Developed as part of a multicultural research project conducted in the San Diego Community College District, this booklet presents the findings of an eight-member research team about various elements of Black American culture and history. The booklet begins with a brief history of Black Americans from the time of the arrival of the first slaves to…

This paper is the first in a compilation of articles reprinted by NCTE from the journal "Elementary English" and entitled "On the Dialects of Children." It comprises an overview of recent research in regional and social dialects in the United States. The "Linguistic Atlas of New England," the first section of the "Linguistic Atlas of the United…

This paper is intended as an outline synthesis of what is presently known about the processes of pidginization and creolization. Section 1 deals with the linguistic processes of pidginization under the following headings: (1) the learned expectancies of how to behave in a contact situation, (2) necessity and heightened attention, (3) redundancy,…

The Instructional Concepts Program of the Southwest Regional Laboratory (SWRL) is designed to help kindergarten children learn the labels of concepts which are important to success in school. Since vocabulary differences are characteristic of dialect differences, it is possible that some items taught in the Instructional Concepts Program are…

In Guyana Creolese, the word "doz" appears frequently in the speech of people on a wide range of social levels. The term signals that the action occurs habitually. The use of "doz" is not widely noted among creolists, however, possibly because it often occurs in phonologically reduced forms such as "Iz" or…

This paper, presented as part of a military lecture series given by the Division of Continuing Education and Community Service Speakers' Bureau of the University of Hawaii to military personnel at Schofield Barracks and Fort Shafter, investigates the origins and present status of Black English. A discussion of early studies in the Gullah dialect…

This study of certain phonological and morphological aspects of the Negro speech of Memphis, Tennessee, is a revision of the author's 1961 Ph.D. thesis submitted to the University of Michigan. Twenty-four informants, all but one of whom were native Memphians, were used for the study; they were classed according to education and age. The interview…

This paper will outline some of the ways in which the language of the test instrument can be a factor in affecting the performance of a given child or group of children on a test. In tests of quantitative intelligence, mathematical skills, conceptual knowledge, readiness and aptitude, it is not reasonable to think of the language of the test as a…

Exploring the issue of black and white speech differences, the articles reprinted in this anthology span several decades and are to be viewed in a historical perspective. Turner (1948) examines Gullah, the creole language spoken off the coast of South Carolina. McDavid and McDavid (1951) attempt to identify the different influences on the speech…

Four nonstandard linguistic features used by five black children, ages 6-11 years, in 14 conversations were recorded and transcribed. The interviewers included male and female adults, Negro and white. The four nonstandard linguistic features were multiple negation, and absence of the Z suffixes marking noun plural, possession, and the third person…

One of a series on Anthropology and Education by the Columbia Teachers College Press, this is a group of papers with a common focus upon language behavior in the classroom. The emphasis of the authors is not on the structure of language, but on how language is used to communicate between teachers and students. The book is divided into three parts:…

It seems highly likely that many of the features of Black American English can be traced back to the Afro-Portuguese Creole dialects that sprang up in the fifteenth century in Portuguese slave camps along the West African coast, particularly in the Gulf of Guinea area, the area of greatest concentration of activity during the slave trade. This…

A model for teaching writing, which takes into account different kinds of school writing and a combination of oral and writing skills, is suggested. (Author/AM)

A discussion of certain methodological issues in linguistics as they bear on the debate over cultural deprivation. Whether or not the non-standard English (NNE) of a minority group can be considered a distinct language with its own grammar is arbitrary and therefore not a useful question. However, one can compare standard and NNE forms for…

Results of questionnaires asking graduate students in reading courses to indicate whether they would correct specific examples of reading miscues and whether they thought the miscues came mostly from blacks, mostly from whites, or from both. (AA)