Geneva Smitherman

“The Chain Remain the Same” Communicative Practices in the Hip Hop Nation

It is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.

How I got over: Communication dynamics in the black community

(1976). How I got over: Communication dynamics in the black community. Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol. 62, No. 1, pp. 26-39.

Language and African Americans Movin on up a Lil Higher

It was nearly a generation between Martin Luther King Junior Elementary School Children, et al., v. Ann Arbor School District Board (l979) and Oakland, California, Unified School District Board’s “Resolution on Ebonics” (l996). In that time, however, public knowledge of and attitudes toward African American Language (AAL) remained largely unchanged, as was exceedingly clear from the public outcry that greeted Oakland’s resolution. The author compares King and Oakland and finds that although it is clear that history did in fact repeat itself in many ways, there are also unmistakable signs of progress in language research, pedagogy, and policy. The author points out opportunities for linguists to infuse research on African American educational achievement with the results of Black Language research. For the sake of all children, it is time to act in ways that reflect genuine valuation of language diversity and to implement policies fostering multilingualism and dialect awareness.

Moving Beyond Resistance: Ebonics and African American Youth

We have had pronouncements on Black speech from the NAACP... from highly publicized scholars... from executives of national corporations... from housewives and community folk. I mean, really, it seem like everybody and they momma done had something to say on the subject!

Black english, diverging or converging?: The view from the national assessment of educational progress 1

Abstract Writing by seventeen‐year‐old African American students in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is analysed for the frequency and distribution of Black English Vernacular (BEV) and the co‐variance of BEV with rater scores. NAEP is a Federally‐funded decennial programme, mandated by the US Congress and initiated in 1969, which assesses national, representative groups of elementary and secondary school students in ten subject areas. NAEPs writing tasks are assessed by trained teacher‐raters, using numerical scales. This study involves 2, 764 essays beginning with NAEPs inception, and concluding with the most recent assessment in 1988/89. BEV is examined from the vantage point of William Labovs mid‐1980s Divergence Hypothesis. The study proposes that in the past 20 years, BEV has converged with, not diverged from, Edited American/Standard English, as reflected in this demo‐graphically representative group of Black students. Analysis of the correlation between rater scores and BE...

The Power of the Rap: The Black Idiom and the New Black Poetry.

Black Arts Literature--of which the New Black Poetry is the most important manifestation-emerged during the past decade as the appropriate artistic counterpart to Black Power. Rhetoric and shouting aside, this new thrust was, on a very basic level, simply a call to Black folks to redefine Blackness and reevaluate the Black Experience. For the writer, this reassessment has culminated in a redefinition of the role of the artist and a new perspective on what constitutes Art. The creator of Black Arts Literature envisions himself as a Nec-

Ebonics and TESOL: “Dat teacher be hollin at us”—What Is Ebonics?

The TESOL Quarterly publishes brief commentaries on aspects of English language teaching. For this issue, we asked two educators to discuss the following question: What is Ebonics, and is it relevant to TESOL?

The Language of Affirmative Action: History, Public Policy and Liberalism

the swirling, often heated debates about the University of Michigans (U-M) affirmative action admissions policies, supporters and detractors alike often argue their points as if affirmative action is a phenomenon that suddenly fell from the sky into the lap of postmodern America. However, affirmative action, at U-M and elsewhere in American institutional life, is a policy developed within particular historical, social, political, and linguistic contexts. This essay seeks to illuminate these contexts by revisiting the socio-historical origins of affirmative action, the ideology that gave rise to it, and the language and discourse within which the policy was framed. The socio-historical roots of affirmative