Over Fifty Years of Research on African American English: Breaking the Cycle

A lecture by Prof. Lisa Green (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

The stream of research on African American English (AAE) has continued to flow steadily, stemming from the claim in the 1960s that the variety is a legitimate linguistic system. Over the course of the years, insightful revelations about the sentence structure, sound system, and composition of meaning, have been made about AAE; however, issues related to the intersection of language of speakers in African American communities and social factors continue to be in the forefront. In this talk, I will frame the past fifty years of research on AAE in terms of cycles and then discuss research on linguistic patterns in children developing AAE, speakers who are often overlooked. I discuss myths about child AAE and explain the importance of acquisition research, especially in countering the growing epidemics of the preschool to prison pipeline and the “adultification” of African American girls.

To attend the lecture, please use this Zoom Webinar link.