Investigated African American Vernacular English dialect features in the midwestern community of Davenport, Iowa, and compared them to those reported by Pollock and Berni (1997) for Memphis, Tennessee--specifically productions of vocalic and postvocalic /r/ across African-American speakers from Davenport and Memphis. (Author/VWL)

Recruiters (n=65) rated effect of specific social dialect characteristics on job interview and rated their perceptions of social dialect speakers. Results revealed that 58% of Appalachian English variables presented and 93% of Black English variables presented were considered to have negative effect on job interview. For both dialects, nonstandard…

Three studies of the relationship of Black English (BE) pronunciation to spelling performance are reported in this document. The first study explored a large number of BE pronunciation features. The second included control features that do not have differing pronunciations in BE and standard English (SE). The third examined final consonant…

A study investigated whether fluency in oral reading, as indicated by proper intonation, could be used as a measure of college students' reading comprehension. The study was designed to look at the three features of intonation--pitch, stress, and juncture--separately and in combination to determine whether any one or a combination of all the…

This study investigated differences in the writing styles of African American and European American test takers using a portfolio entry assessment as a means of examining writing style, focusing on language choice, rhetorical style, and organization. The portfolio entry was from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Middle…

This report discusses the results of a study of children's spelling errors to determine whether vernacular black English (VBE) speakers and standard English speakers (SE) infer different underlying phonological representations according to their respective dialects. Subjects included two groups of beginning second graders from schools in two…

Through taped interviews, this study investigated the pronunciation of certain consonants in a rural, deep south county in the South Georgia-North Florida area. The informants came from three groups: lower socioeconomic status (LSES) second graders, LSES senior high students, and teachers in the public schools. Some of the findings showed that…