What do you need to know? Final prep for AAVE (Ling 65)

1. What do you need to know? Final prep for AAVE (Ling 65) Questions? Tylers@stanford.edu

2. About the final • The final is a three hour cumulative exam (everything is fair game). • There are three sections: data analysis, short answer questions, one longer essay. Each section should take one hour or less. • You will have some choice of questions like on the midterm. • The data analysis will be like the mid-term and be focused on identifying AAVE features • Reminder: There may be questions based on information in the readings that we didn’t cover in lecture, so review the readings. There may also be questions based on information from the lectures that wasn’t addressed in the readings, so please review notes, handouts, and slides. • See notes posted on Coursework. • Your best bet is always to talk to other people in the course. Two heads are better than one.

3. Review of the first half

4. Dialects of English • Dialects of English: Review your notes from “American Tongues” (or watch it in Green). Reread Wolfram article from the first week. This section will NOT be limited to the parts of the materials that talked about AAVE • Wolfram 1981, Varieties of American English (in Language in the USA, 44-68, available on Coursework; Rickford and Rickford Spoken Soul, ch. 1:3-10; Green African American English, Introduction, 1-11; Smitherman, Word, ch 1:1-19 • Recall that linguists are interested in variation, how different people use language differently. Can you name the features beyond region and ethnicity?

5. Lexicon • Lexicon: Review all the readings. You won’t be expected to memorize all the lexical items from Smitherman, but you should be familiar with some. Make sure to review Green’s lexical entries. • Rickford and Rickford, Spoken Soul, ch. 6, first section, 91-98; Green African American Englishch 1, 12-33; Smitherman, Word, chs. 2 & 3, 20-63 • What’s slang and what isn’t? Does it matter? • What makes something part of the “AAVE lexicon”? • Why bother compiling one at all, btw? • Were there differences in how the authors approach “the lexicon”? • Do differences in spelling/definition tell you anything? • What do you do with the N-word?

6. Phonetics/phonology • Phonetics/phonology: Review major phonological features of AAVE and their linguistic environments (when do they happen, when are they more likely to happen). • Ohio Language Files, 9th ed., 2004: Files 3.1-3.5, pp. 41-60, and 3.6, 63-5; and Rickford & Rickford, Spoken Soulch 6, second half, 98-108 • Green African American Englishch 4: 106-133 • Why not use the English spelling system to transcribe speech? • Know your IPA. • Can you describe sounds in terms of manner, place, and voicing? • Review the handouts for different pronunciation features in AAVE. • Can people “sound Black”? What’s really going on?

7. Grammar • Grammar: Review major grammatical patterns: copula deletion, negative concord (multiple negation), absence of 3rd person s etc. you’ll have to know the meaning of verbal markers like BIN, habitual be, steady etc. • Rickford & Rickford, Spoken Soul, ch. 7, first section, 109-122; Green African American Englishch 2, 34-75; • Rickford & Rickford, Spoken Soul, ch. 7, second section, 122-8; Green African American Englishch 2, 34-75 • What are tense, aspect, and mood? How are they different? • Look at how Green talks about BIN. • Re-read Green on “be” (51-52, especially) • Negative inversion (R&R p. 123)

8. Writers • Writers: Review major authors and historical trends in the use of AAVE. You don’t need to memorize every author and title mentioned in the readings, but you should know at least one author who exemplifies each of the major styles, historical periods, and points of view about AAVE. • Rickford & Rickford, Spoken Soul, ch. 2, pp. 13-38; Green African American English ch 6: 164-199

9. Preachers • Preachers: Review the readings, including “Stylin’ outta the black pulpit,” to understand the major rhetorical styles and the history of the Black church. • Rickford & Rickford, Spoken Soul, ch.. 3, pp. 39-56, & ch. 5, first part: 73-80; Green African American Englishch 5, 146-154; Holt 1972, 189-204; Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., 1993: 13-25; SmithermanWord, ch 4, 66-67 • Mostly about discourse features and rhetorical style versus linguistic features • Repetition, recursivity, call and response, rhetorical questioning, metaphor, play between reality and the bible • Origins of the Black church (Holt)

10. The Living Art • The Living Art: Review the chapters discussing comedians as well as the readings on speech events. You won’t be expected to memorize every name mentioned, but you should know the names of a few comedians from different periods who use different styles. • Rickford & Rickford, Spoken Soul, ch. 4, pp. 57-72, ch. 5, 2nd part, 80-88; Green African American Englishch 5, second part, 134-145, 154-63; ch 7, pp 200-215; SmithermanWord, ch 4, 64-81 • Review Green’s speech events (signifyin’, playing the dozens, toasting, etc.) • Blackface, minstrels, fake dialect. • How does AAVE work in comedian’s mouths? What about Bill Cosby?

11. Stuff since mid-term

12. Pidgins and Creoles • Pidgins and Creoles: Know the definition of a pidgin, a creole, and decreolization. Know examples of each (the Nichols reading will give you examples of creoles). • Nichols 2004: 133-152; Blake 2006, 172-7; Rickford 2006:259-276; Weldon 2006: 178-82 • When/why do pidgins arise? Do most pidgins become creoles? Do all creoles start as pidgins? Do pidgins/creoles always happen when languages are in contact? Why/why not? • Why are creoles more complex than pidgins? • Define: basilect, mesolect, acrolect. • What does it mean that creoles are less complex than the contributing languages? (Hint: usually they don’t have verbal inflection)

13. Origins of AAVE • Origins of AAVE Debate: Be familiar with the viewpoints of Creolists and Anglicists, and the major historical evidence for each view. You should know the basic points made in the “Story of English” video we watched in section (“Black on White”). • Rickford & Rickford, Spoken Soul, ch. 8, pp. 129-160; Ohio Language Files, 9th ed., 2004: File 10.5: 346-52 • What are distinctive features of Gullah? (Here you go: tense marking, pronouns, lexicon, see the Nichols and the Weldon) • How is it that Gullah has managed to hang on til today? (See Nichols and Weldon) • What facts make the Creolist hypothesis reasonable? Which ones make the Anglicist hypothesis reasonable? (Think about social conditions and history!) • What do historical accounts of African American speech tell us? • Is there modern linguistic evidence we can use to figure out the origins of AAVE? (Hint: Go to West Africa, the Sea Islands, the Caribbean, Liberia, Nova Scotia, etc.) • What similarities are there in conditions for Caribbean English (see the Black reading) and America during slavery? • What do copula, aspect, and negation tell us about the origins of AAVE?

14. Education and Ebonics • Education/ Ebonics: Know the basics of different strategies for taking AAVE into account in the classroom. Review chapters on the Ebonics controversy. Review slides and readings on Ann Arbor King case. Be familiar with the actual Oakland resolution (and how it was revised). • Rickford & Rickford, Spoken Soul, ch 9:163-81; SmithermanWord, ch 7, 121-145 • Green African American Englishch 8, 216-44; Jordan 1985: “Nobody mean more to me than you and the future life of Willie Jordan.” In On Call: Political essays, 123-39; Fordham and Ogbu 1986, Black Students’ school success: coping with the “burden of ‘acting white’.” Urban Review 18(3):176-206. • Are AAVE and Standard English converging or diverging? What does it matter? • How does language play a role in “the burden of acting White”? (Fordham and Ogbu—connect this with the Terrell and Terrell on speaking AAVE while trying to get a job and the Baugh on profiling) • Give a history of the Oakland Ebonics controversy. How was it similar/different compared to the King case? • How did the wording of the school board’s resolution change? (R&R p. 170) • How do we address the achievement gap for students of color? What does language have to do with it?

15. Media/Disney • Media/ Disney: What does the media have to do with racial stereotypes? How does language fit into this? • Rickford & Rickford, Spoken Soul, chs.10, 11; 181-218 • Synthesize the idea of “language attitudes” with as much as you can in the course. How many different lectures/readings can you connect attitudes to? (How about the Wright reading? The Jordan? The Fischer and Massey? Terrell & Terrell? Fordham & Ogbu?)

16. Linguistic profiling • Linguistic Profiling: Review the general findings of the three studies discusses in the lecture. Be familiar with the legal issues and controversies involved in linguistic profiling and lay-people testifying about race/ethnicity based on speech. • Terrell, Sandra L., and Francis Terrell. 1983. Effects of speaking Black English upon employment opportunities. ASHA (Journal of the American Speech and Hearing Assn.) 26:27-9. Baugh 1999:135-147; Fischer and Massey 2004, “The Ecology of Racial Discrimination” City and Community 5.5, Sep. 2004, 221-41 • Rickford & Rickford, Spoken Soul, ch.12:221-229;

17. Hip hop • Hip Hop: Review Alim’s 10 points and your lecture notes. • Don’t worry about: Alim 2007, “The Whig Party don’t exist in my hood: Knowledge, reality, and education in the Hip Hop Nation” In Talkin Black talk, ed. By H. Samy Alim and John Baugh, 1-12 • But DO look over the tenets that were handed out.