There is little or no argument these days that Black English Vernacular (BEV) is a reality and that it is stigmatized. There is still a need, however, in spite of many studies of spoken varieties of BEV, for teachers to know what governs its occurrence in writing. This study concentrates on the written manifestation of BEV, on explaining which…

This study examined the production of African-American English (AAE) forms produced by 69 school-aged African-American children from middle socio-economic status (SES) communities to determine if age would influence: (a) the number of different types of AAE tokens and (b) the rate of dialect. Descriptive data revealed that there were more than 20…

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…

Concludes from three studies that Black English speakers may not spell as well as standard English speakers and that Black English itself can interfere with spelling. (DD)

Presents a description of auxiliary and aspectual marker verbs in African American English. Discussion focuses on patterns of the auxiliary system as a whole, highlights the generalization that speakers of the dialect make when they use the system, describes how the language system is rule-governed, and presents some meaning differences between…

Suggests that Ebonics has been mediated in ways that clearly reveal American racial politics, which remain hostile to African Americans, describing the dominant strategies used to mediate Ebonics and locating those media strategies within the cultural context of racist circumstances, the racist political history of African Americans, and African…

The use of African American vernacular English among a group of secondary school students who participated in a digital media course as part of a pre-college summer enrichment program is examined. The study has highlighted the utility and importance of creating socially and culturally relevant spaces for technology teaching and learning and also…

To investigate speech-language clinicians' attitudes regarding treatment goal setting for children who were speakers of Black English, questionnaires based on W. Wolfram and R. Fasold's conceivable goals in teaching standard English to speakers of nonstandard dialects were distributed to 103 clinicians. (Author/CL)

Examines several longstanding, isolated biracial sociolinguistic situations in the coastal and Appalachian regions of North Carolina: a core community of African Americans and two case studies of isolated speakers. Compares diagnostic phonological and morphosyntactic variables for speakers representing different generations of African American and…

Presents a case study of the language of a 23-year-old white female who makes consistent use of the many distinctive features associated with African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Argues that the interaction of ideologies of race, class, localness, and language allow her to be considered an ingroup member despite her biographical race.…

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)

Examined nonlinguists' beliefs about language through dialogue in which African-American Vernacular English is the focus. Respondents are observed reasoning about language, and analyses reveal the structure of the conversation and the structure of participants' folk beliefs about language. (JP) (47 references)

The Black English semi-auxiliary "come" is used to express speaker indignation, as opposed to the motion verb "come." Examines the history of the semi-auxiliary and why it has remained undetected for so long. (EKN)

On all three tests, learning disabled children scored lower than control children. Also, the effect of removing dialect miscues as errors caused an overall increase in reading scores on all three tests. (Author/SB)

Investigates the extent to which users of Black South African English (BSAE) command the vowel system of English. One mother tongue speaker each of English, Southern Sotho, and Zulu read a set of stimulus words representing various monothong contrasts in standard South African English. Results are discussed in relation to the question of whether…