African American English Research Articles

You good?: Examining the role of intonation and eyebrow movements in sentence type distinction

By analyzing the pitch accents, edge tones, and eyebrow movements of African American English (AAE) speakers, this study examines the coordination of prosody and co-speech gestures. Twelve self-identified AAE speakers engaged in scripted dialogues with an AAE-speaking confederate via Zoom. Half of the dialogues contained the polysemous AAE idiomatic phrase “you good” which has declarative and interrogative forms hypothesized to be distinguished by various eyebrow and intonation patterns. The other dialogues included non-idiomatic phrases semantically related to their “you good” equivalents. These dialogues were designed to explore whether the coordination patterns for the idioms occur with non-idiomatic utterances of the same sentence type. Acoustic data is prosodically annotated using the MAE-ToBI transcription system and visual eyebrow data is tracked using OpenFace 2.0, a facial landmark detection toolkit. The derived eyebrow movement trajectories are time-aligned with the pitch trajectories for the semi-automatic labeling of multimodal signals. The temporal relationship between eyebrow movement landmarks, pitch accents, and edge tones is examined to investigate how different meanings and sentence types are created through their coordination. Preliminary examination indicates intonationally similar contours for the idiomatic and non-idiomatic interrogative phrases, but shared and consistent intonational contours are not evident in the declarative data.

Neural oscillation to music processing in children with different language backgrounds

Musical experience and tonal language experience are both associated with structural and functional changes in the brain that underlie facilitated pitch perception. We investigated whether neuronal oscillations in response to music were correlated with musical expertise and whether they reflected the language backgrounds (tonal versus nontonal, monolingual versus bilingual). We measured music processing in bilingual children (5–10 years old) from Mandarin (a tone language) households and three groups of age-matched children from non-tone language households (Bilingual Spanish-English, monolingual mainstream American English (MAE), and African American English (AAE)). Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded in an oddball paradigm with six types of music changes. We analyzed the phase locking and amplitude modulations of ongoing oscillations in the theta (4–8 Hz) alpha (8–14 Hz), beta- (14–30 Hz), and gamma- (30– 80 Hz) bands to music changes. Preliminary results suggest that musical expertise was associated with strengthened phase locking of neural oscillations to most music features. Tonal language experience was also associated with more robust phase locking. Bilingual experience alone does not show any enhancement in neural oscillation. There were no clear advantages of music processing for the bilingual experience.

The lexical source of BIN and habitual be in African American English

AbstractAlthough various works on African American English (AAE) offer significant and insightful analyses of the semantic interpretation of its aspectual elements, including in particular stressed remote past BIN and habitual be (behab), the syntactic analysis of these elements is problematic. BIN and behab are claimed to be invariant lexical elements with fixed semantic values, and to not interact with INFL (Tense) as auxiliaries do, thus not displaying subject–verb agreement or undergoing any operations typical of finite auxiliaries. However, considerations including syntactic positioning, accompanying auxiliaries, patterns of verb affixation, and the formation of active and passive sentences point instead to BIN and behab being in most instances phonetic manifestations of any of the various ordinary auxiliary verbs be (progressive, passive, and copular), elements of the system of auxiliaries common to both AAE and Mainstream American English (MAE). The surface forms BIN and be are sufficient to trigger their special meanings in logical representation. Semantically dedicated lexical elements are unnecessary. The various interpretations of sentences containing these forms are due to constructional semantic interpretation of various combinations of surface elements. This analysis further reveals the existence of another AAE innovation, a fourth auxiliary verb be unique to AAE indicating simple past.

The Representation of Earlier African American Vernacular English by Charles W. Chesnutt

This article examines the validity of regional speech represented in the writings of an African American short story writer, essayist, lawyer, and stenographer Charles W. Chesnutt (1858–1932) with a corpus of dialogues extracted from his literary works (approximately 40,000 words). As a touchstone for exploring its accuracy, the Atlas data from Fayetteville, North Carolina, and the surrounding regions in Cape Fear and Pee Dee Valley− a region where the author spent his youth and his stories are set−are compared with the speech of his African American characters. The result reveals that the Atlas records and Chesnutt’s dialogues share many expressions in their regional lexicons ranging from single words to phrases. Considering the difficulty of recording all the synonyms and semantically related words from the same informant during the interview, the overall agreement between the two provides further evidence that as an African American writer who spent his formative years in a rural community in North Carolina, Chesnutt’s literary dialect offers a glimpse of earlier AAVE spoken in the region in the mid-nineteenth century. Furthermore, this article touches on Chesnutt’s racial identity and what led him to enter the literary world as it is pertinent to his linguistic background and the motive behind the use of literary dialect.

English Language with Reference to African American Vernacular English and Creating Cultural Attitude in a Multicultural Setting

Language is one of the crucial factors that have developed in humans since ancient times. It is one such source that enables one to communicate with another person and maintain once existence. This language gradually changed its pattern, and now it has become one of the most important factors for not only communication but also survival and English being one of them. The English language today is the language of development, as it is one of the major languages of commerce. In this part, one needs to understand and learn the English language according to the prescribed rules and regulations. But, then, could it be possible to make this language learning process better with more understanding and the inclusion of vernacular language? The paper tries to present the origin and cultural consequences of the use of African-American vernacular English. Also, the paper tries to present that AAVE is no different language than SAE.

Filling in the Blank: The Development of a Writing Screener for Elementary School Students Who Speak African American English.

Clinicians are tasked with using culturally and linguistically appropriate tools to evaluate oral and written language development accurately. However, limited tools account for linguistic diversity in writing. This gap can lead to under- and overdiagnosis of students who speak nonmainstream dialects. This study addressed that gap by developing a writing task to identify nonmainstream dialect features in the writing of early elementary school students. We describe the development, feasibility, and results of pilot testing of the task. One hundred fifty-one first and second graders participated in the study as part of a larger study of nonmainstream dialect use. Students completed standardized literacy and language assessments and the researcher-developed writing task. The writing task used a novel fill-in-the-blank format to identify morphological features that vary between Mainstream American English and nonmainstream varieties such as African American English. Second-grade students performed better on the writing task than first graders, and writing performance was strongly related to standardized literacy scores. Literacy skills were the strongest predictor of Mainstream American English use in writing, but spoken dialect use also correlated with written dialect use. The writing task captured dialect use in early elementary school students' writing, and students' performance on standardized literacy measures predicted written dialect features. These results are a first step toward developing a standardized measure to help professionals appropriately diagnose written expression disorders within linguistically diverse students. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.25079891.

Dialect identification, intelligibility ratings, and acceptability ratings of dysarthric speech in two American English dialects

ABSTRACT The current study explored the intelligibility and acceptability ratings of dysarthric speakers with African American English (AAE) and General American English (GAE) dialects by listeners who identify as GAE or AAE speakers, as well as listener ability to identify dialect in dysarthric speech. Eighty-six listeners rated the intelligibility and acceptability of sentences extracted from a passage read by speakers with dysarthria. Samples were used from the Atlanta Motor Speech Disorders Corpus and ratings were collected via self-report. The listeners identified speaker dialect in a forced-choice format. Listeners self-reported their dialect and exposure to AAE. AAE dialect was accurately identified in 63.43% of the the opportunities; GAE dialect was accurately identified in 70.35% of the opportunities. Listeners identifying as AAE speakers rated GAE speech as more acceptable, whereas, listeners identifying as GAE speakers rated AAE speech as more acceptable. Neither group of listeners demonstrated a difference in intelligibility ratings. Exposure to AAE had no effect on intelligibility or acceptability ratings. Listeners can identify dialect (AAE and GAE) with a better than chance degree of accuracy. One’s dialect may have an effect on intelligibility and acceptability ratings. Exposure to a dialect did not affect listener ratings of intelligibility or acceptability.

“Being a native is not enough if you are not White”: The identity construction trajectory of an African American English language teacher at a Saudi university

Increasing research has recently been devoted to issues of racism within TESOL; however, most studies have been directed towards the unearned privilege of teachers labelled as ‘native English-speaking teachers’ (‘NESTs’) and the unjust marginalization of those perceived as ‘non-native English-speaking teachers’ (‘NNESTs’). This focusing on the former as the exclusive beneficiaries and the latter as the sole victims of racial discrimination has led to overlooking a large portion of language teachers whose professional experiences fit neither group. Approached through the lenses of communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) and critical race theory, and guided by a narrative inquiry approach, this qualitative study tackles this gap by investigating the professional identity construction trajectory of an African American English language teacher working in a dominated by the native speakerism ideology Saudi university. Relying on in-depth interviews as the main data source, the findings revealed that the participant’s trajectory and forms of (non)participation were profoundly, yet detrimentally, shaped by his non-Whiteness. The study concludes with implications for research, practice, and policy.

2. African American English

2. African American English

Linguistic emancipation

Abstract: The term linguistic emancipation embraces various interpretations. One relates to occasions where linguists have helped people overcome problems that are attributable to various linguistic calamities. Another pertinent vector relates to methodological innovations that extricate linguistic research from methodological confinement and that embrace new technologies to help advance our collective scientific mission. These alternative perspectives are illustrated here in small measure through studies of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and gender modification in the speech of a trans woman. The legacy of inventive methodological advances in linguistics is celebrated by emphasizing some liberating linguistic research trajectories in which experimental, self-generated data and descriptive investigations of endangered and underrepresented languages or dialects stand side by side, serving a comprehensive linguistic science in which alternative analytical procedures abound in harmonious complementarity.

“Pseudo-dialect” or “role language”? Speech varieties in three Japanese translations of Gone with the Wind

Abstract This study considers the use of dialectal and distinctive language features in three Japanese translations of the 1936 novel Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, published in 1938, 2015, and 2015–2016. Previous studies have noted that these translations adopt various linguistic features originating in dialects from Japan’s Tōhoku region when rendering the African American Vernacular English–influenced eye dialect spoken by Black enslaved characters, and suggest that this translation strategy draws on and reinforces negative social perceptions of real-life Tōhoku-dialect speakers. Conversely, through a dual approach involving both a comparative textual analysis and a quantitative perceptual survey, this study argues that these speech styles should be viewed rather as an enregistered form of “role language”: a speech variety unique to fictional contexts serving to identify a character archetype that in the eyes of a majority of readers is disassociated from any historical origin.

Book Review: Middle Class African American English

Book Review: Middle Class African American English

Playground Learning: African American English in Latinx Linguistic Repertoires

ABSTRACT This case study applies a raciomultilingual perspective to pre-adolescent language socialization in a majority-African American social and educational context. I examine naturalistic recordings of elementary-school Latinx children during a formative period of migration to Washington, DC, comparing these to contemporary Latinx linguistic repertoires and contextualizing them in the local social environment. Latinxs’ use of AAE historically and in the present day, and in a range of contexts, suggests that AAE features acquired through peer socialization are an enduring part of the local Latinx linguistic repertoire. Results add insight into English language learners’ bilingual repertoire formation in contact situations where minority groups are the local majority and highlight the importance of peer interaction and play in educational contexts as part of language and dialect acquisition more broadly. Findings underscore the inadequacy of linguistic ideologies that assume a one-to-one correlation between language or language variety and ethnocultural identity. The Latinx children are not crossing; rather, their use of AAE appears to be normalized in line with language sharing as part of community socialization.

Grammaticality Judgments of Tense and Agreement by Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder Across Dialects of English.

Within General American English (GAE), the grammar weaknesses of children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have been documented with many tasks, including grammaticality judgments. Recently, Vaughn et al. replicated this finding with a judgment task targeting tense and agreement (T/A) structures for children who spoke African American English (AAE), a dialect that contains a greater variety of T/A forms than GAE. In the current study, we further tested this finding for children who spoke Southern White English (SWE), another dialect that contains a greater variety of T/A forms than GAE but less variety than AAE. Then, combining the SWE and AAE data, we explored the effects of a child's dialect, clinical group, and production of T/A forms on the children's judgments. The data were from 88 SWE-speaking children (DLD, n = 18; typically developing [TD], n = 70) and 91 AAE-speaking children (DLD, n = 34; TD, n = 57) previously studied. As in the AAE study, the SWE judgment data were examined both with A' scores and percentages of acceptability, with comparisons between dialects made on percentages of acceptability. As in AAE, the SWE DLD group had significantly different A' scores and percentages of acceptability than the SWE TD group for all sentence types, including those with T/A structures. Additional analyses indicated that the judgments of the TD but not the DLD groups showed dialect effects. Except for verbal -s, overt production and grammaticality judgments were correlated for the TD but not for the DLD groups. Children with DLD across dialects of English present grammar difficulties that affect their ability to make judgments about sentences. More cross-dialectal research is needed to better understand the grammatical weaknesses of childhood DLD, especially for structures such as verbal -s that are expressed differently across dialects of English.

Intensifying expletive constructions and their use on social media: Innovative functions of the hashtag #wokeAF in English tweets

The hashtag has seen increasing attention in the linguistics literature, in recognition of its prevalence on social media and in other modes of communication. Here, we report on a diachronic analysis of the hashtag #wokeAF in English-language tweets posted between 2012 and 2022. First, we trace the use of the word woke from verb to adjective, with novel uses arising in African American Vernacular English. Such uses then spread into mainstream standard English, eventually being used in a novel construction: the intensifying expletive ([adjective + as + expletive]). Although examples of the intensifying expletive are listed in the Urban Dictionary, to our knowledge, this is the first linguistic analysis of the construction. Second, we analyse semantic interpretations and syntactic characteristics of the intensifying expletive #wokeAF, by documenting its occurrence in tweets spanning eleven years. Analysis of the discourse and the context in which the hashtag appears allows us to uncover its novel use as a collective noun, which in our data, is linked to a pejorative stance. In general, we find innovation in the semantic scope of the hashtag and versatility in its position and integration within tweets. Given the pervasiveness of the word woke in the public consciousness, as evidenced by its occurrence in the popular press, this article aims to fill a timely gap while providing an interesting example of language innovation online.

Cortical processing of Mandarin lexical tone in children with different language backgrounds

Bilingual experience modulates cognitive skills, particularly executive control. However, it is not clear if such modulation can be observed in automatic speech processing. Furthermore, it is unknown if bi-dialectal experience will enhance speech processing. This study aims to investigate whether and how early bilingual experience influences cortical sensitivity for automatic cortical processing of speech, specifically in the context of tonal and non-tonal languages. A passive listening oddball paradigm with two lexical tone contrasts were used and event-related potentials were recorded. An easy contrast (tone 1 versus tone 3) and a hard contrast (tone 2 versus tone 3) were used as the stimuli. Children between 5 and 10 years of age were tested. Preliminary results indicate that monolingual mainstream English, African-American English, and bilingual Mandarin-English learners all showed similar brain responses to the easy lexical tone contrast. However, there was an age effect across language groups. Such results suggest that biological factors such as age are stronger predictors of brain responses to lexical tone contrasts comparing to the factor of language background.

Into the fray: Black English, reading politics, and the legacy of Dr. Ken Goodman

AbstractThis article revisits the legacy of Ken Goodman, specifically his work on African American Language and reading. In this body of scholarship, Goodman and like‐minded scholars entered a fray of competing interests, political agendas, and economic stakes, which continue to plague current debates about the teaching of reading. To make sense of Goodman's contribution, I briefly explore the context in which the research was conducted. I then discuss Goodman's attention to language variation and African American Language, including an illustrative study the compared the reading of elementary grade students from eight linguistic communities. I end by linking this historical body of research to current debates about the reaching of reading.

A Cognitive Linguistic Reading of Features of African American Vernacular English in Kathryn Stockett’s The Help

A Cognitive Linguistic Reading of Features of African American Vernacular English in Kathryn Stockett’s The Help

What do classroom teachers of varying backgrounds know about English spelling?

The ability to encode (spell) is an integral writing skill needed to communicate effectively. The ability to spell, also, enhances decoding as spelling and decoding are reciprocal skills that rely on knowledge of the same subskills. Spelling can also be particularly difficult for students with literacy and phonological-processing difficulties such as dyslexia. Because of the multiple benefits of knowing how to spell correctly, it is important for teachers to know the structure of the English language, so they can explicitly teach spelling. Through the administration of a survey, this study assessed 324 U.S. teachers' knowledge of English spelling patterns (Part 1). In addition, the inclusion of survey items intended to measure teachers' awareness of how children's spelling can be influenced by either African American English or the overlap between Spanish and English in emergent bilinguals. African American English and Spanish were chosen due to the underperformance of many African American and Hispanic/Latinx students on national and state reading assessments. Part 2 of the survey assessed teachers' self-efficacy in teaching spelling, while Part 3 assessed teachers' philosophy about spelling and teaching spelling. The Rasch analyses revealed that teachers whose primary area of teaching was reading outperformed those whose primary area of teaching was not reading. Additionally, teachers who taught Emergent Bilinguals outperformed those who did not on the constructs measuring words with possible influences of Spanish language on the spelling of English words. Several spelling patterns posed problems for all groups of teachers, while others were the least difficult for teachers. Practical and research implications are addressed.

Grammatical Analysis of African American Vernacular English in The Eminem Show Album: A Linguistics Perspective

Albeit the research on African American Vernacular English (AAVE) as nonstandard form of English spoken by African Americans in lower socioeconomic classes has been documented by many scholars, little is known about it from the perspective of Wolfram's theory. To fill this lacuna, the present study aims to elucidate the grammatical elements of Eminem's lyrics song in the album "The Eminem Show." This single case study showcased 32 lyrics song from Eminem's album with that seven grammatical features such as copula/auxiliary absence, the invariant be, the remote been, the subject verb agreement, the negation, the question formation, and the nominals. The findings found that negation is the most common grammatical features whereas the invariant be is the least common. The findings indicated that songs serve as a platform for asserting identity and criticizing diverse social, cultural, political, and economic issues. The performers are free to improvise in accordance with the tendencies and interests of the critic. Thus, the song can serve both to identify the current social crisis and as a catalyst for the crisis itself.