Background: Both academic research and educational policy have focused on the diverse language resources of young schoolchildren. African American Language (AAL) in particular has a rich history of scholarship that both documents its historical evolution and sociolinguistic complexity and reveals the persistent lack of knowledge about AAL in our…

Author reaffirms the value of the Black idiom" in speech, and criticizes those who would either eradicate the Black idiom or teach Blacks to be switchers from the Black idiom when they be around Blacks, to the white idiom when they are around white employees and others." (Author/DR)

Schools should provide opportunities for students, especially Black students, to become knowledgeable about their language system and culture. (JH)

The author discusses the linguistic dispute of Black English, or Black Idiom vs. Standard English and argues for the acceptance of the former. (MM)

Suggests that since black speech is adequate for linguistic, social, and intellectual functions, black scholars should argue for its legitimacy and usage in the home, on the job, in school, in the media, and in all institutional contexts. (Author/AM)

A Five-Point Program for teaching English in the inner city... based on the real needs of the Black ghetto student. (Author)

Suggests a holistic approach to the language of Black people involving theory and research, policy and planning, and implementation and practice, the ultimate aim of which is knowledge for liberation. (DD)

Maintains that linguists and educators sincerely interested in black education should concentrate on devising a performance instrument to measure the degree of command of the style of any given Black English speaker rather than on establishing linguistic remediation programs to correct a non-existent remediation. (Author)

Discusses (1) American class anxiety and racism as reflected in the linguistic purist tradition; (2) the didialectalism of contemporary Black Idiom speakers; (3) the need for accurate comprehensive descriptions of Black Idiom; and (4) the need for teachers to teach communication skills to Black students. (MM)

Analysis of nearly 1,800 essays written by 17-year-old African-American students were examined in terms of the frequency and distribution of Black English Vernacular (BEV) and the covariance of BEV with rater scores. Results suggests that BEV has converged with Edited American/Standard English and that students were not penalized for BEV in…

Although research and the court have established the viability of Black English as a communication system, scholars and educators have not rallied for institutional support of its use and acceptance in society. A rational language policy must be developed that recognizes the legitimacy of all languages and dialects in America.(Author/MJL)

The author examines the precedent set in the King v Ann Arbor case as a tool to reform the miseducation of Black children. She also details some linguistic and sociocultural aspects of the controversy over whether Black English is a language or a dialect. (SK)

A study analyzed the degree to which an African American verbal tradition (Black English Vernacular) survives in the writing of Black students across a generational time span. A total of 867 essays from the 1984 and the 1988/89 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were subjected to primary trait and holistic scoring analysis, and…

Educators and intellectuals with some sense of humanity should comprehend the hidden message inherent in setting up a dichotomy referring to two linguistic/cultural entities: that one set of structures is sufficient; one is not. For the black student, this message of inferiority is communicated both through the teacher in his instruction,…

Students and teachers, black and white, need to be familiarized with some of the significant linguistic and cultural differences between blacks and whites. (JH)