Purpose: In 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. Method: One hundred six…

Purpose: Using data from children who spoke various nonmainstream dialects of English and who were classified as either children with specific language impairment (SLI) or typically developing (TD) children, we examined children's marking of infinitival TO by their dialect and clinical status. Method: The data came from 180 kindergartners (91…

Approaches to teaching critical language awareness are gaining traction in urban schools with culturally and linguistically complex student populations; however, what teachers need to know to enact these pedagogies is not well understood. Using a lens of pedagogical content knowledge for critical language teaching, this study examines what happens…

Drawing on translanguaging and raciolinguistics frameworks in an ethnographic case study, this article contextualizes how young Black American children engage in rich literacy practices to validate their cultural and linguistic identities in an elementary, two-way immersion bilingual program. Findings demonstrated that despite teachers' perceived…

We utilize positioning theory to analyze language use within two different language program models in elementary language arts classrooms. We explore how the positioning of minoritized languages as valuable facilitates the use of students' home languages in classrooms and allows us to examine the connections between language, identity, and power.…

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…

The ability to encode (spell) is an integral writing skill needed to communicate effectively. The ability to spell, also, enhances decoding as spelling and decoding are reciprocal skills that rely on knowledge of the same subskills. Spelling can also be particularly difficult for students with literacy and phonological-processing difficulties such…

The many permutations of spoken English have called for an interrogation into the notions of 'standard English' and 'native accents'. Despite their problematic nature, these terms remain commonly used, and familiarity with 'standard', inner-circle varieties of English is typical among L2 English speakers, differences in education and language…

This study sheds light on the socio-economic factors determining the (re)location of sociolinguistic prestige in postcolonial environments. It uses the case of Namibia, an ethnolinguistically diverse African country that replaced Afrikaans -- an established lingua franca -- with English as its official language to weaken the hold of the formerly…

Purpose: Dialect-shifting has shown promise as an effective way to improve academic outcomes of students who speak nonmainstream dialects such as African American English (AAE); however, limited studies have examined the impacts of an interprofessional approach with multiple instructional methods. In this study, we developed a dialect-shifting…

Purpose: We investigated and compared the outcomes from two standardized, norm-referenced screening assessments of language (i.e., Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals Preschool--Second Edition [CELFP-2], Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation--Screening Test [DELV-ST]) with African American preschoolers whose spoken dialect differed…

One of the challenges of gaining a broader appreciation of Deaf history is the need to examine the contributions of Deaf people of color. This article summarizes the contributions of black Deaf individuals to the scholarly and public history of the period from the 1980s to the present. We begin with the 1980s since that was the era when the…

Previous research has demonstrated mixed findings pertaining to the risk conferred by variation from Mainstream American English (MAE) for African American children in our education system. Based on the research on language, behavior, and reading, the present study sought to examine the relative and combined contributions of culturally appropriate…

This study explores a psychosocial concept coined by the author referred to as "Urban Critical Literacy" (UCL). UCL is an emergent four-step strategy employed by five African American young men as they navigated their cultural worlds of home and school in an urban setting. Critical literacy is the theoretical conceptual framework that…

Leveraging the aesthetic turn in hip-hop scholarship, this article examines how some of the goal-directed and compositional techniques of DJs can be used to redesign and remix African American literature courses. Specifically, we focus on drops and blends, two moves evident among DJs and turntablists in hip-hop culture. Anchoring our analysis to…