The Oxford Handbook of African American Language

by Sonja Lanehart (Editor)

Overview

The goal of The Oxford Handbook of African American Language is to provide readers with a wide range of analyses of both traditional and contemporary work on language use in African American communities in a broad collective. The Handbook offers a survey of language and its uses in African American communities from a wide range of contexts organized into seven sections: Origins and Historical Perspectives; Lects and Variation; Structure and Description; Child Language Acquisition and Development; Education; Language in Society; and Language and Identity. It is a handbook of research on African American Language (AAL) and, as such, provides a variety of scholarly perspectives that may not align with each other -- as is indicative of most scholarly research. The chapters in this book "interact" with one another as contributors frequently refer the reader to further elaboration on and references to related issues and connect their own research to related topics in other chapters within their own sections and the handbook more generally to create dialogue about AAL, thus affirming the need for collaborative thinking about the issues in AAL research. Though the Handbook does not and cannot include every area of research, it is meant to provide suggestions for future work on lesser-studied areas (e.g., variation/heterogeneity in regional, social, and ethnic communities) by highlighting a need for collaborative perspectives and innovative thinking while reasserting the need for better research and communication in areas thought to be resolved.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190273224
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	06/01/2015
Series:	Oxford Handbooks
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	15 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Sonja Lanehart is Professor and Brackenridge Endowed Chair in Literature and the Humanities at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Table of Contents

Language Use in African American Communities: An Introduction Sonja L. Lanehart, Jennifer Bloomquist, and Ayesha M. Malik PART I. ORIGINS AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES The English Origins Hypothesis Gerard Van Herk The Creole Origins Hypothesis John R. Rickford The Emergence of African American English: Monogenetic or Polygenetic? With or Without "Decreolization"? Under How Much Substrate Influence? Salikoko S. Mufwene On the Origins of African American Vernacular English: Beginnings Donald Winford African American English Over Yonder: The Language of the Liberian Settler Community John Victor Singler Documenting the History of African American Vernacular English: A Survey and Assessment of Sources and Results Edgar W. Schneider Regionality in the Development of African American English Walt Wolfram and Mary E. Kohn PART II. LECTS AND VARIATION The Place of Gullah in the African American Linguistic Continuum Tracey L. Weldon and Simanique Moody Rural African American Vernacular English Patricia Cukor-Avila and Guy Bailey African American English in the Mississippi Delta: A Case Study of Copula Absence and /r/-Lessness in the Speech of Black Women in Coahoma County Rose Wilkerson African American Voices in Atlanta William A. Kretzschmar African American Language in Pittsburgh and the Lower Susqueshanna Valley Jennifer Bloomquist and Shelome Gooden African American Phonology in a Philadelphia Community William Labov and Sabriya Fisher African American Language in New York City Ren?e A. Blake, Cara Shousterman, and Luiza Newlin-Lukowicz African American Vernacular English In California: Four Plus Decades Of Vibrant Variationist Research John R. Rickford The Black American Sign Language Project: An Overview Joseph Hill, Carolyn McCaskill, Robert Bayley, and Ceil Lucas The Sociolinguistic Construction of African American Language Walt Wolfram PART III. STRUCTURE AND DESCRIPTION Syntax and Semantics Lisa J. Green and Walter Sistrunk The Systematic Marking of Tense, Modality and Aspect in African American Language Charles E. DeBose On the Syntax-Prosody Interface in African American Language James A. Walker Segmental Phonology of African American English Erik R. Thomas and Guy Bailey Prosodic Features of African American English Erik R. Thomas PART IV. CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND DEVELOPMENT Language Acquisition in the African American Child: Prior to Age Four Brandi L. Newkirk-Turner, RaMonda Horton, and Ida J. Stockman The Development of African American English through Childhood and Adolescence Janneke Van Hofwegen Development of Variation Lisa J. Green and Jessica White-Susta?ta Narrative Structures of African American Children: Commonalities and Differences Tempii B. Champion and Allyssa McCabe Some Similarities and Differences between African American English and Southern White English in Children Janna B. Oetting Contemporary Approaches and Perspectives for Assessing Young and School-Age AAE Child Speakers Toya A. Wyatt PART V. EDUCATION African American Language and Education: History and Controversy in the Twentieth Century Geneva Smitherman Managing Two Varieties: Code-switching in the Educational Context Monique T. Mills and Julie A. Washington Balancing Pedagogy with Theory: The Infusion of African American Language Research Into Everyday Pre K-12 Teaching Practices Sharroky Hollie, Tamara Butler, and Jamila Gillenwaters History of Research on Multiliteracies and Hip Hop Pedagogy: A Critical Review K.C. Nat Turner and Tyson L. Rose African-American Vernacular English and Reading William Labov and Bettina Baker Dialect Switching and Mathematical Reasoning Tests: Implications for Early Educational Achievement J. Michael Terry, Randall Hendrick, Evangelos Evangelou, and Richard L. Smith Beyond Bidialecticalism: Language Planning and Policies for African American Students John Baugh PART VI. LANGUAGE IN SOCIETY African American Church Language Charles E. DeBose The (Re)turn to Remus Orthography: The Voices of African American Language in American Literature James Braxton Peterson African American Language and Black Poetry Howard Rambsy II and Briana Whiteside African American Divas of Comedy: Staking a Claim in Public Space Jacquelyn Rahman The Construction of Ethnicity via Voicing: African American English in Children's Animated Film Jennifer Bloomquist SWB: (Speaking while Black or Speaking while Brown): Linguistic Profiling and Discrimination Based on Speech as a Surrogate for Race in International Perspective John Baugh PART VII. LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY Racializing Language: Unpacking Linguistic Approaches to Attitudes about Race and Speech Kate T. Anderson African American Standard English Arthur K. Spears African American English in the Middle Class Erica Britt and Tracey L. Weldon African American Women's Language: Mother Tongues Untied Marcyliena Morgan Black Masculine Language David E. Kirkland Hip Hop Nation Language: Localization and Globalization H. Samy Alim African American Language and Identity: Contradictions and Conundrums Sonja L. Lanehart

Editorial Reviews

"...An indispensable resource for scholars and students in linguistics, sociology, education, and cultural studies... the essays are clearly written, well chosen, and accessible to a wide range of academic readers. This is an excellent, comprehensive overview of an important area of study... Essential." —CHOICE

From the Publisher