* Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes (1998) American English:
Dialects and Variation. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
- this is a general, reader-friendly text which is a revision of the
now out-of-print Dialects and American English, by Wolfram, who is one
of the best-known experts on American dialects. Contains chapters
on how dialects come to be, social and ethnic dialects, "genderlects",
the history of American dialects, etc.
* Ofelia García and Joshua A. Fishman, eds. (1997)
The Multilingual Apple: Languages in New York City. Berlin: Mouton
de Gruyter.
- contains descriptions of the histories of various ethnic groups in
New York City, with discussion of the linguistic practices of members of
those groups
Robbins Burling (1973) English in Black and White. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Evelyn B. Dandy (1991) Black Communications: breaking down the barriers.
Chicago: African American Images.
- contains some debatable information, but
generally a useful overview, accessible
Geneva Smitherman (1977) Talkin and Testifyin: the language of black America. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Jean E. van Keulen, Gloria Toliver Weddington, and Charles E. DeBose, eds. (1998) Speech, Language, Learning, and the African American Child. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
The Real Ebonics Debate: power, language, and the education of African
American children. Boston: Beacon Press.
- a book version of the special edition of the excellent special issue
of Rethinking Schools on the Ebonics question
Vocabulary:
Geneva Smitherman (1994) Black Talk: words and phrases from the hood to the amen corner. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Black speech styles and genres:
Edith A. Folb (1980) Runnin' Down Some Lines: the language and culture of black teenagers. Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press.
Thomas Kochman, ed. (1977) Rappin' and Stylin Out: communication in urban black America. Urbana, Il.: University of Illinois Press.
Thomas Kochman (1981) Black and White Styles in Conflict. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Claudia Mitchell-Kernan 1974) Language Behavior in a Black Urban Community. Berkeley, Ca.: Language Behavior Research Laboratory.
* Ronald Scollon and Suzanne Wong-Scollon (1990) "Athabaskan-English interethnic communication." In Donal Carbaugh, ed. Cultural Communication and Intercultural Contact. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 259-286.
* Harry Irwin (1996) Communicating with Asia: Understanding people and customs. St. Leonards, Australia: Allen and Unwin.
* Charles N. Li (1983) "The basic grammatical structures of selected Asian languages and English." In Mae Chu-Chang, ed. Asian- and Pacific-American Perspectives in Bilingual Education. New York: Teachers College, pp. 3-30.
* Tamar Katriel (1986) Talking Straight: Dugri speech in Israeli Sabra culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* Schiffrin, D. (1984) "Jewish argument as sociability." Language in Society 13: 311-335.
* Deborah Tannen (1981) "New York Jewish conversational style." International
Journal of the Sociology of Language 30: 133-149.
Pierre Bourdieu (1991) Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge,
Ma.: Harvard University Press.
- not exactly light reading, but repays the reader's effort;
deep, wide-ranging discussion of role of language differences in reinforcing
the gulf between
the haves and the have-nots
Lisa Delpit (1995) Other People's Children: cultural conflict in
the classroom. New York: The New Press.
- thoughtful discussion of the status of children of color in the classroom,
with many concrete suggestions for addressing language-related issues
Sidney Greenbaum, ed. (1985) The English Language Today.
Oxford: Pergamon.
- collection of essays on public attitudes toward English in
the U.S. and elsewhere
Rosina Lippi-Green (1997) English with an Accent: language, ideology,
and discrimination in the United States. London & New York:
Routledge.
- very useful, engagingly written book on differences in the social
status of different dialects; includes one very interesting chapter on
the use of dialects by characters in Disney animated films
Werner Sollors, ed. (1998) Multilingual America: transnationalism,
ethnicity, and the languages of American literature. New York:
New York University Press.
- I haven't seen this one yet, but a promotional flyer I received makes
it sound useful: "Arguing that multilingualism is perhaps the most important
form of diversity, Multilingual America calls attention to – and seeks
to correct – the linguistic parochialism that has defined American literary
study. … presents a fuller view of multilingualism as a historical
phenomenon and as an ongoing way of life."
Peter Trudgill (1975) Accent, Dialect, and the School.
London: Edward Arnold.
- reader-friendly examination of the grounds for prejudice toward particular
dialects; discusses the British sociologist Basil Bernstein's controversial
theory of "restricted" and "elaborated" codes
Mary I. Berger (1996) Teach Standard Too: teach oral and written
Standard English as a
Second Dialect to English-speaking students. Chicago:
Orchard Books.
Garrard McClendon (1998) The African-American Guide to Better English.
Gary, In.:
Positive People Publishing.
- rather idiosyncratic but targeted squarely at young speakers of Ebonics
who want to make it in the economic mainstream, this book concentrates
on a list of
"forbidden words, definitions, phrases and pronunciations" that such
speakers should focus on in keeping with the dictum "One wrong word can
kill an opportunity."
Joy Harjo and Valerie Martinez, eds. (1997) Reinventing the Enemy's
Language:
contemporary native women's writings of North America. New
York: Norton.
Maria Hong, ed. (1995) Growing up Asian American: stories of childhood,
adolescence
and coming of age in American, from the 1800s to the 1990s, by 32
Asian American writers. New York: Avon.
Richard Rodriguez (1981) Hunger of Memory: the education of Richard
Rodriguez. Boston: David R. Godine.
Yeah You Rite (1985; New York, NY: Center for New American Media)
- by the same filmmakers as American Tongues (and with some
of the same footage), a shorter look at the variety of dialects spoken
in New Orleans, with commentary on the way they influence and identify
their speakers
Crosstalk (a 1979 BBC production, available from New York Films, Inc.)
- a look at the way in which cross-dialectal misunderstandings
in Britain limit the social prospects of speakers of "Asian" speakers of
English
Crosstalk at Work (a 1997 BBC production, available from Films for the
Humanities and Sciences, Princeton, N.J.)
- a more recent look at difficulties encountered by non-native speakers
of English in the U.S., particularly in job-related contexts. Focus
on Asian Americans.
1. Have the students do a write-up on their own linguistic identity. This is a useful exercise, because it puts all students on the same ground, regardless of their background. They may have a hard time with this initially, since they may never have thought of themselves as having a linguistic identity. I have used guides like the following to provoke students into thinking about this question:Classroom Activities to Help Students Start Thinking about the
Meaning of Dialect Diversity in the U.S.
[many of these are mentioned in Lisa Delpit's book, Other Peoples' Children]
7. Have students “compare pieces written in different styles, and discuss the impact of different styles on the message by making translations and back translations across styles.”
8. Have students “discuss the history, apparent purpose, and contextual appropriateness of each of the technical writing rules presented by their teacher.”
9. “Practice writing different forms to different audiences based on rules appropriate for each audience.” (teaches standard forms and explores aspects of power exhibited through linguistic forms)
10. “Rowe Grubis, a junior high school teacher in a multicultural school, makes lists of certain technical rules for her eighth graders’ review and then gives them papers from a third grade to ‘correct.’ The students not only have to correct other students’ work, but also tell them why they have changed or questioned aspects of the writing.”
11. Have students create bidialectal dictionaries of their own language variety and Standard English
12. Have students become “language detectives,” interviewing a variety of people and listening to TV and radio to discover differences and similarities in the way people talk.
13. Have the students teach the teacher (and other students from other cultural backgrounds) aspects of their own language variety
14. Have students “translate” songs, poems, and stories into their own dialect or into “book language” or other language varieties appropriate for other audiences (e.g., a church group, academicians, rap singers, a feminist group, politicians) and compare the differences.
15. Have students “listen to rap songs to develop a rule
base for their creation. The students would teach [the teacher] their
newly constructed ‘rules for writing rap,’ and she would in turn use this
knowledge as a base to begin a discussion of the rules Shakespeare used
to construct his plays, or the rules poets used to develop their sonnets.”
[from teacher Amanda Branscomb, cited in Delpit,
p. 67]
Phonological Traits
1) Stress fronting
- multi-syllabic words pronounced with the stress on the second syllable
in other varieties
are often pronounced with stress on the first syllable in Ebonics
e.g., If the POlice catch
em, then he'll be sorry.
2) Absence of various vowel distinctions in certain environments
e.g., the [ai] vs. [a] contrast before certain consonants is absent,
so that pairs of words like
"pride" and "prod" are pronounced with the same ([a]) vowel
e.g., the [I] vs. [?] contrast is absent before the nasal consonants
[m], [n], and [n], so that
pairs of words like "pin" and "pen" are pronounced with the same ([I])
vowel
3) "th" is often pronounced as [f] or [v] at the end of words
or in the middle, as [t] or [d] at the beginning of words
e.g., Ruf (= Ruth)
bruvah (= brother)
dis (= this)
tink (= think)
4) [l]s and [r]s are often absent after vowels
e.g., po (= Poe, pole, poor)
5) [b], [d], and [g] are often pronounced as [p], [t], and [k],
respectively, at the end of a
word
e.g., bit (= bid), back (= bag)
6) Words that end in [t], [d], [s], and [z] in other dialects
are often missing these consonants,
especially they appear next to another consonant
e.g., lif' up (= lift up)
bussing (= busting)
7) Sequences that end in the nasal consonants [m], [n], and [?] in other
dialects often end in a
nasalized vowel instead
e.g., phõ (= phone)
Morpho-Syntactic Traits
1) Regularized present tense verb forms (instead of using special third
person singular forms with "s", specialized forms of the verb be)
e.g., He hate to go
She have a bicycle
The office be closed on weekends
2) The possessive marker "'s" is optional
e.g., Jane dress (= Jane's dress)
3) The plural marker "s" is optional
e.g., three dog (= three dogs)
4) Use of a distinctive past tense form of many verbs is optional
e.g., He walk (= he walked)
5) Multiple negation
e.g., We don't got no gas.
6) Use of it's where other dialects would use there is
e.g., It's a school up there (= There's a school up there.)
7) WH- questions sometimes appear with subject - auxiliary verb
order
e.g., Why you don't like him?
8) Questions embedded inside other sentences sometimes appear
with aux. verb - subject order
instead of whether or if
e.g., Ask him can you do it.
9) Inflected forms of the verb be are optional
e.g., You in the store (= You're in the store.)
He going (=
He's going)
10) In sentences referring to habitual or continuing states or
events, the uninflected be verb appears
e.g., He be busy (= He's
always busy)
e.g., And we be tired from the heat, but he just made everybody keep
on working.
11) Double modals
e.g., might
oughta, oughta could, supposta could
12) Completed actions with continuing relevance for the presence often
marked with done
e.g., He done busted his lip.
The teacher done lost her keys.
13) Accounts of situations that began long ago and are still relevant
often contain stressed
been
e.g.. I BEEN known him a long time.
14) Future perfect predictions may contain be done
e.g., They be
done spent my money before I even get a look at it. (=They will have
spent my money before I even get a look at it.)
14) Statements about the future may contain the future auxiliary
finna or the first person form
Ima
e.g., He finna do X (= He's going to do X.)
Ima sing (= I'm going
to sing)
16) Subject noun phrases may be followed by a pronoun which
refers to the same referent
e.g., Ray sister she got a new doll baby (= Ray's sister got a new
doll.)
17) Descriptions of past events in narratives may contain the
verb ending "s", in first, second, or third person
e.g., this dude, um, punched me in my face, an' I swings around,
e.g., this white guy runs behin' me an' bend down, say "Hold it!"
18) Use of relative pronouns to introduce relative clauses is
optional
e.g., You know Ray sister live on S street? (= You know Ray's sister
who lives on S
street?)
e.g., He got a gun sound like a bee. (= He has a gun that sounds
like a bee)