Readings in African American Language

The Editor: Nathaniel Norment, Jr. is Associate Professor and Chair of the African American Studies Department at Temple University in Philadelphia. He earned his undergraduate degree in English and history from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, and his Ph.D. in language literacy, and learning (curriculum and instruction) from Fordham University in New York. His areas of specialization include African American literature, curriculum and teaching, rhetoric and composition, applied linguistics, African American Studies, and comparative rhetoric. He is editor of The African American Studies Reader and Readings in African American Language: Aspects, Features and Perspectives (Peter Lang, 2003), and he has published articles in professional journals.

• Contents: Joseph L. Dillard: Perspectives on Black English – Ralph W. Fasold: Distinctive Linguistic Characteristics of Black English – Roger D. Abrahams: The Advantages of Black English – Charles E. DeBose/Nicholas Faraclas: An Africanist Approach to the Linguistic Study of Black English: Getting to the Roots of the Tense-Aspect-Modality and Copula Systems in Afro-American English – William A. Stewart: Sociolinguistic Factors in the History of American Negro Dialects – Michele D. Foster: Sociolinguistics and the African-American Community: Implications for Literacy – Fay Boyd Vaughn-Cooke: Are Black and White Vernaculars Diverging? – Charles E. DeBose: Codeswitching: Black English and Standard English in the African-American Linguistic Repertoire – Daniel H. Morrow: Dialect Interference in Writing: Another Critical View – Nathaniel Norment, Jr.: Quantitative and Qualitative Analyses of Textual Cohesion in African American Students’ Writing in Narrative, Argumentative and Expository Modes – Nathaniel Norment, Jr.: Some Effects of Culture-Referenced Essay Topics on the Writing Performance of African American Students – Marcyliena Morgan: Theories and Politics in African American English – Geneva Smitherman: Toward Educational Linguistics for the First World – Thomas Kochman: Culture and Communication: Implications for Black English in the Classroom.