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…

Results of this research lead to a discussion of the possibility and implications of Negro nonstandard English being a distinct quasi-foreign" language system. (MB)

Despite the recent focus on the role of dialect differences in creating learning difficulties for speakers of nonstandard dialects of English, research has tended to concentrate on difficulties related to speaking and reading, while ignoring those involved in teaching writing to these students. This paper attempts to meet the need for such studies…

The recent work by sociolinguists is more accurate for consideration of urban dialects than is the analysis provided in the "Linguistic Atlas" materials. The sociolinguists' work shows that the use of nonstandard phonological and grammatical features varies according to one's socioeconomic status, ethnic background, speech context, age,…

The regularity with which much variation between forms, formerly dismissed as "free variation," can be accounted for on the basis of extra-linguistic and independent linguistic factors has made the concept of the linguistic variable an invaluable construct in the description of patterned speech variation. The linguistic variable, itself…

Concern during the past decade with educational failures of urban Negro children suggested the need for empirical evidence demonstrating whether or not students use identical grammatical and stylistic structures in both speech and writing. Fourteen black, inner city junior high students, all of whom speak "black English," were interviewed for…

This experiment deals with a test of auditory discrimination between standard Black English and nonstandard Black English. The test consists of two sections, one emphasizing phonological variables and the other emphasizing grammatical variables. It was administered to 83 black and 71 white children who were second, fourth, and sixth graders in…

This book is the fifth in a series of publications concerning the position and role of language in a large metropolitan area. In this sociolinguistic description Detroit is chosen as a case study of a large Northern urban area which has shown a dramatic increase in its Negro population within the last half century. The primary goal of the study…

These materials, a self-instructional workbook, a teacher's manual and accompanying tapes, are designed for students grades 7 through 12 who are speakers of the dialect sometimes called "Black Nonstandard." The terms "standard" and "nonstandard" are avoided, however, "informal" being used for the child's own dialect and "formal" for the English…

It has recently been noted that Negro children, especially those of lower socioeconomic status, have a language system whose phonological and grammatical rules differ in predictable ways from the rules governing the standard English used by most white Americans. Four features of Negro non- standard American English have been noted with predictable…

This study investigates the structural and functional differences between the non-standard Negro English of northern ghetto areas (NNE) and standard English (SE). The major field work was done in Central Harlem with (1) a geographically random sample of 50 pre-adolescent speakers in Vacation Day Camps, (2) six pre-adolescent and adolescent peer…