Adolescents use the language of peers as models for dialect acquisition in ways that sometimes diverge from their family or home variety, often leading to broad heterogeneity and unpredictability during adolescence and early adulthood. Participants in Grade 6, 8, and 10 were paired with a same-sex peer partner and interviewed in dyads. In this chapter, using an analytical model based on Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT), we establish participants’ convergence to or divergence from the peer partner. The study analyzes these accommodation patterns in adolescent African American dyads through the use of the scores from the Dialect Density Measure (DDM) composite index and an analysis for assessing relative similarity within dyads for large dyadic samples. The results reveal that samples exhibiting high and significant intra-class correlations (ICC) indicate more accommodation in terms of the DDM than those with low, non-significant ICCs. The study uncovers important gender differences in accommodative patterns intersecting with grade level as well as a role for ethnic identity. Ethnically salient features are employed as resources for accommodation for both girls and boys, but in different ways.

In this chapter, we consider trajectories of change in vernacular African American Language (AAL) based on a set of seven temporal data points, from 48 months of age to post-secondary (19-21 years of age), using a Dialect Density Measure (DDM). Although different trajectories are uncovered, the predominant pattern is the “roller-coaster effect,” in which children’s vernacular index entering school recedes over the first four grades, accelerates during sixth to eighth grade, then recedes again as they proceed through secondary and post-secondary school. Comparison of token-based and type-based inventories show a high correlation in the results, and most individual variables also follow this pattern. However, some variables that are acquired during the later acquisition phase, such as ‘habitual be’ and copula/auxiliary absence, may show divergent patterns over the early lifespan.

In this chapter, we examine the relationship between the vernacularity of caretaker speech as represented by the participants’ mothers and the subjects in the FPG sample. In this chapter, we examine the relationship between the vernacularity of caretaker speech as represented by the participants’ mothers and the subjects in the FPG sample. The analysis indicates that a significant relationship between the relative vernacularity of AAL-speaking mothers and their children exists across most of the early lifespan. Further, the analysis of the impact of relevant social and family factors on the development of AAL vernacularity reveals gender as a significant determiner at only the earliest and the latest points in the early lifespan. Finally, the analysis uncovers the nuanced picture of the relationship between mothers’ and children’s vernacularity – that adolescent females from low-vernacular families are likely to become low-vernacular speakers (like their mothers) in older adolescence. Finally, we see the departure of the children from the parents in the early stages of schooling, following the roller coaster trajectory described in the overall trajectory of vernacularity described for morphosyntactic features.

The monumental research project reported here emerges at a crucial juncture in the field, bridging work on individual variation across distinct life stages with more traditional questions related to community variation, style, and change. The project expands previous approaches to African American Language (AAL) by considering the interaction between life stages, a host of social variables, and language use. The participants come from a wide variety of neighborhoods and communities, allowing us to move beyond the tradition of prioritizing highly vernacular speakers from ethnically homogenous communities to investigate the relationship between segregation and language variation. The depth and breadth of this study adds a new richness to our understanding of AAL as it relates to distinct life stages and social contexts. It also represents a more inclusive and comprehensive variationist perspective by adding to the analytical toolkit the composite dialect index that has traditionally been eschewed and dismissed by variationists in favor of myopically focused isolated, single linguistic structures. Though this methodological inclusion is controversial in variationist studies, we have offered empirical evidence and argued for its methodological utility and its theoretical validity as a complement to traditional variation studies.

This chapter examines the relationship between the use of African American Language (AAL) and the third grade outcomes of the development of reading skills and academic success assessments. Third grade is of particular importance because it is the point when standardized testing takes place for the first time and many future achievement patterns are set. Children’s reading skills were measured by standard scores on the different components of the Woodcock & Johnson test in third grade, including the Letter-Word ID task testing the child’s knowledge of letters and words, the Passage Comprehension items assessing reading comprehension, and the Word Attack Skills section evaluating the child’s phoneme/grapheme knowledge. The analysis suggests that more regular observed use of AAL in early elementary school is related to the development of Mainstream American English language and literacy skills above and beyond the effects previously attributed to home and school factors. The results further found that AAL use was significantly related to lower scores on Letter-Word ID test, but not on the other two reading tests. The regression results imply that when a child encounters different language varieties at home and in the classroom, it may make it more difficult for young learners to develop decoding and vocabulary skills.

The approach to language variation developed over the last half century has focused on systematic variation of variants for a single structural unit under the construct of the linguistic variable. While this approach may offer important detail for particular variables, it is essential to examine the overall configuration of a language variety as well. Composite linguistic measures facilitate the exploration of social factors and offer a profile of change for the entire linguistic system. We describe the methodological tools to provide a global description of language variation, “the composite index”, and to fully capture when and why individuals change their linguistic behavior over time. We emphasize the need to view language as a system by moving beyond individual variables to more fully characterize the ways in which individual linguistic features move in-tandem across the lifespan. The study demonstrates that a composite index score like the Dialect Density Measure (DDM) can be used as a means of tracking trajectories of language use across the lifespan on a unidimensional scale.

In this chapter, we consider stylistic shifting at several different temporal points, Grades 1/2, Grade 6, and Grade 8. Utilizing different strategies for eliciting formal and informal speech (presenting a planned speech for a parent audience vs. having lunch with a peer), we then compare the DDM scores in the two activities, using both a difference score and a ratio score to determine the shift between styles at the three temporal datapoints. Three main trajectories of shifting behavior take place during elementary and middle school. First, some speakers exhibit a general increase over time, indicating that speakers are engaging in more and more shifting as they age. Second, there is also an inverted V pattern, which shows that by Grade 6, shifting ability has increased, but in Grade 8 they are shifting less. Since these speakers are engaging in shifting behavior in Grade 6, it seems unlikely that they lose the ability to shift in Grade 8; instead, perhaps other outside factors may be influencing their linguistic behavior. The results suggest that the speakers have developed an increased ability to shift their language in response to contextual differences by the time they reach middle school. Age clearly plays an important role, with speakers shifting more as they get older, but gender also proves to be a relevant motivator for style shift.