, and politics.

Research has suggested that children who speak African American English (AAE) have difficulty using features produced in Mainstream American English (MAE) but not AAE, to comprehend sentences in MAE. However, past studies mainly examined dialect features, such as verbal -s, that are produced as final consonants with shorter durations when produced in conversation which impacts their phonetic saliency. Therefore, it is unclear if previous results are due to the phonetic saliency of the feature or how AAE speakers process MAE dialect features more generally. This study evaluated if there were group differences in how AAE- and MAE-speaking children used the auxiliary verbs was and were, a dialect feature with increased phonetic saliency but produced differently between the dialects, to interpret sentences in MAE. Participants aged 6, 5–10, and 0 years, who spoke MAE or AAE, completed the DELV-ST, a vocabulary measure (PVT), and a sentence comprehension task. In the sentence comprehension task, participants heard sentences in MAE that had either unambiguous or ambiguous subjects. Sentences with ambiguous subjects were used to evaluate group differences in sentence comprehension. AAE-speaking children were less likely than MAE-speaking children to use the auxiliary verbs was and were to interpret sentences in MAE. Furthermore, dialect density was predictive of Black participant’s sensitivity to the auxiliary verb. This finding is consistent with how the auxiliary verb is produced between the two dialects: was is used to mark both singular and plural subjects in AAE, while MAE uses was for singular and were for plural subjects. This study demonstrated that even when the dialect feature is more phonetically salient, differences between how verb morphology is produced in AAE and MAE impact how AAE-speaking children comprehend MAE sentences.

The current study examines the effect of dialect for a Black speaker, paying particular attention to the implications for criminal justice processing. Participants in this study heard an audio clip of a Black man describing his weekend and were randomly assigned to hear the account spoken in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) or Mainstream American English (MAE). For half of each sample, the audio clip was described as an alibi. Participants then evaluated the speaker across dimensions related to character and criminality, as well as his race, education, and socio-economic status. Results indicate that the speaker was viewed as having worse character and a greater criminal propensity if he spoke using the AAVE guise rather than the MAE guise. Additionally, participants perceived the AAVE speaker to be more stereotypically Black, less educated, and lower socio-economic status. These findings raise questions about contemporary forms of bias in criminal justice processing.

There is a debate regarding whether the variety of speech called African American Vernacular English (AAVE) participates in any of the vowel shifts identified in today’s American English. Because pronunciation of vowels in AAVE has never been studied with sufficient experimental rigor, it is unknown whether the vowel system of AAVE differs from those of closely-related regional variants of American English. The present experiment examines the apparent resistance of AAVE to assimilation into Southern American English (SAE) and seeks to determine the presence or absence of Southern Vowel Shift in the speech of speakers of AAVE. Acoustic measures of AAVE vowels produced by male speakers born and raised in Statesville, NC (Piedmont region) are compared with the same measures of SAE vowels spoken by European-American male speakers living in western North Carolina. Acoustic measures (obtained from fourteen monophthongs and diphthongs in /<phone>h—<phone>d/ context) included dynamic formant pattern, extended vowel space area for each speaker, the amount of frequency change for F1 and F2 at two temporal points located close to vowel onset and offset (vector length), and vowel duration. These measures will establish both systemic and vowel inherent characteristics within these two varieties of English. Dialectal differences will be discussed. [Work supported by NIH NIDCD R01 DC006871.]

Language is influenced by social differences that appear in society, such as age, gender, religion, power, economic status, and ethnicity. Those social factors produce different kinds of language which is called as variety. Ethnicity as one of the social factors influences the emergence of variety that comes from African American people who lives in United States of America. The variety is called as African American Vernacular English (AAVE). AAVE is often used in literary works to represent African American ethnicity as occurred in Shrek movie through the character of Donkey.This research focused on analyzing the grammatical characteristics of Donkey's AAVE utterances and the factors underlying them through descriptive qualitative research. The result of this research showed that Donkey's AAVE utterances have three AAVE's grammatical features which are verb phrase, negation, and nominal and all four factors which consist of social class, gender, age, and linguistic environment underlying those grammatical characteristics. AAVE grammatical characteristics that appeared in Donkey's utterances are Copula/Auxiliary Absence, Invariant be, Subject-Verb-Agreement, Other Verb Phrase Structure, ain't, multiple negation, ain't with but, and second person plural y'all. Those grammatical characteristics are influenced by Donkey's working class status, his male gender, teenage age, and his mood when the utterances were taking place whether he was comfortable or not. AAVE grammatical characteristics indicate that Donkey's character represents African American ethnicity through his utterances and the factors underlying them show that Donkey's variety is influenced by the social factors that appear in society.

Millions of Black Americans speak a version of English not reflected in the American education system. This version of English—African American Vernacular English—is rule-governed, oral, and systematically different from the “standard” form of English (referred to as Mainstream American English from hereon) used in academic spaces. Though many young Black students enter the education system knowing African American Vernacular English, classroom instruction occurs in Mainstream American English. Black students are instructed in a language that is radically different from the one they use at home yet are expected to perform at levels similar to those of students who already speak mainstream English. This expectation contributes to the achievement gap, wherein Black students, on average, perform at lower levels than white students on evaluations in education. This research, as a community-centered attempt to examine differences in literacy and achievement rates between Black and white students in America, seeks to address the achievement gap in two West Philadelphia elementary schools by leveraging the University of Pennsylvania’s resources. This paper describes my problem-solving learning research, using the Penn Reading Initiative as a vehicle for change in order to support students’ cultural and sociolinguistic backgrounds in the classroom, ideally improving literacy rates through culturally responsive pedagogy. This article lays out the problem of dialectical miscomprehension and details a solution developed alongside community members in West Philadelphia. This article also reflects on the progress made in the two years since the original research took place. It highlights the development of the Netter Center’s Professional Development Associates team and the Anti-Racism Working Group—both having been influenced by work done in this problem-solving learning framework.

The author investigated the use of AAVE by Brian Imanuel or Rich Brian in his rap song lyrics. This study aimed to identify the grammatical features of AAVE in Brian's Amen album. Further, this study was also explored the underlying effect on Brian's use of AAVE. This study applied a descriptive-qualitative method. The context of the data in this study was song lyrics. The results are as follows: Brian rap song lyrics' contained 7 out of AAVE's 13 grammatical features. Those are copula absence, invariant be, completive done, specialized auxiliaries, negation, nominal, and ain't. The causal effect on the use of AAVE by Brian is influenced by the environment or neighborhoods where he grew up. Growing up around his friends who use AAVE in their daily conversation leads him to obtain AAVE's native-like control. Likewise, AAVE's use was the main effect of the linguistic marketplace in order to project identities in stable ways.

At present little is known about regional variations in the phonological characteristics of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Regional variation in AAVE allows for a closer examination of the convergence‐divergence controversy. Researchers are still in disagreement on whether AAVE is converging to white speech or diverging away from white vernaculars. In addition, speakers of AAVE who have more contact with whites have been observed to assimilate toward such speech and have less of a change in their lexicons and phonologies (Ash and Myhill, 1986). These findings have implications for the dialects of African Americans residing in the midwest region where communities are less segregated.The present study investigated AAVE dialect features in the midwestern community of Davenport, Iowa and compared them to those reported by Pollock and Berni (1997) for Memphis, Tennessee – specifically, productions of vocalic and postvocalic /r/ across African American speakers from Davenport and Memphis.Results showed that AAVE speakers from Davenport produced vocalic and postvocalic /r/ in all contexts, in sharp contrast to AAVE speakers from Memphis who showed a consistent pattern of variation in /r/ usage according to phonetic context. The implications of the findings are discussed and directions for future research are outlined.