African American English Research Articles

Achiever of Higher Self: A Humanistic Study of Celie’s Character in the Novel, Color Purple

A. Maslow in his book Motivation and Personality (1954) presents the five-stage hierarchy Model, emphasizes on the fulfilment of needs to achieving higher self. Based on textual analysis, the study demonstrates how the protagonist Celie, from the novel Color Purple written by Alice Walker, follows the gratification of needs in edict to connect the higher self. The evolution of character’s personality has been appraised thoroughly at each level, gives an equal attentive of new visions into her conduct and relationships with other characters. The Colloquial African-American dialect of the text is taken metaphorically, formulates the scarcity of needs created by external milieu. It is inimitably distinguished to identify the one of the major forces after her unusual, capricious and incoherent behaviors are usual social human drives.

Grammatical Reanalysis and the Multiple N-Words in African American English

African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is developing a class of previously undescribed function words, facilitated by the semantic generalization of the word nigga. The authors demonstrate that nigga is unspecified for race, gender, or humanness. They argue that there are multiple n-words, fulfilling different grammatical and social functions. Using a variety of sources, they show that there are new pronouns in AAVE based on nigga—moreover, they pattern with pronouns, not imposters, with respect to binding, agreement, and theta-role assignment. Vocatives and honorics are also explored. The article concludes with a discussion of the origin of these forms and their relevance both to linguistic controversy and to societal controversy around the taboo word and the stigmatized dialect.

Django Unbleached: The Languages of Power and Authenticity in Mainstream Film

:Though racial representation among top-billed actors in mainstream film is improving, serious Black heroes who speak African American vernacular English (AAVE) are still nearly nonexistent in these roles. Jamie Foxx's character Django from Quentin Tarantino's 2012 film Django Unchained may represent the only one in a successful, mainstream film in the twenty-first century. Unlike other characters who speak AAVE, Django is neither silly nor stupid. Tarantino expresses power through language in this character and others in the film, and Django's AAVE dialect is presented as equal in authority to the dialects of the film's white characters.

Phonetic cues influence judgment of syntax

This speech perception experiment provides evidence of interaction between phonetic and syntactic cues associated with socio-/ethnolects. These phonetic and syntactic (socio)linguistic cues were crossed in stimuli recorded by speakers of African American English (AAE), Southern Standard British English (BrE), and General American English (GAE). Thus, some of the sentences listeners heard contain 'matching' cues—for example, a have raising question with BrE phonetic features—while the others contain “mismatching” cues much less likely to have been experienced together by listeners. Listeners (n = 30) rated the spoken utterances' acceptability on a scale of 1 to 5; response time was recorded. The mixed-effects linear regression fitted to the Z-transformed data shows BrE and AAE constructions are more acceptable when the phonetic cues match. The effect is most robust for the BrE accent; compared to estimates for the GAE accent ( β = 0:9538, p < 0.001), those for the BrE accent are overall lower (β = −0.106, p = 0.048). The penalty is effectively counteracted, however, when the BrE voice is producing the associated syntactic construction (β = 0:181, p = 0:017). Response time data also suggests stimuli with matching cues are processed faster (t = -2:3586, p = 0:01856).To my knowledge, this is the first experimental evidence of an effect of accent on syntactic acceptability.

Specific Language Impairment in African American English and Southern White English: Measures of Tense and Agreement With Dialect-Informed Probes and Strategic Scoring.

PurposeIn African American English and Southern White English, we examined whether children with specific language impairment (SLI) overtly mark tense and agreement structures at lower percentages than typically developing (TD) controls, while also examining the effects of dialect, structure, and scoring approach.MethodOne hundred six kindergartners completed 4 dialect-informed probes targeting 8 tense and agreement structures. The 3 scoring approaches varied in the treatment of nonmainstream English forms and responses coded as Other (i.e., those not obligating the target structure). The unmodified approach counted as correct only mainstream overt forms out of all responses, the modified approach counted as correct all mainstream and nonmainstream overt forms and zero forms out of all responses, and the strategic approach counted as correct all mainstream and nonmainstream overt forms out of all responses except those coded as Other.ResultsWith the probes combined and separated, the unmodified and strategic scoring approaches showed lower percentages of overt marking by the SLI groups than by the TD groups; this was not always the case for the modified scoring approach. With strategic scoring and dialect-specific cut scores, classification accuracy (SLI vs. TD) was highest for the 8 individual structures considered together, the past tense probe, and the past tense probe irregular items. Dialect and structure effects and dialect differences in classification accuracy also existed.ConclusionsAfrican American English– and Southern White English–speaking kindergartners with SLI overtly mark tense and agreement at lower percentages than same dialect–speaking TD controls. Strategic scoring of dialect-informed probes targeting tense and agreement should be pursued in research and clinical practice.

“More Like You”: Disrupting Native Speakerism Through a Multimodal Online Intercultural Exchange

Research over the past decades has demonstrated the harmful effects of native speakerism in English language teaching, including how perceptions of native speaker status are deeply intertwined with race and national identity. Recently, scholars have begun to investigate how teacher training programs might push back on native speakerism by providing classroom opportunities for students to challenge their assumptions about native speakers. This article discusses the disruptive potential of an online intercultural learning activity in which MA TESL students in Sri Lanka communicated through digital platforms with undergraduates in New York City. Drawing on data from interviews and students’ online writing, this study suggests that, as students shared videos and “linguistic landscape” images and discussed language differences, the MA TESL students confronted linguistic and racial diversity in the United States, recognizing the presence of dialects like African American Vernacular English and drawing on shared English as a second language status to gain confidence in communicating internationally. Ultimately, both groups of students began to question their beliefs about the superiority of inner circle speakers. The article concludes by discussing the benefits of the increased awareness of linguistic variation, considering how this might encourage teachers to move beyond native speaker standards in the classroom, and offering practical suggestions for implementing similar projects.

Assessing hip-hop discourse: Linguistic realness and styling

AbstractThis study provides a corpus-linguistic take on hip-hop discourse (as represented in rap), relating to one of the most influential cultural mass movements to date. To this end, a custom-built corpus of lyrics by US-American rap artists (LYRAP) was compiled, containing performed hip-hop discourse over a 25-year period. This material is used to test the alignment of hip-hop discourse with African American English in terms of morphosyntax, and to determine the amount of styling present in the lyrics. In addition, a comparative perspective with pop lyrics (as represented in the LYPOP corpus) is established, and highly characteristic lexical and discourse features of hip-hop discourse are identified. The analyses suggest that “linguistic realness” (in terms of conveying a street-conscious identity) is created on multiple structural levels, but that different artists style their lyrics to various extents to achieve this realness, and that a complete congruence of African American English with hip-hop discourse cannot be traced.

The Translation Result Evaluation Of Non-Standard English Simple Sentences (African American Vernacular English) Into Indonesian In The Novel Entitled The Help By Kathryn Stockett

&lt;p align="center"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstrak&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This research is an overall view over translation of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) especially simple sentences in the novel The Help by an American author Kathryn Stockett and in the translation by Barokah Ruziati. The writer chooses this topic and the novel as main sources that are analyzed because she realizes that the use of Non-Standard English particularly AAVE is rarely used in writing novels in general.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The objectives of this research are: (1) to analyze the translation of simple sentences from Non-Standard English into simple sentences from Standard Indonesian; (2) and to analyze the result that accordance with a good criteria of translation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This novel is written in Non-Standard English particularly AAVE and it is translated into Standard Indonesian. The writer analyzes simple sentences in the novel to figure out the quality of its translation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;To analyze this novel the writer uses descriptive qualitative method. The writer analyzes descriptive data in form sentences, in specific are simple sentences that are taken from the novel. From this research it can be conclude that there is&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;63.29% of accurate translation and 36.70% of less accurate translation. &lt;/p&gt;

“Sassy Queens”: Stylistic orthographic variation in Twitter and the enregisterment ofAAVE

AbstractRecent computational sociolinguistic analyses of social media have emphasized the potential of using orthographic variation as a proxy for speech, thereby permitting macro‐level quantitative studies of regional and social variation (e.g. Eisenstein, 2015). However, the extent to which stylistic variation may affect these analyses remains largely unexplored. In this paper, I explore how authors use variant spellings stylistically to deploy personae and characterological figures (Agha, 2003), by examining the presence of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) features in a corpus of 15,804 tweets extracted from the timelines of 10 gay British men. I argue that the stylization ofAAVEsignals the development of a very specific persona—the “Sassy Queen”—which relies on an essentialized imagining of Black women as “fierce” and “sassy.” Concluding, I emphasize the value of micro‐level analyses in complementing quantitative analyses of linguistic variation in social media.

An examination of cultural-linguistic influences on PPVT-4 performance in African American and Hispanic preschoolers from low-income communities

ABSTRACTIn this study, we examined potential influences of cultural and linguistic background on PPVT-4 performance in a community sample of preschool-age children from low-SES households. We did this by evaluating PPVT-4 item-level performance across African American and Hispanic children from low-income families. We compared PPVT-4 item-level performance for 332 Hispanic and African American children (Mage = 48 months) using Wald chi-square tests of independence. There were clinically significant differences in accuracy on 14 PPVT-4 test items with most favouring the African American group. We then looked at the relationship between African American English use and PPVT-4 scores for a subset of 113 African American children (Mage = 49.9 months). A correlational analysis with PPVT-4 standard scores and a dialect density measure (DDM) in narratives revealed no association between these measures. We concluded that there were potential cultural-linguistic biases in PPVT-4 items that were not explained by income alone for the young Hispanic children.

#aintnobodygottimeforthat: cultural appropriation, stylization and the social life of hashtag interjectionality

Th is paper will discuss a particular hashtag meme as one example of a potential new manifestation of interjectionality, engendered and fostered in the written online context of social media. Th e case derives from a video meme and hashtag from the United States which ‘went viral’ in 2012. We will ask to what extent hashtags might perform interjectional-type functions over and above their referential functions, thereby having links to other, more prototypically interjectional elements. Th e case will also be discussed from multiple sociolinguistic perspectives: as an example of the (indirect) signifying of ‘whiteness’ through ‘black’ discourse, as cultural appropriation in the context of potential policing of these racial divides in the United States, and as a case of performative stylization which highlights grammatical markers while simultaneously downplaying phonological markers of African American English. We will end by speculating as to the implications of the rise of (variant forms of) hashtags for processes of creative language use in the future.

Nonword Repetition Across Two Dialects of English: Effects of Specific Language Impairment and Nonmainstream Form Density.

Purpose Nonword repetition (NWR) has been proposed as a culturally and linguistically fair measure of children's language abilities that is useful for the identification of specific language impairment (SLI). However, Moyle, Heilmann, and Finneran (2014) suggested that the density of a child's nonmainstream forms also influences NWR in ways that could complicate its use. Using speakers of either African American English (AAE) or Southern White English (SWE), we asked if NWR performance differed in children with SLI and same dialect-speaking typically developing (TD) children and if nonmainstream form density impacted their scores. Method The participants were 106 kindergartners (AAE: SLI n = 35; TD n = 35; SWE: SLI n = 18; TD n = 18; groups matched for age and IQ) who performed the NWR task of Dollaghan and Campbell (1998) . Nonmainstream form density measures were gathered from listener judgments of conversational samples. Results NWR performance differed between those with and without SLI, but the difference was smaller in AAE than in SWE, especially at the longest syllable length. Nonmainstream form density was found to further explain NWR performance beyond the children's SLI status for AAE speakers; density and SLI status were confounded for the SWE speakers, making it harder to disentangle the effects of each in that dialect. Conclusions Results indicate the NWR may differ in diagnostic utility between speakers of different dialects. Results also support Moyle et al.'s (2014) finding that density affects NWR. Thus, NWR is more sensitive to dialectal differences than originally assumed.

We Gon’ Be Alright? The Ambiguities of Kendrick Lamar’s Protest Anthem

The best-known track on Kendrick Lamar’sTo Pimp a Butterfly, “Alright” has come to be regarded as a protest anthem, fueled by Lamar’s charged performances of the song at the BET Awards and the Grammys, and by accolades from the press that cite its political importance. This article argues that the actual musical track is ambiguous and open to several interpretations. To support this idea, I first explore the process through which the track came into being and how this process may have contributed to the song’s ambiguity. I then examine the message of “Alright,” contextualizing its place in the concept album and in the music video. I closely examine the musical track, analyzing its accent patterns using the metrical preference rules of Lerdahl and Jackendoff (".fn_cite_year($lerdahl_1983).") and David Temperley (".fn_cite_year($temperley_2001)."). This analysis of the track implies a 3&amp;plus;5 or 3&amp;plus;2&amp;plus;3 beat reading of the meter in addition to a straight ".fn_meter(4,4).". Using the linguistic tool Praat, I analyze the ways in which rappers Fabolous (who originally recorded on the track) and Lamar respond to this meter in their stresses, rhythms, and rhymes. I examine the well-known hook, which Pharrell Williams raps with a striking rise in pitch. This rise lends itself to several possible interpretations, due to differences in intonation between African American English and standard American English, coupled with Williams’s fluency in both. Finally, I analyze the ways that protesters have performed and interpreted the hook differently from the recording, as an illustration of the multivalent nature of the work.

Dialect on trial: use of African American Vernacular English influences juror appraisals

ABSTRACTWe investigated the effect of dialect and race on juror decision making. Mock jurors read a summary of an ambiguous criminal case, which included audio of a defense witness (Study 1) or defendant (Study 2). Both speaker dialect [General American English (GAE)/African American Vernacular English (AAVE)] and race (White/Black) were crossed; Study 2 also included three levels of case (Ambiguous/Pro-Prosecution/Pro-Defense) to evaluate any effects of evidentiary context. In both studies, jurors who listened to the AAVE recording found the AAVE-speaking witness to be less professional and less educated than their GAE-speaking counterparts. Interestingly, jurors in Study 2 who heard the defendant use GAE were more likely to find him guilty and found him less credible when the case favored the prosecution, hinting that ingroup biases such as the black sheep effect may also play a role in perceptions of dialect. Secondary analyses found that AAVE predicted more negative overall evaluations of the speaker, and these negative evaluations were associated with an increase in guilty verdicts. Together, these findings suggest that dialect plays an under-investigated role in the courtroom, and that bias against AAVE negatively impacts juror appraisals of its speakers and can potentially influence juror decision making.

Enclaving and cultural resonance in Black "Game of Thrones" fandom

Because of the ways fandom is constructed as white, Black fans are often overlooked or marginalized. Black Game of Thrones (2011–) fans create a parallel culturally resonant fandom organized around an African American Vernacular English–inflected iteration of the show's title, Dem Thrones. Through podcast recaps and the use of nonstandard hashtags for live tweeting, these fans draw on the affordances of digital media to create enclaved fan spaces. In addition to creating parallel and sequestered fandoms, Dem Thrones fans also engage in culturally resonant fan practices that use Black cultural commonplaces and center Black experiences. Dem Thrones fans draw on vernaculars and Black cult media to interpret the show through Black cultural lenses. They also use strategies for reading otherwise absent Black cultural specificity into the text. Seizing on resemblances to Black linguistic, aesthetic, or social practices, Dem Thrones fan map Black culture onto a text, creating opportunities for identification despite a dearth of Black representation.

Racial categorization and word identification: The influence of sex, race and regional dialect

The speech signal provides information on talker characteristics including socio-ethnic affiliation and racial identity. Regional variation, both similar and divergent from White American English, has been described in African American English. However, it is unknown if such regional dialect variation influences listeners’ racial categorization or word identification accuracy. This work evaluated the influence of listeners’ sex, race, and regional dialect on racial categorization and word identification for Black and White talkers from two dialect regions within North Carolina. Black and White listeners (n = 23) from eastern and central North Carolina participated. In the racial categorization task, listeners heard /hVd/ words produced by male and female Black and White talkers from eastern and western North Carolina. Listeners categorized the perceived talker race for each token as Black or White. In the word identification task, the same listeners matched the speech tokens from the same talkers to one of fourteen /hVd/ words. Results showed an effect of listener sex on word identification accuracy such that female listeners were more accurate than male listeners. No effect of listener race or regional dialect was observed for either task. Follow-up analyses will investigate the interaction between listener and talker sex, race, and regional dialect.

Celebrating the belittled and understanding the beloved: A review of Talking Black in America - Walt Wolfram, Neal Hutchison &amp; Danica Cullinan (producers), Talking Black in America: The Story of African American English. Raleigh: The Language and Life Project at NC State, 2017. DVD $20

Celebrating the belittled and understanding the beloved: A review of Talking Black in America - Walt Wolfram, Neal Hutchison &amp; Danica Cullinan (producers), Talking Black in America: The Story of African American English. Raleigh: The Language and Life Project at NC State, 2017. DVD $20 - Volume 35 Issue 3

How Does a Metalinguistic Phonological Intervention Impact the Reading Achievement and Language of African American Boys?

Researchers consistently find a correlation between low literacy levels and high school dropout rates, expulsion, reading achievement, and failing grades for African American males. Low literacy achievement in African American males may result from multiple factors, including dialectic linguistic differences and/or phonological awareness abilities. Phonological deficits are consistently associated with dyslexia. This article documents results from a metacognitive flexibility-based phonological intervention designed to mitigate the effects of dialect differences and phonological awareness among African American boys. Based on their scaled scores on the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing–Second Edition Elision subtest, we placed participants in 2 different groups: low phonological awareness (n = 13) and average phonological awareness (n = 17). The 4-week intervention included manipulative phonemic procedures targeting final consonant patterns with an emphasis on a metacognitive understanding of phonological differences between African American English and academic English. We analyzed pre- and posttest data on resulting reading achievement, phonological awareness, and dialect variation using multivariate analysis of variance/multivariate analysis of covariance. We used hierarchical regression to analyze the prediction of reading achievement scores. The findings of this study suggest several recommendations for teachers to increase phonological awareness abilities among students who are at risk for reading difficulties. Teachers can also implement explicit instruction combining phonemic manipulation and verbal scaffolding related to a metacognitive understanding of the phonological differences between African American English and academic English.

Exploring the Master Narrative: Racial Knowledge and Understanding of Language and Literacy Pedagogy for Special Education Teacher Candidates

Researchers have revisited the influence of African American English many times within extant scholarship over the past 4 decades. However, the resulting pedagogical developments within teacher training programs are inadequate. Through a survey of literature of relevant topics, this article provides a framework regarding training for preservice teachers to ensure that they understand the historical intersectionality of race, gender, and language, especially when educating African American males. We believe the dismal underperformance of African American males and their significant disproportionality in special education should enliven the focus of reform efforts on the instructional and dispositions toward nonstandard English, such as African American English, which influence the fidelity of instruction.

Testifying while black: An experimental study of court reporter accuracy in transcription of African American English

Testifying while black: An experimental study of court reporter accuracy in transcription of African American English