Proposes to establish the correct Black cultural perspective on the role and function of personal insults in sounding and the boundary between play and nonplay. Considers different cultural consequences that would stem from regarding personal insults to be part of verbal play or not, and shows similarity in the structure and function of…

To be culturally valid, the characteristics identified by dialectologists as distinctive of black English must correspond to the terms members of the black community use to characterize their speech. Not all of the patterns that characterize black English within the dialectal framework are equal in their social or ethnic significance--the speech…

Increasing language skills in black children is not dependent on teaching them the ability to perform in standard dialect. Appears in "The Florida FL Reporter special anthology issue, "Linguistic-Cultural Differences and American Education. (FWB)

This document discusses significant differences between the cultural personalities and communication patterns of non-mainstream and mainstream groups in an effort to understand the nature and cause of conflict between groups. The author seeks to identify the "combustible" features of different communication systems, to demonstrate the systematic…

In this paper, the author (1) weighs the educational value of an oral language program which attempts to teach standard dialect to speakers of a nonstandard dialect and (2) considers the probable success of such a program, given the present social trends. He voices the following objections: (a) teaching a speaker of nonstandard dialect the…

This book uses an ethnographic approach to collect and analyze patterns of language and culture that affect interracial communication and culture. The study selects patterns of behavior, or elements within patterns, and maps black and white cognitive territory in order to reveal the cultural reasons for communications difficulties. The book…

This paper draws from a number of sources, from Muhammad Ali to TV commercials, to demonstrate the quite different conceptions that black and white Americans have of the meaning of boasting and bragging. For blacks, boasting and bragging are two distinct ways of speaking and communication. Boasting is a joking, playful verbal bahavior, not to be…