2013/04/15 by Guy Bailey, John Baugh, Salikoko S. Mufwene +1 · 1 citation
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Phonetics and Phonology Research #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Vernacular #Phonology #Linguistics #History #Philosophy
paper · doi:10.4324/9780203355596-13
openalex publication_date 2013/04/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
The focus on morphology and syntax does not mean that linguists regard AAVE phonology as unimportant, however. In fact, during the late 1960s and early 1970s linguists saw the phonological differences between AAVE and white varieties of English as crucial to the reading difficulties and standardized test biases faced by African-American children. A series of studies, undertaken primarily in response to these educational problems, documented many of the features of AA VE phonology (see, for instance, Baratz and Shuy 1969; Wolfram 1969; Fasold and Wolfram 1970; Labov 1972; Luelsdorff 1975). More recently, researchers in speech and language pathology have examined the role that AA VE phonological features play in the assignment of a disproportionately high percentage of African Americans to special education classes and to speechlanguage therapy (Wolfram 1994; Stockman 1996). Such assignments are often made on the basis of dialect differences rather than pathologies; they not only stigmatize African-American children unfairly, but they also fail to address real problems that these children face. Finally, work on subjective reactions to AA VE and on language and discrimination has shown that phonology plays a crucial role in ethnic identification and hence in discrimination based on language (Tucker and Lambert 1966; Bailey and Maynor 1989; Kerr-Mattox 1990; Baugh 1996). In fact, some work suggests that phonology alone is sufficient for ethnic identification (Graff et al. 1986; Bailey and Maynor 1989; Thomas and Bailey, forthcoming), and indeed that intonation alone may suffice (Rickford 1977: 205).