The Racialization of African-American English: Insights from Linguistics & Psychology

Anne H. Charity Hudley

The University of California, Santa Barbara

acharityhudley@ucsb.edu

References:

American Anthropological Association. (n.d.) “Understanding Race.”

http://www.understandingrace.org/home.html

American Psychological Association. (n.d.). “Psychology Topics: Race.”

http://apa.org/topics/race/index.aspx

American Sociological Association. (2003). “The Importance of Collecting Data and Doing

Social Scientific Research on Race.” Washington, DC: American Sociological

Association. http://www2.asanet.org/media/asa_race_statement.pdf

Baker, L. (2010). Anthropology and the Racial Politics of Culture. Durham, NC: Duke

University Press.

Charity Hudley, A. (2017). Language and Racialization. The Oxford Handbook of Language and

Society. Garcia, O, Flores, N., and Spotti, M., eds. New York: Oxford University Press.

DOI:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190212896.001.0001

Charity AH. (2007). Regional differences in low SES African-American children’s speech in the

school setting. Language Variation and Change.;19:281–293.

Dunstan, S B. & Jaeger, A. (2015). Dialect and influences on the academic experiences of

college students. Journal of Higher Education 86(5). 777–803.

Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1995). A dialogue: culture, language, and race. Harvard Educational

Review, 65 (3).

Hart, B., and T. R. Risley. (1995). Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young

American Children. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.

Heim, S., & Alter, K. (2006). Prosodic pitch accents in language comprehension and production:

ERP data and acoustic analyses. Acta Neurobiologiae Experimentalis, 66(1), 55-68.

Herrnstein, R. J., and C. A. Murray. (1994). The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in

American Life. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Holliday, N. (2016). “Intonational Variation, Linguistic Style, and the Black/Biracial

Experience”. Ph.D. Dissertation, New York University.

2

Hutton, C. (1999). Linguistics and the Third Reich: Mother-Tongue Fascism, Race, and the

Science of Language. London: Routledge.

Labov, W. (2001). Principles of linguistic change, Volume 2: Social

Factors. Blackwell.

Mallinson, C. (2006.) The Dynamic Construction of Race, Class, and Gender through Linguistic

Practice among Women in a Black Appalachian Community. Doctoral Dissertation.

North Carolina State University.

Mallinson, C., & Charity Hudley, A. (2010). Communicating about Communication:

Multidisciplinary Approaches to Educating Educators about Language Variation.

Language and Linguistics Compass, 4(4), 245-257.

Rickford, J. and McNair-Knox, F. (1994). Addressee- and Topic-Influenced Style Shift: A

Quantitative Sociolinguistic Study. In Perspectives on Register: Situating Register

Variation within Sociolinguistics, ed. by Douglas Biber and Edward Finegan. Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 235-76.

Rickford, J. (1997). "Unequal Partnership: Sociolinguistics and the African American Speech

Community." Language in Society. 26:161-197.

Rickford, J., & Rickford, R. (2000). Spoken soul: The story of Black English / John Russell

Rickford and Russell John Rickford. New York: Wiley.

Simmons, R J. (1998). "My Mother's Daughter: Lessons I Learned in Civility and Authenticity."

Texas Journal of Ideas, History and Culture, 20: 20–29. Online:

http://www.humanitiestexas.org/news/articles/my-mothers-daughter-lessons-i-learned-

civility-and-authenticity

Wang, L., Bastiaansen, M., Yang, Y., & Hagoort, P. (2010). The influence of information

structure on the depth of semantic processing: How focus and pitch accent determine the

size of the N400 effect, Neuropsychologia. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.12.035

Online Materials:

North Carolina Language and Life Project: https://languageandlife.org/

Virginia Department of Education Literacy, Language, and Culture Videos:

http://www.doe.virginia.gov/instruction/english/literacy/language_culture.shtml

Valuable Voices App

https://charityhudleymallinson.com/2016/09/27/valuable-voices-our-new-free-iphone-app-for-

teachers/

ARE BLACK AND WHITE VERNACULARS DIVERGING? 11

FIGURE 3

Use of Black English Variables by Four Groups of Philadelphia Speakers by Index of Cross-Racial Contact

(adapted from Ash and Myhill 1983)

% non-std

variant PRONUNCIATION AND UOCRBULRRY 90

80

70

60

50 0. ...

a egg/an egg... my book/mah book... man/ma... dude, vines, gitgo...

50

40 _ 30 %%J

20

10I%13

06 Igo,,I,,,,, "'oe.,,,,,"e 0 ...........

(aan) Sg /s/ Copula Possessi) (vne ) Vocabulary a egg/an egg... my book/mah book... man/ma'.. dudes, vines, gitgo...

% non-std GRAMMATICAL UARIABLES variant

70

60

50

40

30

20 [ .-'

3rd SgI/s/ Copula PossessiveI/s/ didn't/ain't He walks He's here My sister's house He didn't go /He walk... /He here... /My sister house... /He ain't go...

SBlacks with little white contact [N=17]

Blacks with considerable white

contacts [N=5]

0- Whites with considerable black

contacts [N=5]

', Whites with little black contact

This content downloaded from 128.239.99.140 on Mon, 20 Mar 2017 15:32:02 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Fasold,R.,Labov,W.,Vaughn-Cooke,F.,Bailey,G.,Wolfram,W.,Spears,A.,&Rickford,J.(1987).AreBlackandWhiteVernacularsDiverging?PapersfromtheNWAVEXIVPanelDiscussion.AmericanSpeech, 62(1),3-80.doi:10.2307/454555

CharityAH.RegionaldifferencesinlowSESAfrican-Americanchildren’sspeechintheschoolsetting.LanguageVariationandChange.2007;19:281–293.

RaceinSociolinguistics:2ndWave:RickfordandMcNairKnox(1994)

Racialandagepeerinterviewer OlderWhiteinterviewer

4

EnteringCommunities:NorthCarolinaLife&LanguageProject