Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T07:19:36.616Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Stylistic Variation in the Early AAL Lifespan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2020

Mary Kohn ,
Walt Wolfram ,
Charlie Farrington ,
Jennifer Renn  and
Janneke Van Hofwegen
Mary Kohn
Affiliation:
Kansas State University
Walt Wolfram
Affiliation:
North Carolina State University
Charlie Farrington
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
Jennifer Renn
Affiliation:
Purdue University, Indiana
Janneke Van Hofwegen
Affiliation:
Google, Inc.
Get access

Summary

In this chapter, we consider stylistic shifting at several different temporal points, Grades 1/2, Grade 6, and Grade 8. Utilizing different strategies for eliciting formal and informal speech (presenting a planned speech for a parent audience vs. having lunch with a peer), we then compare the DDM scores in the two activities, using both a difference score and a ratio score to determine the shift between styles at the three temporal datapoints. Three main trajectories of shifting behavior take place during elementary and middle school. First, some speakers exhibit a general increase over time, indicating that speakers are engaging in more and more shifting as they age. Second, there is also an inverted V pattern, which shows that by Grade 6, shifting ability has increased, but in Grade 8 they are shifting less. Since these speakers are engaging in shifting behavior in Grade 6, it seems unlikely that they lose the ability to shift in Grade 8; instead, perhaps other outside factors may be influencing their linguistic behavior. The results suggest that the speakers have developed an increased ability to shift their language in response to contextual differences by the time they reach middle school. Age clearly plays an important role, with speakers shifting more as they get older, but gender also proves to be a relevant motivator for style shift.

Keywords

styleattention to speechaudience designspeaker designAfrican American Language (AAL)Dialect Density Measure (DDM)difference scoreratio score
Type
Chapter
Information
African American Language
Language development from Infancy to Adulthood
 , pp. 167 - 190
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bell, Allan. 1984. Language style as audience design. Language in Society 13(2): 145–204.Google Scholar
Charity, Anne H., Scarborough, Hollis S., and Griffin, Darion M. 2004. Familiarity with “school English” in African-American children and its relationship to early reading achievement. Child Development 75(5): 1340–1356.Google Scholar
Chevrot, Jean-Pierre, Beaud, Laurence, and Varga, Renata. 2000. Developmental data on a French sociolinguistic variable: Post-consonantal word-final/R. Language Variation and Change 12(3): 295–319.Google Scholar
Cohen, Jacob. 1988. Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (second ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2007. Style, Variation, and Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Craig, Holly K. and Washington, Julie A.. 2004. Grade-related changes in the production of African American English. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 47(2): 450–463.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Craig, Holly K. and Washington, Julie A.. 2006. Malik Goes to School: Examining the Language Skills of African American Students from Preschool-5th Grade. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.Google Scholar
Craig, Holly K., Zhang, Lingling, Hensel, Stephanie L., and Quinn, Erin J.. 2009. African American English-speaking students: An examination of the relationship between dialect shifting and reading outcomes. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 52(4): 839–855.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Díaz-Campos, Manuel. 2005. The emergence of adultlike command of sociolinguistic variables: a study of consonant weakening in Spanish-speaking children. In Eddington, David (ed.), Selected Proceedings of the 6th Conference on the Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese as First and Second Languages, 56–65. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Cross, William E. Jr. 1991. Shades of Black: Diversity in African-American Identity. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2000. Linguistic Variation as Social Practice. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2017. Meaning and Language Variation: The Third Wave in Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ervin-Tripp, Susan. 2001. Variety, style-switching, and ideology. In Eckert, Penelope and Rickford, John (eds.), Style and Variation, 44–56. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Finegan, Edward and Biber, Douglas. 1994. Register and social dialect variation: An integrated approach. In Biber, Douglas and Finegan, Edward (eds.), Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Register, 315–347. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Helms, Janet. 1990. Black and White Racial Identity: Theory, Research, and Practice. Westport, CT: Praeger.Google Scholar
Kendall, Tyler and Wolfram, Walt. 2009. Local and external language standards in African American English. Journal of English Linguistics 37(4):5–30.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1965. Stages in the acquisition of Standard English. In Shuy, Roger W. (ed.), Social Dialects and Language Learning, 77–103. Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1966. The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1972. Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 2001. The anatomy of style shifting. In Eckert, Penelope and Rickford, John R. (eds.), Style and Sociolinguistic Variation, 85–108. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Liang, Kung-Yee and Zeger, Scott. 1986. Longitudinal data analysis using generalized linear models. Biometrika 73: 13–22.Google Scholar
Miller, Jon F. and Paul, Rhea. 1995. The Clinical Assessment of Language Comprehension. Baltimore, MD: Paul Brookes Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Patterson, Janet Lee. 1992. The Development of SociolinguisticPphonological Variation Patterns for (ing) in Young Children. Ph.D. Dissertation. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico.Google Scholar
Renn, Jennifer. 2007. Measuring Style Shift: A Quantitative Analysis of African American English. UNC MA thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Renn, Jennifer. 2010. Acquiring Style: The Development of Dialect Shifting among African American Children. Ph.D. dissertation. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Renn, Jennifer. 2011. Patterns of shift: Longitudinal trajectories of style shifting among African American youth. Paper presented at the American Dialect Society Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, PA.Google Scholar
Jennifer, Renn. 2015. Investigating the relationship between African American English use and early literacy skills. Paper presented at the American Dialect Society Annual Meeting, Portland, OR.Google Scholar
Renn, Jennifer and Michael Terry, J.. 2009. Operationalizing style: Quantifying the use of style shift in the speech of African American adolescents. American Speech 84(4): 367–390.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rickford, John R. and Faye, McNair-Knox. 1994. Addressee- and topic-influenced style shift: A quantitative sociolinguistic study. In Biber, Douglas and Finegan, Edward (eds.), Perspectives on Register: Situating Register Variation within Sociolinguistics, 235–276. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rickord, John R. and Price, Mackenzie. 2013. Girlz II women: Age‐grading, language change and stylistic variation. Journal of Sociolinguistics 17:143–179.Google Scholar
Rowley, Stephanie A. J., Sellers, Robert M., Chavous, Tabbye M., and Smith, Mia. 1998. The relationship between racial identity and self-esteem in African American college and high school students. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74(3): 715–724.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schilling-Estes, Natalie. 1998. Investigating “self conscious” speech: The performance register in Ocracoke English. Language in Society 27(1): 53–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schilling-Estes, Natalie. 2004. Constructing ethnicity in interaction. Journal of Sociolinguistics 8(2): 163–195.Google Scholar
Sellers, Robert M., Stephanie, A. J. Rowley, Tabbye M. Chavous, J. Nicole Shelton, and Smith, Mia. 1997. Multidimensional inventory of black identity: A preliminary investigation of reliability and construct validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73(4): 805–815.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Jennifer, Durham, Mercedes, and Richards, Hazel. 2013. The social and linguistic in the acquisition of sociolinguistic norms: Caregivers, children, and variation. Linguistics 51(2): 285–324.Google Scholar
Street, Richard L. and Giles, Howard. 1982. Speech accommodation theory: A social cognitive approach to language and speech behavior. In Roloff, M. and Berger, C. R. (eds.), Social Cognition and Communication, 193–226 .Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walt and Schilling, Natalie. 2016. American English: Dialects and Variation, Third Edition. Cambridge/Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×