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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Print Price: $192.50

Format:
Hardback
944 pp.
180 mm x 251 mm

ISBN-13:
9780199795390

Publication date:
June 2015

Imprint: OUP US


The Oxford Handbook of African American Language

Edited by Sonja Lanehart

Series : Oxford Handbooks

The goal of The Oxford Handbook of African American Language is to provide readers with a wide range of analyses of both traditional and contemporary work on language use in African American communities in a broad collective. The Handbook offers a survey of language and its uses in African American communities from a wide range of contexts organized into seven sections: Origins and Historical Perspectives; Lects and Variation; Structure and Description; Child Language Acquisition and Development; Education; Language in Society; and Language and Identity. It is a handbook of research on African American Language (AAL) and, as such, provides a variety of scholarly perspectives that may not align with each other - as is indicative of most scholarly research.

The chapters in this book "interact" with one another as contributors frequently refer the reader to further elaboration on and references to related issues and connect their own research to related topics in other chapters within their own sections and the handbook more generally to create dialogue about AAL, thus affirming the need for collaborative thinking about the issues in AAL research. Though the Handbook does not and cannot include every area of research, it is meant to provide suggestions for future work on lesser-studied areas (e.g., variation/heterogeneity in regional, social, and ethnic communities) by highlighting a need for collaborative perspectives and innovative thinking while reasserting the need for better research and communication in areas thought to be resolved.

Readership : Scholars and students in sociolinguistics who are interested in African American language.

Sonja L. Lanehart, Jennifer Bloomquist, and Ayesha M. Malik: Language Use in African American Communities: An Introduction
PART I. ORIGINS AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
Gerard Van Herk: The English Origins Hypothesis
John R. Rickford: The Creole Origins Hypothesis
Salikoko S. Mufwene: The Emergence of African American English: Monogenetic or Polygenetic? With or Without "Decreolization"? Under How Much Substrate Influence
Donald Winford: On the Origins of African American Vernacular English: Beginnings
John Victor Singler: African American English Over Yonder: The Language of the Liberian Settler Community
Edgar W. Schneider: Documenting the History of African American Vernacular English: A Survey and Assessment of Sources and Results
Walt Wolfram and Mary E. Kohn: Regionality in the Development of African American English
PART II. LECTS AND VARIATION
Tracey L. Weldon and Simanique Moody: The Place of Gullah in the African American Linguistic Continuum
Patricia Cukor-Avila and Guy Bailey: Rural African American Vernacular English
Rose Wilkerson: African American English in the Mississippi Delta: A Case Study of Copula Absence and /r/-Lessness in the Speech of Black Women in Coahoma County
William A. Kretzschmar: African American Voices in Atlanta
Jennifer Bloomquist and Shelome Gooden: African American Language in Pittsburgh and the Lower Susqueshanna Valley
William Labov and Sabriya Fisher: African American Phonology in a Philadelphia Community
René A. Blake, Cara Shousterman, and Luiza Newlin-Lukowicz: African American Language in New York City
John R. Rickford: African American Vernacular English In California: Four Plus Decades Of Vibrant Variationist Research
Joseph Hill, Carolyn McCaskill, Robert Bayley, and Ceil Lucas: The Black American Sign Language Project: An Overview
Walt Wolfram: The Sociolinguistic Construction of African American Language
PART III. STRUCTURE AND DESCRIPTION
Lisa J. Green and Walter Sistrunk: Syntax and Semantics
Charles E. DeBose: The Systematic Marking of Tense, Modality and Aspect in African American Language
James A. Walker: On the Syntax-Prosody Interface in African American Language
Erik R. Thomas and Guy Bailey: Segmental Phonology of African American English
Erik R. Thomas: Prosodic Features of African American English
PART IV. CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND DEVELOPMENT
Brandi L. Newkirk-Turner, RaMonda Horton, and Ida J. Stockman: Language Acquisition in the African American Child: Prior to Age Four
Janneke Van Hofwegen: The Development of African American English through Childhood and Adolescence
Lisa J. Green and Jessica White-Susta¡ta: Development of Variation
Tempii B. Champion and Allyssa McCabe: Narrative Structures of African American Children: Commonalities and Differences
Janna B. Oetting: Some Similarities and Differences between African American English and Southern White English in Children
Toya A. Wyatt: Contemporary Approaches and Perspectives for Assessing Young and School-Age AAE Child Speakers
PART V. EDUCATION
Geneva Smitherman: African American Language and Education: History and Controversy in the Twentieth Century
Monique T. Mills and Julie A. Washington: Managing Two Varieties: Code-switching in the Educational Context
Sharroky Hollie, Tamara Butler, and Jamila Gillenwaters: Balancing Pedagogy with Theory: The Infusion of African American Language Research Into Everyday Pre K-12 Teaching Practices
K.C. Nat Turner and Tyson L. Rose: History of Research on Multiliteracies and Hip Hop Pedagogy: A Critical Review
William Labov and Bettina Baker: African-American Vernacular English and Reading
J. Michael Terry, Randall Hendrick, Evangelos Evangelou, and Richard L. Smith: Dialect Switching and Mathematical Reasoning Tests: Implications for Early Educational Achievement
John Baugh: Beyond Bidialecticalism: Language Planning and Policies for African American Students
PART VI. LANGUAGE IN SOCIETY
Charles E. DeBose: African American Church Language
James Braxton Peterson: The (Re)turn to Remus Orthography: The Voices of African American Language in American Literature
Howard Rambsy II and Briana Whiteside: African American Language and Black Poetry
Jacquelyn Rahman: African American Divas of Comedy: Staking a Claim in Public Space
Jennifer Bloomquist: The Construction of Ethnicity via Voicing: African American English in Children's Animated Film
John Baugh: SWB: (Speaking while Black or Speaking while Brown): Linguistic Profiling and Discrimination Based on Speech as a Surrogate for Race in International Perspective
PART VII. LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY
Kate T. Anderson: Racializing Language: Unpacking Linguistic Approaches to Attitudes about Race and Speech
Arthur K. Spears: African American Standard English
Erica Britt and Tracey L. Weldon: African American English in the Middle Class
Marcyliena Morgan: African American Women's Language: Mother Tongues Untied
David E. Kirkland: Black Masculine Language
H. Samy Alim: Hip Hop Nation Language: Localization and Globalization
Sonja L. Lanehart: African American Language and Identity: Contradictions and Conundrums

There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.

Sonja Lanehart is Professor and Brackenridge Endowed Chair in Literature and the Humanities at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

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Special Features

  • Offers a survey of language and its uses in African American communities from a wide range of contexts.