African American Language

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

No other dialect of English has received as much academic and social attention as African American Language. From negative critiques to positive celebration of the dialect, the objective of this course is to provide a survey of African American Language (AAL) from linguistic structure and social application. Topics explored in the course will focus on the following areas: · Features of AAL—vocabulary (lexicon, including slang), pronunciation (phonetics and phonology), grammar (morphology and syntax) · Art—rhetoric, expression, speech events like rappin’ and signifyin’ as well as the Black preaching genre, AAL and its influence in music · History and variation—AAL’s relation to African languages, examination of the creole comparison, earlier examples of African American Language, variation within AAL · Education, Ebonics and other applied issues—issues connected to the use of AAL, attitudes and effects on teachers’ expectations as well as linguistic profiling, and the extent to which AAL affects the learning of Standard English and the acquisition of reading skills, language in the courtroom and politics Each week, we will explore a different topic from the aforementioned areas and apply the theoretical lesson to practical application, including but not limited to ethnographic observation, data collection, data analysis, student presentations and guest lectures from researchers in the field. Students will use data from the Language and Communication in Washington, DC (LCDC) project and the Corpus of Online Regional African American Language (CORAAL).