John Baugh

African-American English : structure, history, and use

Introduction 1. Some Aspects of African-American Vernacular English Guy Bailey and Erik Thomas 2. The Sentence in African-American Vernacular English Stefan Martin and Walt Wolfram 3. Aspect and Predicate Phrases in African-American Vernacular English Lisa Green 4. The Structure of the Noun Phrase in African-American English Salikoko S. Mufwene 5. Coexistent Systems in African-American English William Labov 6. The Development of African-American Vernacular English, Focusing on the Creole Origin Issue John R. Rickford 7. Word from the Hood: The Lexicon of African-American Vernacular English Geneva Smitherman 8. African-American Language Use: Ideology and So-Called Obscenity Arthur K. Spears 9. More than a Mood or an Attitude: Discourse and Verbal Genres in African-American Culture Marcyliena Morgan 10. Linguistics, Education, and the Law: Education Reform for African-American Language Minority Students John Baugh

A REEXAMINATION OF THE BLACK ENGLISH COPULA

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the facets of Afro-American behavioral research that have obvious social implications. In the case of linguistics, some of the most significant theoretical advances of times can be linked directly with Black English Vernacular (BEV) research. When the variable rule was first introduced, the full potential of variable analysis for linguistic purposes could not be known. Returning to the special needs confronting BEV, there is an obvious need to enhance inductive methodologies. Scanning the BEV literature written over the past decade, one is struck by the fact that much of the descriptive emphasis is focused on younger members of the community, with the data usually having been gathered by strangers in unfamiliar surroundings. The Cobra data are excellent from a synchronic standpoint owing to the handling of the data and the Cobras collective command of BEV.

Linguistic Contributions to the Advancement of Racial Justice Within and Beyond the African Diaspora

As a rule, linguistic diversity has little to do with racial diversity. However, studies in Africa, Europe, and North and South America have documented that standard and nonstandard dialects are often divided along socially and racially stratified lines. Results in this discussion grow from studies of linguistic profiling in France, South Africa, and the USA regarding the devaluation of Black Speech. Studies of housing discrimination against Blacks and Latinos in the USA, along with preliminary analyses of linguistic attitudes throughout the African diaspora, reveal that employment, education, housing, and access to other goods and services may be influenced by linguistic stereotypes. Here we explore various interdisciplinary controversies that are closely intertwined, with primary emphasis on the USA, where studies in linguistic profiling are most advanced. Experiments that build upon Lamberts classical matched guise technique explore various demographic characteristics that listeners attribute to someone based on the sound of his or her voice, such as during a telephone conversation. These experiments are linked directly with attempts to advance racial justice in education, law, health care and economic transactions, along with corresponding policy implications.

Standard English and Academic English (Dialect) Learners in the African Diaspora

This article compares and contrasts the learning of (Standard?) English as a second dialect in the United States with the learning of Standard English as a second language in South Africa. It argues that the common denominator of racial segregation has had clear econolinguistic and educational consequences that have been, and might continue to be, detrimental to the welfare of historically subordinated racial populations. In order to advance the teaching of Academic English, Standard English, and Workplace English in both contexts, educators should address stereotypes associated with specific varieties, students’ goals, the potential benefits of gaining communicative competence in particular varieties, and the potential consequences of not gaining that competence.

IT AIN'T ABOUT RACE: Some Lingering (Linguistic) Consequences of the African Slave Trade and Their Relevance to Your Personal Historical Hardship Index

While most Americans agree that government officials failed to act promptly to provide food, water, shelter, and other relief to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, they disagree about the racial relevance of this negligence. Nevertheless, the unavoidable images of the storm’s disproportionately high number of African American victims among those unable to flee a foretold disaster brought into view the specter of racial inequality. While most theorists and commentators have used race and poverty as the primary lenses through which to view Katrina’s human toll, this paper utilizes linguistic rubrics and relative immigration status to address inequities globally suffered by people of African descent. In the case of American Blacks, our emphasis is on Blacks with ancestral ties to enslaved Africans, since those who suffered most in the wake of Katrina were not merely Black, but also direct descendants of American slaves of African origin. Framing the discussion in terms of linguistic ancestry, its relationship to slavery, and instances of (c)overt social and educational apartheid born of statutory racial segregation, I develop a Historical Hardship Index as an alternative way to advance equality in the period after the end of African slave trade. The proposed Historical Hardship Index can be applied—with slight regional modifications—to anyone, anywhere, without reference to race.

Meaning-Less Differences: Exposing Fallacies and Flaws in “The Word Gap” Hypothesis That Conceal a Dangerous “Language Trap” for Low-Income American Families and Their Children

ABSTRACT The present article compares and contrasts linguistic findings from longitudinal studies of low-income Americans derived from evidence of recorded family speech interactions. Hart and Risley (1995) employed research assistants who spent 1 hour per month observing language usage among families from different socioeconomic backgrounds in their homes for 2.5 years. Baugh (1983) spent 40 hours per week during seven consecutive summers between 1969 and 1976 as a participant observer in a low-income African American community, conducting tape recorded interviews with African American families in various social circumstances during the final 4 years, which always included recorded interviews within each family home. Comparison of the linguistic results derived from the alternative data collection procedures allow for a reinterpretation of Hart and Risley’s (1995, 2003) conclusions, casting doubt on their findings as well as their speculations about future linguistic prospects for Americans from diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds due to false positive interpretations of their results that wrongly conclude deceptively enticing causalities. Regrettably, the alleged “word gap” is another incarnation of a deficit language hypothesis that is fundamentally flawed and woefully uninformed by decades of extensive linguistic research that has been conducted by many different linguists in various American inner-city communities since 1968.

Use and Misuse of Speech Diagnostics for African American Students

Many African American students have been tested using speech pathology diagnostics that are ill suited to their distinctive linguistic circumstances. Slave descendants of African origin share a unique linguistic heritage in contrast and comparison to every other immigrant group residing within America. In an effort to overcome the legacy of educational bias born of inappropriate speech diagnostics for Black students, this article begins with observations about racial discrimination that reinforced educational disparities that were, at times inadvertently, exacerbated by remedial education programs that failed to improve educational outcomes for Black students. The remainder of the article describes the combination of educational and legal circumstances, owing their existence largely to the efforts of Geneva Smitherman, that gave rise to the controversy over Ebonics and ensuing demands for linguistic human rights in support of educational equality for all students regardless of race.

FEATURED ARTICLE: CONVENIENTLY BLACK: Self-Delusion and the Racial Exploitation of African America

Commentary on the Following Publications McWhorter, John H., Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America . New York: Free Press, 2000, 285 pages, ISBN 0 684 83669 6,

Linguistic Discrimination in Educational Contexts

24.00. McWhorter, John H., Authentically Black: Essays for the Black Silent Majority . New York: Gotham Books, 2003, 264 pages, ISBN 1 59240 001 9,

More on Vernacular Black Speech@@@Black Street Speech: Its History, Structure, and Survival

25.00.