Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T19:39:09.083Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Coming of Age in African American Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2020

Mary Kohn ,
Walt Wolfram ,
Charlie Farrington ,
Jennifer Renn  and
Janneke Van Hofwegen
Mary Kohn
Affiliation:
Kansas State University
Walt Wolfram
Affiliation:
North Carolina State University
Charlie Farrington
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
Jennifer Renn
Affiliation:
Purdue University, Indiana
Janneke Van Hofwegen
Affiliation:
Google, Inc.
Get access

Summary

Most linguistic theories of language socialization from childhood to early adulthood are based on cross-sectional studies or case studies of individuals. The Frank Porter Graham (FPG) project radically breaks from this tradition by examining the longitudinal development of more than 70 African American children for the first 21 years of their lives. The result is an unprecedented, comprehensive study that offers insight into the trajectory of change from pre-school through post-secondary education for speakers of African American Language (AAL) and the primary factors that influence these changes during this vital stage in the lifespan.

Keywords

African American Language (AAL)cross-sectional studieslongitudinal studieslanguage acquisitionlanguage lifespan
Type
Chapter
Information
African American Language
Language development from Infancy to Adulthood
 , pp. 1 - 21
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arnett, Jeffrey J. 2000. Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties. American Psychologist 55(5): 469–480.Google Scholar
Bailey, Guy, Wikle, Tom, Tillery, Jan and Sand, Lori. 1991. The apparent time construct. Language Variation and Change 3(1991): 241–264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baratz, Joan and W. Shuy, Roger (eds.). 1969. Teaching Black Children to Read. Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Baugh, John. 1983. A survey of Afro-American English. Annual Review of Anthropology 12(1): 335–354.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baugh, John. 1996. Dimensions of a theory of econolinguistics. In Guy, Gregory, Feagan, Crawford, Schiffrin, Deborah, and Baugh, John (eds.), Towards a Social Science of Language: Papers in Honor of William Labov, 397–419. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Bigham, Douglas. 2012. Emerging adulthood in sociolinguistics. Language and Linguistics Compass 6(8): 533–544.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blake, Renée and Josey, Meredith. 2003. The /ay/ diphthong in a Martha’s Vineyard community: What can we say 40 years after Labov? Language in Society 32(4): 451–485.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloom, Lois. 1970. Language Development: Form and Function in Emerging Grammars. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Roger. 1973. A First Language: The Early Stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary. 2011. White Kids: Language, Race, and Styles of Youth Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Burchinal, Margaret R., Roberts, Joanne E., Hooper, Steve, and Zeisel, Susan A.. 2000. Cumulative risk and early cognitive development: A comparison of statistical risk models. Developmental Psychology 36(6): 793–807.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burchinal, Margaret R., Roberts, Joanne E., Nabors, Laura A., and Bryant, Donna M.. 1996. Quality of center child care and infant cognitive and language development. Child Development 67(2): 606–620.Google Scholar
Burchinal, Margaret R., Roberts, Joanne E., Riggins, Rhodus, Zeisel, Susan A., Neebe, Eloise, and Bryant, Donna M.. 2015. Relating quality of center-based child care to early cognitive and language development longitudinally. Child Development 71(2): 339–357.Google Scholar
Carter, Phillip. 2007. Phonetic variation and speaker agency: Mexicana identity in a North Carolina middle school. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 13(2): 1–14.Google Scholar
Carter, Phillip M. 2013. Shared spaces, shared structures: Latino social formation and African American English in the U.S. south. Journal of Sociolinguistics 17(1): 66–92.Google Scholar
Cedergren, Henrietta. 1987. The spread of language change: Verifying inferences of linguistic diffusion. In Lowenberg, P. (ed.), Language Spread and Language Policy: Issues, Implications and Case Studies: Georgetown University Round Table on Language and Linguistics, 44–60. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Chambers, J.K. 1995. Sociolinguistic Theory: Linguistic Variation and Its Social Significance. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Chambers, J.K. 2003. Sociolinguistic Theory: Linguistic Variation and Its Social Significance. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny. 2005. Age and generation-specific use of language. In Ammon, Ulrich, Dittmar, Norbert, and Mattheier, Klaus J. (eds.), Sociolinguistics: An Introductory Handbook of the Science of Language and Society, 1552–1563. Boston/Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Craig, Holly K. and Washington, Julie A.. 2006. Malik Goes to School: Examining the Language Skills of African American Students from Preschool-5th Grade. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cukor-Avila, Patricia. 2002. She say, she go, she be like: Verbs of quotation over time in African American Vernacular English. American Speech 77(1): 3–31.Google Scholar
Cukor-Avila, Patricia and Bailey, Guy. 2011. The interaction of transmission and diffusion in the spread of linguistic forms. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 17(2): 39–49.Google Scholar
De Decker, Paul. 2006. A real-time investigation of social and phonetic changes in post-adolescence. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 12(2): 65–76.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 1997. Age as a sociolinguistic variable. In Coulmas, Florian (ed.), The Handbook of Sociolinguistics, 151–167. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2011. Language and power in the preadolescent heterosexual market. American Speech 86(1): 85–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisikovits, Edina. 1998. Girl-talk/boy-talk: Sex differences in adolescent speech. In Coates, Jennifer (ed.), Language and Gender: A Reader, 45–58. Sydney: Australian Professional Publications.Google Scholar
Evans, Bronwen and Iverson, Paul. 2007. Plasticity in vowel perception and production: A study of accent change in young adults. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 121(6): 3814–3826.Google Scholar
Fasold, Ralph W. and Wolfram, Walt. 1970. Some linguistic features of Negro dialect. In Fasold, Ralph W. and Shuy, Roger (eds.), Teaching Standard English in the Inner City, 41–86. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Fought, Carmen. 1999. A majority sound change in a minority community: /u/-fronting in Chicano English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4(1): 5–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foulkes, Paul and Docherty, Gerard. 2006. The social life of phonetics and phonology. Journal of Phonetics 34(4): 409–438.Google Scholar
Green, Lisa J. 2011. Language and the African American Child. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Green, Lisa J. and White-Sustaita, Jessica. 2015. Development of variation in child African American English. In Lanehart, Sonja (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of African American English, 475–491. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Habib, Rania. 2014. Vowel variation and reverse acquisition in rural Syrian child and adolescent language. Language Variation and Change 26(1): 45–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habick, Timothy. 1993. Farmer City, Illinois: Sound systems shifting south. In Frazer, Timothy (ed.), “Heartland” English: Variation and Transition in the American Midwest, 97–121. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Hockett, Charles. 1950. Age-grading and linguistic continuity. Language 26: 449–459.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul and Williams, Ann. 2000. Creating a new town koine: Children and language change in Milton Keynes. Language in Society 29: 65–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohn, Mary Elizabeth. 2017. (De)Segregation: The impact of de-facto and de-jure segregation on African American English in the New South. Proceedings from LAVIS IV: Language Variety in the South. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press.Google Scholar
Kohn, Mary Elizabeth and Farrington, Charlie. 2012. Evaluating acoustic speaker normalization algorithms: Evidence from longitudinal child data. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 131(3): 2237–2248.Google Scholar
Kohn, Mary Elizabeth and Farrington, Charlie. 2017. Longitudinal sociophonetic analysis: What to expect when working with child and adolescent data. In Wagner, Suzanne Evans and Buchstaller, Isabelle (eds.), Using Panel Data in the Sociolinguistic Study of Variation and Change, 122–154. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1963. The social motivation of a sound change. Word 19(January): 273–309.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1965. Linguistic research on the non-standard English of Negro children. In Dore, A. (ed.), Problems and Practices in the New York City Schools, 110–117. New York: New York Society for the Experimental Study of Education.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1994. Principles of Linguistic Change: Internal Factors. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1995. Can reading failure be reversed? A linguistic approach to the question. In Gadsden, Victoria and Wagner, Debora. (eds.), Literacy Among African-American Youth: Issues in Learning, Teaching, and Schooling, 39–68. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 2001. Principles of Linguistic Change: Social Factors. Vol. 2. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Cohen, Paul, Robins, Clarence and Lewis, John. 1968. A Study of the Non-Standard English of Negro and Puerto Rican Speakers in New York City. Report on cooperative research project 3288. New York, NY: Columbia University.Google Scholar
Miller, Wick and Ervin, Susan. 1964. The Development of Grammar in Child Language. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 29(1): 9–34.Google Scholar
Moore, Emma. 2004. Sociolinguistic style: A multidimensional resource for shared identity creation. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 49. 375–396.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newkirk-Turner, Brandi L., Oetting, Janna B. and Stockman, Ida J.. 2014. BE, DO, and modal auxiliaries of 3-year-old African American English speakers. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 57(4). 1383–1393.Google Scholar
Pope, Jennifer. 2002. The Social History of a Sound Change on the Island of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts: Forty years after Labov. Unpublished M.A. dissertation. Edinburgh, UK: University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Prichard, Hilary and Tamminga, Meredith. 2012. The impact of higher education on Philadelphia vowels. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 18(2): 87–95.Google Scholar
Renn, Jennifer E. 2007. Measuring Style Shift: A Quantitative Analysis of African American English. M.A. Thesis. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Renn, Jennifer E. 2010. Acquiring Style: The Development of Dialect Shifting among African American Children. Ph.D. Dissertation. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Renn, Jennifer E. and Terry, J. Michael. 2009. Operationalizing style: Quantifying the use of style shift in the speech of African American adolescents. American Speech 84(4): 367–390.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R. 1999. African American Vernacular English: Features, Evolution, Educational Implications. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R. and King, Sharese. 2016. Language and linguistics on trial: Hearing Rachel Jeantel (and other vernacular speakers) in the courtroom and beyond. Language 92(4): 948–988.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R. and McNair-Knox, Faye. 1994. Addressee- and topic-influenced style shift: A quantitative sociolinguistic study. In Biber, Douglas and Finegan, Edward (eds.), Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Register, 235–276. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R. and Price, MacKenzie. 2013. Girlz II women: Age-grading, language change and stylistic variation. Journal of Sociolinguistics 17(2): 143–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rickford, John R. and Rickford, Angela E.. 1995. Dialect readers revisited. Linguistics and Education 7(2): 107–128.Google Scholar
Roberts, Julie. 2002. Child language variation. In Chambers, J.K., Trudgill, Peter, and Schilling-Estes, Natalie (eds.), The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, 333–348. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian. 2004. Adolescents, young adults, and the critical period: Two case studies from “Seven Up.” In Fought, Carmen (ed.), Sociolinguistic Variation: Critical Reflections, 121–139. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian, Blondeau, Helene and Charity, Anne. 2001. Individual roles in a real-time change: Montreal (r->R) 1947–1995. In van de Velde, Hans and van Hout, Roeland (eds.), ‘r-atics: Sociolinguistic, Phonetic and Phonological Characteristics of /r/. Bruxelles: ILVP.Google Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian and Wagner, Suzanne Evans. 2006. Age-grading in retrograde movement: The inflected future in Montreal French. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 12(2): Article 16.Google Scholar
Smith, Jennifer, Durham, Mercedes and Fortune, Liane. 2007. “Mam, my trousers is fa’in doon!” Community, caregiver, and child in the acquisition of variation in a Scottish dialect. Language Variation and Change 19(1): 63–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snyder, Thomas D. and Hoffman, Charlene M.. 2003. Digest of Educational Statistics, 2002. Washington, DC: National Center for Educational Statistics.Google Scholar
Sweetland, Julie. 2006. Teaching Writing in the African American Classroom: A Sociolinguistic Approach. Ph.D. dissertation. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A. and D’Arcy, Alexandra. 2009. Peaks beyond phonology: Adolescence, incrementation, and language change. Language 85(1): 58–108.Google Scholar
Terry, J. Michael, Hendrick, Randall, Evangelou, Evangelos, and Smith, Richard L.. 2010. Variable dialect switching among African American children: Inferences about working memory. Lingua, (120): 2463–75.Google Scholar
Van Hofwegen, Janneke and Stob, Reuben. 2011. A longitudinal analysis of the relationship between reading and AAE vernacularity. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 40. Washington, DC: Georgetown University.Google Scholar
Van Hofwegen, Janneke Van and Stob, Reuben. 2012. The gender gap: how dialect usage affects reading outcomes in African American youth. Paper presented at the Linguistic Society of America 2012 Annual Meeting, Portland, OR, January 5–8.Google Scholar
Van Hofwegen, Janneke and Wolfram, Walt. 2010. Coming of age in African American English: A longitudinal study. Journal of Sociolinguistics 14(4): 427–455.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, Suzanne Evans. 2008. Language Change and Stabilization in the Transition from Adolescence to Adulthood. Ph.D. dissertation. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Wagner, Suzanne Evans. 2012a. Real-time evidence for age grad(ing) in late adolescence. Language Variation and Change 24(2): 179–202.Google Scholar
Wagner, Suzanne Evans. 2012b. Age grading in sociolinguistic theory. Linguistics and Language Compass 6(6): 371–382.Google Scholar
Wagner, Suzanne Evans and Buchstaller, Isabelle (eds.), 2017. Using Panel Data in the Sociolinguistic Study of Variation and Change. Routledge Studies in Language Change Series. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wheeler, Rebecca. 2016. So much research, so little change: Teaching Standard English in African American classrooms. Annual Review of Linguistics 2(1): 367–390.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolfram, Walt. 1971. Black and White speech differences revisited. In Wolfram, Walt and Clark, Nona H. (eds.), Black-White Speech Relationships, 139–161. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Woolard, Kathryn. 2011. Is there linguistic life after high school? Longitudinal changes in the bilingual repertoire in metropolitan Barcelona. Language in Society 40(5): 617–648.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×