African American English Research Articles

Range in the Use and Realization of BIN in African American English.

This paper jointly considers syntactic, semantic, and phonological/phonetic factors in approaching an understanding of BIN, a remote past marker in African American English that has been described as "stressed." It brings together data from the Corpus of Regional African American Language (CORAAL) and a production study in a small African American English-speaking community in southwest Louisiana to investigate the use and phonetic realization of BIN constructions. Only 20 instances of BIN constructions were found in CORAAL. This sparsity was not simply due to a dearth of semantic contexts for BIN in the interviews, since 122 instances of semantically equivalent been + temporal adverbial variants were also found. These results raise questions about the extent to which BIN constructions and been + temporal adverbial variants are used in different pragmatic and discourse contexts as well as in different speech styles. The production study elicited BIN and past participle been constructions in controlled syntactic and semantic environments. The phonetic realization of BIN was found to be distributed over the entire utterance rather than localized to BIN. BIN utterances were distinguished from past participle been utterances by having higher ratios of fundamental frequency (F0), intensity, and duration in BIN/been relative to preceding and following material in the utterance. In both studies, BIN utterances were generally realized with a high F0 peak on BIN and a reduced F0 range in the post-BIN region, with variability in the presence and kinds of F0 movements utterance-initially and utterance-finally, as well as in F0 downtrends in the post-BIN region.

“It Was Like Listening to Someone Laughing Their Way Toward Death”: Black Noise, Vocal Experiments, and Sonic Silence in Chester Himes’s The Heat’s On

Abstract The article draws together sound studies and Black studies to examine Himes’s sonic inventions and interventions for imagining the persistence of Black life under conditions of extreme domination. Taking up Sharpe’s call for recognizing “insistent Black visualsonic resistance to that imposition of non/being,” it finds that Himes’s soundscapes in The Heat’s On offer alternatives to how western sound studies theoreticians think about the relationship between sound, white supremacy, and the environment (21). The article contributes to research on the sonic modalities of resistance and domination as well as ongoing discussions about the importance of listening, specifically, the ways in which listening fosters alternative forms of relationality and spatiality. As far as the sonic subversions and experiments of Harlemites, “Black noise” emerges as something that bypasses attempts at capture, including dominant cultural norms, strategies of silencing, and raciolinguistic attitudes toward vernacular forms of Black English. Finally, the article emphasizes the link between what it terms sonic silence, embodied practices of listening and breathing where keeping breath in the Black body can be seen as a prerequisite to interconnected forms of consciousness and being.

American English pitch accents in variation: Pushing the boundaries of mainstream American English-ToBI conventions

Linguists interested in intonation have long struggled to establish a maximally broad set of annotation conventions that function equally well across varieties of American English. The current study tests the advantages and limitations of the widely-used MAE-ToBI conventions, focusing on the H* and L+H* distinction, for three varieties of American English: African American English, Appalachian English, and Jewish English. Results of quantitative analysis of production data from 30 speakers of the three varieties finds major differences in rate of use of the H* and L+H* pitch accent as well as the phonetic realizations of these pitch accents, which may not be captured solely using the MAE-ToBI conventions. These differences appear not only between MAE-ToBI and the other three varieties, but also between the varieties themselves in unique ways that may shed light on the nature of sociolinguistic variation at the level of intonation, as well as the debated status of the distinction of H* vs. L+H* as a phonological or phonetic distinction. These findings provide further motivation for the development and use of annotation systems that explicitly consider sociolinguistic variation as well as phonetic parameters. Such systems will become even more essential as both sociolinguists and phoneticians expand intonational analysis beyond so-called “standard varieties” in order to arrive at a richer and more accurate picture of the intonational system of American English.

A Study of African American English Variant Based on the Corpus of Afro-American Music

As black culture became a trend, African American English, used by the majority of Afro-Americans, also gained influence. In order to solve the prejudice and misunderstanding toward language variant, this paper, taking Afro-American music as corpus, sorts out the characteristics and development history of AAE, introduces the concept of language variant, and analyzes AAE from the perspective of sociolinguistics. It is expected to arouse the attention to AAE English variant in the field.

Sociopsychological cost of AAE-to-SAE code-switching

Objective: This conceptual article outlines the sociopsychological cost that speakers of African American English (AAE) may incur when having to use the Standard dialect of American English (SAE) in academic and professional settings. Its goal is to detail the challenges to speakers’ self-concept resulting from this cost, to outline how clinical work may be affected by it, and to issue a call of action to qualitative researchers in the field of communication sciences and disorders. It will be argued that a symbolic interactionist account of identity, informed by qualitative research data, can guide clinicians into action regarding therapy and advocacy. Methods: A contrastive definition of code-switching versus code-mixing/code-meshing or translanguaging will be provided. Existing research, cultural artifacts, and personal accounts will be used to illustrate the sociopsychological cost of code-switching, and the ways in which it can have important impacts on individuals’ self-concept and their attitude toward learning. In order to conceptualize these dynamics in interactional terms, Mead’s model of the self will be deployed. Results: It can be expected that a sizable portion of African American children and adolescents incur sociopsychological cost when faced with the expectation to code-switch from AAE to SAE at school. This cost can be explained using a Meadian model of identity. Little research has explored this cost, the interactional dynamics in which it is incurred, or its impact on speech-language therapy. Summary and conclusion: Speech-language pathologists’ scope of practice includes therapeutic work with students who speak AAE, as well as advocacy for all students, disordered or not, who are faced with the cost of this particular type of code-switching. Qualitative research in the field of communication sciences and disorders is uniquely well suited to illuminate the precise form of the interactional dynamics in question, and to develop ways of addressing them in clinical and advocacy work. Such research should employ a symbolic interactionist model of identity that is not tied to psychological assumptions, but which can be derived entirely from empirical observations.

Deriving a complex <em>BIN</em> through adverbial <em>BIN</em> complexes

Work by Green (1998) discusses 3 sub-types of stressed BIN in African American English (AAE): stative, habitual, and completive. BIN constructions that co-occur with temporal adverbials exhibit limited grammaticality, with each sub-type differing in how they interact with these adverbials. Non-BIN constructions that involve multiple instances in the same clause of adverbials of the same class exhibit restrictions that resemble BIN + adverbial data. Drawing on works that analyze BIN as a remote past marker (Rickford 1975, Green 1998) and on works connecting adverbial position to interpretation (Ernst 2020), I argue that BIN is an adverbial itself that situates the initiation of an eventuality in the remote past. This adverbial BIN, in concert with certain combinations of tense and aspect, forms a complex that makes up the canonical BIN construction.

“You don’t know nothin’ bout no Earth, Wind, and Fire”: Reexamining negative concord and definiteness in African American English

AAE is described as exhibiting negative concord, similar to other varieties of English, in which negation licenses c-commanded n-words as well as Negative Polarity Items (NPIs). Crucially, these are thought to be licensed only when the noun phrase they modify is indefinite. Here, our object of study is an under-described phenomenon in AAE: under certain discourse conditions, AAE licenses no before a definite noun phrase (as in “You don't know nothin’ bout no Kendrick Lamar”). We argue that this phenomenon should not be situated in the syntax (as a previously unattested definite n-word), but rather in pragmatics, as speakers “demote” definite NPs to indefinite as part of a discourse strategy of signaling disagreement with, and rejection of, listener assumptions. This has implications for existing analyses of AAE negation, and for cross-dialect comprehension, camouflage constructions, and linguistic ideologies and discrimination. We also revisit existing canonical examples of AAE negation in light of this new analysis (eg., “it ain't no cat can't get in no coop” in Labov 1972).

Surprised by Sound: Rhyme’s Inner Workings

Surprised by Sound: Rhyme’s Inner Workings

Navigating Black Identity and White Desire: Seven-Eleven and the 1920s Crossover Musical Comedy

Navigating Black Identity and White Desire: <i>Seven-Eleven</i> and the 1920s Crossover Musical Comedy

About the Contributors

About the Contributors

Debate Surrounding Black Linguistics

This paper provides an assessment of the origins and growth of African American Vernacular English. It presents background on AAVE by discussing its users and its cultural role in the Black community and explores the two main theories in the debate surrounding the subsequent development of the vernacular, with focus on specific linguistic evidence relating to the variable copula absence.

Tracey L. Weldon, Middle-class African American English. New York: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 300. Hb. $100.

Tracey L. Weldon, Middle-class African American English. New York: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 300. Hb. $100.

Dis, Dat, and Dem: Addressing linguistic awareness for counselors of African American English speakers

AbstractUpward of 80% of Black people speak some variant of African American English (AAE). The counseling profession is a language‐oriented form of help seeking, yet the relevance of linguistic diversity in a counseling context is largely absent from scholarly literature. Using Critical Race Theory as a theoretical framework, the authors provide a definition of AAE, as well as historical and sociopolitical contextual information about AAE. Important clinical implications for working effectively with AAE speakers are identified.

Consonant Cluster Productions in Preschool Children Who Speak African American English.

The aim of this study was to compare word-initial and word-final consonant cluster productions in young children who speak African American English (AAE) and compare their productions to what we know about cluster productions in children who speak Mainstream American English (MAE), in order to minimize misdiagnosis of speech sound disorders. Twenty-two children (ages 2;10-5;4 [years;months]) labeled pictures whose names contained at least one consonant cluster in word-initial and/or word-final position. Most two-element clusters of English were sampled, the majority in two or more words. The participants' responses were transcribed using a consensus transcription procedure. Each cluster attempt was analyzed for its similarity with MAE. Percentage matching scores were significantly higher for word-initial than word-final clusters. Word-final clusters produced as singletons were significantly more common than word-final cluster substitutions. However, word-initial cluster substitutions were significantly more common than word-initial clusters produced as singletons. Word-initial cluster mismatches were consistent with markedness theory and the sonority sequencing principle (SSP). By contrast, word-final cluster mismatches were not consistent with the SSP, while the voicing generalization seen in adult speakers of AAE was evident. Culturally and linguistically appropriate assessment of phonological development in children who speak AAE requires an understanding of the contrastive and noncontrastive features exemplified in their consonant cluster productions.

Social justice in applied linguistics: Not a conclusion, but a way forward

Abstract in African American English as Anne Would Use It Teaching a Class or Giving a TalkCharity Hudley and Flores give you the real about the papers in this volume and share their direct vision for how to take this work forward in theory and practice. They shout out the leadership of emerging scholars as key to dreaming a world and a role for applied linguistics in the ongoing struggle for justice and liberation throughout the whole world. They lift up the volumes as the start of a new model of justice in scholarly publishing in applied linguistics and linguistics, where the conversations between emerging and more established scholars are more regularly integrated into our scholarly output. In doing so, the flavor that emerging scholars are adding to our understanding of language in various applied contexts will more quickly become part of the educational policy and practice that we legit need everywhere all the time.

Power to the People: Using Black English and Rap to Empower Students

Power to the People: Using Black English and Rap to Empower Students

The Status of ain't in Philadelphia African American English

AbstractThis paper investigates use of ain't in a corpus of naturalistic speech from forty-two African-American Philadelphians. Use of ain't in past/perfective contexts where it varies with didn't is considered a unique feature of AAE. This use is compared in apparent time to uses of ain't in tense-aspect environments shared with other English varieties. Results show that past/perfective uses of ain't increased during the twentieth century while use in other contexts remained stable, supporting the hypothesis that past/perfective uses resulted from recent change. Generalized linear models for ain't in past/perfective and other contexts show that sociostylistic and linguistic constraints are otherwise the same across contexts. Finally, evidence that a past/perfective use of ain't resulted from either the phonetic reduction of didn't or a shift in meaning from uses of ain't in anterior contexts is examined.

A meeting of the minds: Broadening horizons in the study of linguistic discrimination and social justice through sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic approaches

Abstract 1Understanding social justice as it relates to linguistic discrimination and identity requires consideration of both production and perception. As linguists and cognitive psychologists become more attuned to talking about social justice, the need to discuss linguistic human behaviors through a sociocognitive lens becomes more pertinent than ever. This article offers a sociocognitive approach to linguistic analysis as a means to combat linguistic discrimination in the pursuit of social justice. Having negative ideologies about a particular group of people, especially a minoritized group, influences linguistic prediction and perceptions. Together, sociolinguistic and psychological methodologies are necessary to navigate a world in which people use linguistic knowledge to make decisions and predictions about their interlocutors. I use sociocognitive approaches as vehicles for social justice, centering African American English and Anti-Black Racism. The limited existing sociocognitive linguistic research indicates that listeners may modulate their linguistic expectations during cognitive processing based on speaker identity and stereotypes of speakers. As linguistic discrimination is ever-present in U.S. society, in addition to describing sociocognitive solutions, this article also represents a call to action for researchers to empirically test ideological claims about linguistic varieties that are passively accepted, strengthen replicability, and broaden approaches to the study of minoritized varieties more generally. Hopefully, this article will inspire linguistics researchers to consider all factors, cognitive and social, related to linguistic perception, further contributing to a greater understanding of how to combat linguistic discrimination from a multidimensional frame.

Linguistic Varieties in Homegoing: Translating the Other’s Voice into Spanish

The objective of this paper is to study the Spanish translation of Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing (2016), a novel that adopts the form of a neo-slave narrative to chronicle a black family’s history from eighteenth-century Ghana to the early twenty-first century in the United States. The contexts in which both the source and target text were published will be described, paying attention to paratexts, to the book’s reception, and to the translation’s positive reviews. Gyasi’s debut oeuvre depicts alterity and the non-standard linguistic varieties, such as Black English, spoken by the dispossessed Other. This paper examines the strategies that the translator, Maia Figueroa (2017), has made use of to render this interplay of voices into Spanish. In addition, it considers how her choice to standardize some fragments and to introduce marked non-standard language in certain passages affects the reflection of the narrative Us vs. Otherness in the target text.

The legacy of Sea Island Creole English: Sociolinguistic features of Gullah

This paper builds on the renewed interest in preserving the multiethnic origins of the United States and recognizing a profound impact of the Black experience on the American nation. The article centers on the Gullah language, one of the primary roots of modern African American English and the only remaining English-related Creole language in North America. The pidgin language, which originally evolved as a medium of communication between slaves from various regions of Africa and their owners, is still spoken by Black communities across coastal regions of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. While inland African American English (AAE) has received much attention in linguistic circles over past decades, relatively little research has been done on varieties of AAE spoken in the rural American South. The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the origin and history of Gullah and to present a linguistic description of its most peculiar features. The Gullah language represents a combination of English and Central and West African languages. Geographical isolation, predominance of the Black population, and social and economic independence contributed to its development and survival. Also, in contrast with inland African Americans, the Gullah Geechee communities historically have had little contact with whites. Several folktales written in Gullah have been analyzed for discussing its persistent patterns. Characterizing Gullah is important for our increased understanding of the origins of AAE. Therefore, the article will be useful for scholars interested in Atlantic creoles and in African American and Diaspora Studies.