Presents a definition of ethnicity and clarifies the relationship between language and ethnicity. Considers the effects of bidialectism and bilingualism by comparing the experiences of Blacks in the United States and Blacks in the Commonwealth Caribbean. (RL)

Code-switching is examined in oral narratives of 30 African-American women as they switched from Standard English to Black English Vernacular. A little over half of the speakers assign positive values to their code switches. Examples are given from interviews with two subjects. (SLD)

A study investigated the relationship between phonological features in the oral reading of black West Indians and their reading comprehension. Subjects were 54 college students at the College of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas. Each subject was recorded reading two passages and completed two cloze tests. The tapes then were analyzed for nine…

This paper offers a brief but comprehensive overview of various issues pertaining to the use and origins of Black English. The purpose of the paper is to help educators understand Black English and celebrate this dialect in class while facilitating the acquisition of Standard English. It holds that Ebonics is a dialect of English with its own set…

Examination of representative stories told by black American children of West African descent in South Carolina shows that specific cultural motifs have been preserved in the oral tradition of black communities. Typical stories are tales of the supernatural, such as the Hag story about mortals who shed their skin at night to do evil deeds.…

The rhetoric of black writers and speakers asserts that (1) attitudes and practices toward black language are politically based to keep blacks subordinate to the dominant culture, and (2) African American scholars have a right to determine the meaning and implications of black language. Black rhetors contend that even those blacks who speak…

The use of holistic cognitive style in black language is discussed in this paper. Two types of cognitive style, analytic and holistic, are identified. Holistic thinkers are described as socially oriented while analytical thinkers are characterized as task oriented. Evidence is given to support the claim that blacks tend to be holistic thinkers and…

Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's "Dialogic Imagination" and Henry Louis Gates'"Signifying Monkey," an analysis of an African American student's essay reveals codes that are distinct to African Americans. Bakhtin's theory alerts scholars to the extent to which language is a social phenomenon. Ambiguous and heteroglossic, it reflects…

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…

In devising an inventional scheme for considering black communication behavior with possible implications for a more general theory, four constituents must be considered: frame of mind, scope of context, structure of code, and delivery of message. The concepts of rhythm and styling seem indicative of the black frame of mind, while the contextual…

A study investigated the degree to which the pronunciation of English words in the child's home environment affected the acquisition or discrimination of phonological and orthographic correspondences of standard written English. Subjects were low-socioeconomic-status, inner-city African American kindergarten, first-, and second-grade students, who…

This study investigated the effects of interference of a native dialect in the acquisition of a second dialect. Four groups of subjects were used: Five white preschool children from an intergrated nursery school, five Black preschool children from a Head Start program, five white, middle-class 16-, 17-, and 18-year-olds, and five Black 16-, 17-,…

This study develops specific facts about the nature of the Black English "lingua franca" which formed on the American eastern seaboard in the last half of the eighteenth century. Accepting an assumption that American English of this period was levelling into a "koine," this investigation attempts to characterize the consonant loss and substitution…

This study describes the syntactic features of Black English Vernacular (BEV) spoken by black characters in three black situation comedies on American television: "The Jeffersons,""Good Times," and "What's Happening." Using scripts and audio tapes of three episodes from each series during the 1977-78 television season, transcripts were made of…