African American Evaluations of Black English and Standard American English

1998 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. White ◽  
Beverly J. Vandiver ◽  
Maria L. Becker ◽  
Belinda G. Overstreet ◽  
Linda E. Temple ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American English ◽  
Black English ◽  
Standard American English

Texts, white lies and a videotape: white teachers teaching African American literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 239-253
Author(s):  
Lisa Marie Westbrooks
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
American English ◽  
White Teachers ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Standard American English ◽  
English Classrooms ◽  
Teacher Researcher ◽  
White Gaze

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to share my personal memories and emotions of my experience as an African American, a Woman of Color, teacher-peer, teacher-researcher, student and a colonized standard American English speaker, situated in English classrooms as white teachers teach African American literature from a white gaze. I concur with previous researchers on this topic, but from a fresh perspective that traditional educational spaces support racial-socio and linguistic hierarchies by avoiding authentic racial, social and cultural ways of knowing, thus allowing reproduction and perpetuating academic and social inequities targeted toward multilingual learners. Furthermore, I suggest that teachers must acquaint themselves with communities of color to become affective and effective to specifically facilitate multilingual classrooms. Design/methodology/approach This is an autoethnographic inquiry. It examines instances of culturally inexperienced white teachers teaching African American literature to middle school and high school multilingual learners. In adjacent, I share my personal memories and emotions of my experience as an African American, a woman of color, teacher-peer, teacher-researcher, student and a colonized standard American English speaker, situated in English classrooms as white teachers teach African American literature from a white gaze. Findings Undoubtedly, the white gaze influences marginalized persons. It does not merely attack who we be. It counter forms (e.g. influences) the views and ideas of the world around us. Gonzales (2015), shares in her autoethnography how educational practices are unjustly resistant to diversity. The racial-socio hierarchy uses every means necessary to deprive ethnicity (language, practices and beliefs). I did not verbally resist discrimination. Subsequently, some people of color may be guilty of having a slave gaze. I am very cautious and reluctant to use the term slave gaze. Nevertheless, I describe this as the opposite of having a white gaze. Slave gaze is someone who is colonized, dominated, submissive and feels unequal to whites and describes persons of color who have been conditioned to believe that whites are privileged and there is not much that we can do about it. I think this one way that Gonzales’ (2015); definition of double colonization can be extended, the racial-socio hierarchy in education forces marginalized persons to “redefine their identities within the dictates of yet another racial ideology” (p. 50). Undoubtedly, in re-identifying self-inflicts a counter-response to developing a substandard identity. Yet, I am certainly not the only person of color that is wary of challenging whiteness. Dismantling the master’s house will take more time. As white supremacist’s perceptions are embedded deep in the heart of education. Banishing false linguistic, cultural and racial ideologies equate to a mere few bricks of the master’s house. However, with non-traditional methods (e.g. getting to know the community in which the students live), renewed hearts and minds educators (together as a human race) can deconstruct and rebuild an education system fit for all learners. Originality/value This piece is an autoethnography of my experiences as a teacher teaching in multilingual classrooms. These are my original experiences and opinions.

Black English and Standard American English Constrasts in Consonantal Development of Four and Five-Year Old Children

1981 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry N. Seymour ◽  
Charlena M. Seymour
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Black English ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
White Children ◽  
Standard American English ◽  
Black And White ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Error Types

Four- and five-year old black and white children of black English and standard American English backgrounds, respectively, were administered a standard articulation test. A contrastive analysis revealed phonological differences in consonantal development between the two dialectal groups. However, contrasts were reflected more in number of developmental errors than in form of errors. Thus, the extent of differences noted between adult phonologies of black English and standard American English were less evident in emerging phonologies since unique error types were not exclusively characteristic of either group. These findings have implications for articulation testing of black English speaking children who have not acquired their adult phonology.

Difference Versus Deficit in Child African American English

1998 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 96-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry N. Seymour ◽  
Linda Bland-Stewart ◽  
Lisa J. Green
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American English ◽  
Language Disorders ◽  
African American English ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Standard American English ◽  
The Past ◽  
Conversational Language

We propose that shared features (noncontrastive) between African American English (AAE) and Standard American English (SAE) may be more diagnostically salient than features not shared (contrastive) when identifying children of AAE language backgrounds with language disorders. The syntax of child speakers of AAE with language disorders (LD) and child speakers of AAE without language disorders (NLD) were compared. Syntactic features were transcribed from conversational language samples of seven LD and seven NLD children, and these features were classified according to their overlapping relationship with SAE. Shared features between AAE and SAE were designated as "noncontrastive" and features not shared as "contrastive". The production of several noncontrastive linguistic features were significantly different between groups, whereas group differences were nonsignificant for all contrastive features, with the exception of the past tense /ed/ morpheme.

scholarly journals Performance of Elementary-Grade African American Students on the Gray Oral Reading Tests

2004 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly K. Craig ◽  
Connie A. Thompson ◽  
Julie A. Washington ◽  
Stephanie L. Potter
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Oral Reading ◽  
African American Students ◽  
American English ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Reading Tests ◽  
Poor Reading ◽  
Standard American English ◽  
American Students ◽  
Elementary Grade

Purpose: African American students perform disproportionately more poorly on standardized reading assessments than their majority peers. Poor reading performances may be related to test biases inherent in standardized reading instruments. The purpose of this investigation was to examine the appropriateness of the Gray Oral Reading Tests-Third Edition (GORT-3; Wiederholt & Bryant, 1992) for assessing the reading abilities of elementary-grade African American students. Method: Performances of 65 typically developing African American second through fifth graders were examined on the GORT-3. Results: African American English (AAE) was produced by most students while reading passages from the GORT-3 that were written in Standard American English (SAE). A scoring correction for AAE resulted in a statistical improvement in the performance distributions, but this did not appear to be educationally significant. Measures of total feature production predicted reading accuracy and rate, but not comprehension. Clinical Implications: Findings are discussed in terms of the appropriateness of this instrument for use by speech-language pathologists as they contribute to curricular and classroom placement decisions in schools with large numbers of typically developing African American students.

scholarly journals We Gon’ Be Alright? The Ambiguities of Kendrick Lamar’s Protest Anthem

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Noriko Manabe
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American English ◽  
African American English ◽  
Music Video ◽  
Standard American English ◽  
Concept Album ◽  
The Press

The best-known track on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, “Alright” has come to be regarded as a protest anthem, fueled by Lamar’s charged performances of the song at the BET Awards and the Grammys, and by accolades from the press that cite its political importance. This article argues that the actual musical track is ambiguous and open to several interpretations. To support this idea, I first explore the process through which the track came into being and how this process may have contributed to the song’s ambiguity. I then examine the message of “Alright,” contextualizing its place in the concept album and in the music video. I closely examine the musical track, analyzing its accent patterns using the metrical preference rules of Lerdahl and Jackendoff (".fn_cite_year($lerdahl_1983).") and David Temperley (".fn_cite_year($temperley_2001)."). This analysis of the track implies a 3+5 or 3+2+3 beat reading of the meter in addition to a straight ".fn_meter(4,4).". Using the linguistic tool Praat, I analyze the ways in which rappers Fabolous (who originally recorded on the track) and Lamar respond to this meter in their stresses, rhythms, and rhymes. I examine the well-known hook, which Pharrell Williams raps with a striking rise in pitch. This rise lends itself to several possible interpretations, due to differences in intonation between African American English and standard American English, coupled with Williams’s fluency in both. Finally, I analyze the ways that protesters have performed and interpreted the hook differently from the recording, as an illustration of the multivalent nature of the work.

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