The Five-Minute Linguist - Bite-sized Essays on Language and Languages Third Edition - Caroline Myrick
51. What is African American English?
The Five-Minute Linguist - Bite-sized Essays on Language and Languages Third Edition - Caroline Myrick
Nicole Holliday [+]
Pomona College
Nicole Holliday is an assistant professor of linguistics at Pomona College in Claremont, California, where she teaches courses on sociolinguistics, phonetics, and linguistic discrimination. She received her Ph.D. in linguistics from New York University in 2016. Her academic specialties are African American Language, linguistic profiling and discrimination, sociophonetics, and intonational phonology. She is especially interested in prosodic variation among individuals and communities with multiple and complex racial identities. Her work has appeared in venues such as American Speech and the Journal of the International Phonetic Association, as well as popular venues such as NPR, Dictionary.com, and the Oxford Dictionaries blog.
Description
African American English, or the variety of English spoken in many predominantly African American communities, has long been of great interest to linguists and the public. However, AAE's origins and structures are often stigmatized and misunderstood, resulting in linguistic prejudice and discrimination. This chapter discusses the history of AAE, some of its structural features, and its integral position in modern American society.