A discussion and clarification of various forms and levels of Black English is provided together with a conjugation of the verb "to be" outlining the levels of meanings as used by most divergent black speakers. (EH)

A description and analysis of the various functions of black language as an integral part of the collective experience and identity of American blacks. (EH)

RESEARCH ON ENGLISH PHONOLOGY IN NEW YORK CITY IS DESCRIBED. CURRENT LINGUISTIC THEORY IS CONSIDERED UNABLE TO ACCOUNT FOR MASSIVE "FREE VARIATION" IN THE PHONOLOGY OF THE SPEECH OF THAT AREA. ISOLATED WERE PHONOLOGICAL VARIABLES WHICH ARE ASSOCIATED WITH SOCIAL, STYLISTIC, ETHNIC, AND INDIVIDUAL FACTORS IN NEW YORK CITY. QUANTITATIVE…

Originally appeared in Workpapers: Teaching English as a Second Language," Volume 5 (June 1971), Department of English, University of California, Los Angeles, California. (VM)

This book examines dialect variations in the United States. Chapter topics include an introduction to dialect study, colonial English, eastern settlement, eastern words, eastern pronunciation, eastern grammar, the westward movement, sectional atlas studies (the Great Lakes, the Upper Middle West, Texas, Colorado and other Rocky Mountain areas,…

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,…

When children (particularly African Americans) have a different orthography, phonemic system, and deep structure from Standard American English (SAE) speakers, they may have difficulty grasping the correct SAE phonemes represented by the symbols and reading in general. Language acquisition is natural learning centered around the interaction of…

During the past two decades the educational community has focused much attention on the language of urban minority children. Analytic positions set forth tend to assume varying degrees of either language deficit or language differences. The language deficit position is examined in this work from a sociolinguistic or psycholinguistic point of view.…

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…

Discusses the birthday notices that appear in the advertising section of the Papua New Guinea "Post Courier." The texts of these notices are analyzed from a sociolinguistic perspective, and their context is considered as a register of the variety of English that has become known as Papua New Guinea English. (Author/OD)

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…

Black Arts Literature--of which the New Black Poetry is the most important manifestation--emerged during the past decade as the appropriate artistic counterthrust to Black Power. Rhetoric and shouting aside, this new thrust was, on a very basic level, simply a call to black folks to redefine Blackness and re-evaluate the Black Experience. For the…

The speech habits of the most oppressed --and the largest-- segment of the black population in the United States did not spring solely from an inability to handle acceptable forms of spoken English, nor mainly from the limitations caused by the particular stock of words known to the speaker. Black slang stems from a somewhat disseminated rejection…

A current vocabulary of argot terms and meanings was collected from a Black male control group in the South Central Los Angeles ghetto. This lexicon was used to elicit and compare responses from 5 male groups of youths between 15 and 20 years old. Two of the groups consisted of lower class blacks separated geographically. The other groups were…

THERE IS GROWING EVIDENCE THAT THE PROCESS OF EDUCATIONAL RETARDATION WHICH HAS BEEN OBSERVED IN MANY CHILDREN FROM ECONOMICALLY DEPRESSED AREAS SETS IN LONG BEFORE THE CHILDREN ENTER THE FIRST GRADE. THIS STUDY WAS DESIGNED TO EXAMINE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MATERNAL LANGUAGE STYLES AND PRE-SCHOOL CHILDREN'S COGNITIVE STYLES AND INTELLECTUAL…