The present paper reviews recent research in the area of nonstandard English: the major results to date, the significance of this research for education, and suggestions for further research. The notion of "standard" English resists precise definition; there is not a simple set of linguistic features which can be said to define it. The term…

Anthropologist Melville Herskovits, in the section on language of his book "The Myth of the Negro Past" (1941), gives one of the first scientific orientations to the study of black speech in the United States. His basic contribution was to establish the following main points: (1) that the black people in the New World came from regions…

There are three approaches to the nonstandard dialects of Negro inner-city children: eradication; biloquialism, sometimes called functional bidialectism; and appreciation of dialect differences with no attempt to change speech patterns. The essays in the present volume are all written from the biloquialist point of view, which advocates that…

The results of a project which investigated the speech of black respondents enrolled in the intermediate grades are described. From the data, materials and audio tapes were developed that could be used in helping preservice and inservice teachers identify morphological and syntactic features of black dialect. The concepts used in developing the…

Designed to discriminate Negro dialect speech from standard English, the Rystrom Dialect Test seeks to overcome three problems encountered in research about Negro speech; determining what stable elements distinguish Negro dialect from standard English, constructing a test easily administered to a young child and capable of measuring the…

The workshop produced three speeches which form the three parts of this document. The first, "Children's Materials and the Black Experience" by Augusta Baker, discussed many children's books and how they relate to the black child. The second speech, "What the Appalachian Child Brings to your Classroom" by Rebecca Caudill,…

Foreign language constrastive analysis, pattern practice, and oral drilling served as the experimental treatment in this study investigating whether a regular English class format for teaching English to reading students whose natural language is Black English (BE) is adequate in presenting Standard English (SE) at the secondary level. The form BE…

There is justification for the study of black language to help improve language self-concepts in the black community and to assist in reducing the oppressions of black people. Research literature has generally centered on these approaches: (1) black language is an unsystematic, childlike linguistic system; (2) it is basically an extension of…

Based on research conducted in Oakland, California, between 1965 and 1967, this dissertation explores some aspects of language behavior in a black working-class community. Chapter 1 deals with selected features of the code which serve to differentiate the speech community from others and compares the findings of the present study with those of…

A description of the linguistic characteristics of casual conversations of Los Angeles Negro K-3 school children was recorded outside the classroom in small groups with two to five participants. Analysis of phonological, syntactic, and lexical characteristics discloses considerable variation in the children's speech, exhibiting both a significant…

Four different treatments were used over a period of five months in this experiment concerning the teaching of reading skills to 35 black kindergarten children. The treatments were: (1) spelling patterns/phonic approach using black standard English, (2) a sight approach using black standard English, (3) a sight approach utilizing black nonstandard…

The need to find which social contexts elicit children's fullest language repertoire generated this study of the effects of three social distance variables on language production, as measured by mean length of communication unit, vocabulary diversity, and use of black English. The social distance variables investigated included race and sex of…

In dealing with children's language, this document provides a picture of how language is considered in child development, how children differ in their use of language, and how attitudes about children's language tend to be developed. The document may be used for any inservice program on children's speech (directly observable vocal behaviors),…

Teachers evaluated taped speech samples of middle and lower socioeconomic status (SES) black and white children. Adequacy of task performance was equivalent for all groups, although speech patterns varied as a function of race and social class. White middle SES children were rated and ranked more positively than their counterparts. (Author/CP)