Exploring the role hip-hop language arts plays in the development of Black (and other minoritized) youth, this study provides a theoretical account of hip-hop moral codes and how they become part of young people's ethical sensemaking. This study extends sociocultural theories of moral development by centering the "cultural form" as a…

Background: African American Language (AAL) refers to a rich, widely used, and extensively researched language variety. Despite its importance, AAL remains widely stigmatized in the United States due to anti-Black linguistic racism. Many colleges offer courses with AAL content, and these courses have the potential to help disrupt anti-Black…

For too long, the debate about Ebonics has been about the validity of the language and not about how the perception of the language impacts those that speak it. Ebonics has been considered inappropriate and inadequate as a language in institutions of higher education since the moment Black people in the United States were allowed access. However,…

Scholars have examined and debated the use of African American Language (AAL) in the past but research that has focused on its use in college settings has been scarce. This study uses a case study approach to examine attitudes and perspectives of a university community toward AAL use inside and outside the classroom and beyond. The case study…

The objective of this single-class activity is to get students to make connections between Eurocentric standards of communication and African American Vernacular English (AAVE) through a womanist rhetorical lens. This activity sheds light on how professional, academic, and corporate communicative spaces tend to deflect and reject Black people…

Improve your grading and feedback practices to benefit your students and their writing development. This guide models a research-based, linguistically inclusive approach to grading writing so that you can incorporate equitable assessment and feedback into your everyday practice. A linguistically inclusive grading approach honors Black linguistic…

This purpose of this study was to determine the socio-cultural impact and parameters of Hip-Hop Based Education (HHBE) with the underlying goals of: a) detailing HHBE in relation to previously accepted education paradigms and philosophies; b) detailing the embedded nature of the language of hip-hop in the form of an amalgamation of African…

This essay describes writing and conversations that took place in my First Year Writing class at St. John's University in Queens, New York. I analyze student responses to my invitation to consider more deeply--and wield more consciously--the language resources they bring into classrooms. I seek to understand the potential for their often deeply…

Drawing on recent decades, literature in college writing that theorizes the importance of Critical Language Awareness (CLA) curricula for African American Language (AAL)-speaking students, this article offers empirical evidence on the design and implementation of a college writing curriculum centered on CLA and its influence on AAL-speaking…

Concomitant with calls from scholars to pluralize academic writing to reflect diverse social realities (Canagarajah, 2013; Dryer et al., 2014; Horner, 2011; Martinez, 2020; Palmeri, 2007; Weisser, 2002) and with advocacy efforts by industry specialists to make dissertation writing more in tune with a rapidly changing professional world (Futures…

"Talking College" shows that language is fundamental to Black and African American culture and that linguistic justice is crucial to advancing racial justice, both on college campuses and throughout society. Writing from a linguistics-informed, Black-centered educational framework, the authors draw extensively on Black college students'…

Four teacher educators describe their work to establish Afrocentric foundations through integrating literacy and linguistic pluralism courses. We build on realities that teachers and children "do not learn, systematically and deeply, about Black genius and worth" (Baines, Tisdale, & Long, 2018, p. 20) in schools or universities nor…

This study investigates the attitudes of educators of different race, class, linguistic, political, and disciplinary backgrounds at a large, urban, public university to code-meshed Black English in academic texts. This research draws on surveys as well as interviews gauging how educators responded to the idea of code-meshing not only in principle…

Research has long claimed that rubrics provide the objective, fair, and equitable means by which to assess student writing. Recent moves in writing programs and composition classrooms have acknowledged the ways that writing assessment perpetuates linguistic violence, and shifts towards anti-racist assessment practices have ushered in grading…

Children who speak with nonmainstream American English (NMAE) dialects represent a growing population in the U.S. public school system. This article provides recommendations for how teacher educators can support novice teachers in addressing the needs of NMAE speakers with or at risk for learning disabilities. This article focuses on four core…