Argues that the temptation to isolate Black Englsh and to identify it as a single cause for all black problems in America must be resisted; e.g. those who suggest that Black English usage is the primary cause of reading problems in black children ignore many factors which may be possible causes of failure, such as inadequate schools. (Author/JM)

Examines the dialects" of poverty, frustration, repression, make-believe, and authoritarianism; a paper presented at annual Conference on English Education (7th, Syracuse, New York, March 29, 1969). (SW)

Teachers of culturally different students should not ridicule or verbally abuse their students, but should try to show them how the characteristics of formal English differ from urban Black English. They must be able to explain the appropriateness of standard English usage in certain situations, while they still maintain respect for the students'…

This paper compares respect forms used in Bhojpuri, standard Hindi, and suddh Hindi. The role and use of each dialect are described, and a comparison of respect forms used in each is presented, considering phonemic, grammatical, syntactical, suprasegmental, paralinguistic, and kinesic features. The differences noted appear in a continuum among the…

A construction occurring in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is examined: NPi "call" NPi V"-ing", as in "the woman call herself working." First, a number of reasons that such a form might be overlooked or dismissed as an AAVE dialect form are outlined. Then the sociolinguistic method is applied to the…

Children who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and speak in nonstandard dialects should not be made to feel inferior but should be listened to. (JH)

The results of a study in which eight black kindergarten children responded to a set of structured tasks designed to elicit linguistic constructions which characterize Black English are presented and discussed in this Southwest Regional Laboratory (SWRL) technical note. Some of the children responded with a high rate of nonstandard realizations;…

Linguistic interference as a key factor in the acquisition of reading skills by inner-city black children is explored. Examples of syntactic and phonetic structures in the black dialect which are different from standard English and the role these differences play in beginning reading are given. The use of dialect-based texts allows the child to…

Reported here is the work of two linguists, William Labov and Paul Cohen, and of two black researchers who know the culture of the inner city, Clarence Robins and John Lewis. Together they explore certain aspects of Black English vernacular (BEV) and certain political and cultural aspects of the black community. Part 1 (chapters 1-4) deals with…

Using the case of a vernacular variety spoken on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, this article demonstrates how linguistic-systemic principles such as remorphologization, psycholinguistic principles of perceptual saliency, and sociolinguistic processes of symbolic identity converge to account for the development of leveling in this community.…

In order to test whether certain structures characteristic of West African languages are also present in the Negro English dialect of Natchitoches Parich, Louisiana, 355 short autobiographical papers written by Negro high school students were analyzed. Another 355 papers written by white high school students were used as controls. The papers were…

Verbal and nonverbal patterns of communication found in the black community are discussed in this paper. They have been selected on the basis of their potential as interference factors in intergroup communication. A section on black language describes and explains the following categories: rapping, running it down, jiving, shucking, copping a…

This article examines several major sociological characteristics of the Caribbean region in a study of pidginization and creolization. Three major conditions which may have affected the ways that Creole languages develop are discussed. They include: (1) the relative proportion of Africans, Europeans, and other groups now present in specific…

This study investigated how much of the Language Instruction Register (variation in language in different social situations) black-vernacular speaking children had acquired by grades one, three, and five. A sentence repetition task was devised which contained selected Language Instruction Register forms having black ghetto vernacular semantic…