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…

This paper offers a brief but comprehensive overview of various issues pertaining to the use and origins of Black English. The purpose of the paper is to help educators understand Black English and celebrate this dialect in class while facilitating the acquisition of Standard English. It holds that Ebonics is a dialect of English with its own set…

Discusses problems of present and future urban educators, specifically in the inner-city, and makes specific reference to the fact that the problems involve ethnic and racial differences. (Author)

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

Based in part on a presentation at the Conference on Symbolic Processes in Akron, Ohio, October 1970. (VM)

Black English-Negro Nonstandard English, or Negro dialect,"-although perhaps represented by less divergent varieties in the Northern cities of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is here shown to have been there all along. (JM)

Commentary based on Frank Riessman's book "The Inner-City Child." Concludes that whatever is done to build on the strengths that inner-city children bring to school will be done by individual school people who find the personal and professional strength to do it. (Author/IRT)

Studied the perceptions of 55 African American undergraduates about Black English. Students identified as not having a committed Black identity evaluated Black English as lower in status than those students with a committed Black identity. Black English was not perceived as reflecting higher social solidarity. (SLD)

Herbert L. Foster has written a new book about teaching black youngsters in the inner city. A Kappan interviewer extracts some of his success secrets, among them the rules for life-or-death contests. (Editor)

A STUDY WAS UNDERTAKEN TO EXAMINE THE NATURE OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL CLASS AND COGNITIVE ABILITIES OF NEGRO KINDERGARTEN BOYS. FIFTY MIDDLE CLASS AND 50 LOWER CLASS NEGRO KINDERGARTEN BOYS WERE INDIVIDUALLY ADMINISTERED EXTENSIVE TESTS DESIGNED TO ASSESS SPECIFIC INFORMATION PROCESSING ABILITIES. THE EIGHT INSTRUMENTS USED INCLUDED…

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,…

This study describes the segmental phonemes of five 4-year-old speakers of Black English, and analyzes both their language development and ethnic characteristics. The study group of Negro children, born and living in Washington, D.C., came from homes that met two of three specified criteria based on the mother's education and family income. The…

Asserts that all Asian-American writers create out of, and despite their awareness of a double-terror, the knowledge (empirically derived from generations of betrayal) that language can be a trap and the equally bitter realization that the only alternative is ignominous silence; and notes that Asian American literature reaches some level of…

Discusses reasons for Black and Puerto Rican inner-city students' resentment toward learning and using Standard English. (BE)

The recent discussions about the teaching of Black English, known as Ebonics, in the Oakland (California) school district have highlighted concerns about the right way to educate African American children. The authors of essays in this collection offer background history that explores the race and power dynamics surrounding the development of…