African American English

Green, Lisa

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511809880.007

Cited by 28 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…African American children enter formal schooling with well-developed phonemic and phonological knowledge, including a repertoire of consonants and vowel sounds in their oral dialect and an established understanding of the allowable sound combinations that make up words. Prominent phonological features of AAE include vowel shifts (e.g., "e" in pen is pronounced as pin), consonant cluster reduction (e.g., fist pronounced as fis_), and substitution of consonants (e.g., "th" in bath pronounced as baf) (Green, 2004;Seymour & Seymour, 1981). These phonological features of AAE, though rule-governed based on the constraints of the dialect, differ systematically from GAE phonology used in the classroom and the academic language of instruction.…”

Section: African American English and Readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Phonemic and Phonological Awareness to Children Who Speak African American English

Washington¹,

Lee‐James²,

Stanford³

2023

The Reading Teacher

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There is tremendous variation in the use of American English by major geographic regions, as well as within these regions or cities, and by cultural background. The variety of English spoken by many African American people in the United States is called African American English (AAE). AAE affects early literacy skills in ways that may require differentiated classroom instruction that focuses on integrating this important language variety into both teaching and learning. The purpose of this paper is to: (1) present the characteristics of AAE and its relationship to the development of reading; (2) outline the impact of AAE on foundational language and reading skills, especially phonemic and phonological awareness; and, (3) provide some guidance for addressing variation in the classroom when teaching phonemic and phonological awareness, while simultaneously affirming African American children's identitities by acknowledging and celebrating the language strengths they bring to the classroom.

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Section: African American English and Readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Phonemic and Phonological Awareness to Children Who Speak African American English

Washington¹,

Lee‐James²,

Stanford³

2023

The Reading Teacher

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“…Similarly, the argument goes, speakers of stigmatized varieties of English such as Black English may be "native" monolingual speakers of English, but their dialect gets in the way of their academic success. Baker-Bell (2020), drawing on Alim and Smitherman (2012), argues that the notion of "academic language" is actually a proxy for White Mainstream English; indeed, decades of empirical research documents both the linguistic sophistication of Black English and its stigmatization in United States schools (see also Baugh, 2004;Green, 2004;Wolfram, 2004). Godley and Minnici (2008), in summing up this perspective, quoted a teacher's comments about one of their Black students as representative of this position: "Rajid can't do challenging work-just listen to the way he talks" (p. 30).…”

Section: Academic Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Dismantling Persistent Deficit Narratives About the Language and Literacy of Culturally and Linguistically Minoritized Children and Youth: Counter-Possibilities

et al. 2021

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Despite decades of efforts, deficit narratives regarding language development and use by children and students from historically marginalized backgrounds remain persistent in the United States. Examining selective literature, we discuss the ideologies that undergird two deficit narratives: the notion that some children have a “word gap” when compared to their White middle-class peers, and students must develop “academic language” to engage in rigorous content learning. The “word gap” concept came from a study wherein a group of young children in low-income families heard fewer words than those in middle-class families. It assumes that language can only be acquired in one way—vocabulary exchange from one parent to one child—and ignores decades of research on diverse pathways for language development. We highlight an alternative perspective that language development builds on children’s experience with cultural practices and the harm on minoritized children by privileging a specific form of vocabulary acquisition. The second deficit narrative concerns “academic language,” a concept championed by scholars aiming to address educational inequity. The construct runs the risk of undervaluing the potential of students from historically marginalized backgrounds to engage in learning using language that is “informal,” nonconventional, or “non-native like.” It also is sometimes used as a rationale to relegate students to special programs isolated from more rigorous academic discourse, thus ironically removing them from opportunities to develop the academic registers they are deemed to be missing. We explore alternative frameworks that shift the focus from linguistic features of academic talk and texts as prerequisites for academic work to the broad range of linguistic resources that students employ for academic purposes in the classroom. Finally, we turn to a positive approach to youths’ language development and use: translanguaging by multilingual learners and their teachers. Translanguaging demonstrates the power of a resource-oriented perspective that values students’ rich communicative repertoires and actively seeks to disrupt language hierarchies. We argue that this approach, however, must be considered in relation to the broader social context to meet its transformative aims. Together, our analysis suggests counter-possibilities to dismantle deficit-oriented narratives and points to promising directions for research and practices to reduce inequity in education.

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“…Example (3) in the above section shows that Díaz frequently sprinkles his prose with expressions borrowed from African-American English (for a discussion see Green 2004). Second-generation Dominican-Americans identify strongly with their African American peers because they are often in a similar socio-economic position and because outside observers often categorize them as African-Americans on the basis of their skin color.…”

Section: African-american Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

Translating the Watcher’s Voice: Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao into Spanish

Boyden

Goethals

2011

meta

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RÉSUMÉLe présent article fait état d'une analyse de la traduction espagnole du roman The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao de l'auteur dominico-américain Junot Díaz. Nous examinerons comment la traduction de l'auteure cubaine Achy Obejas affecte la situation narrative, et notamment la relation de solidarité entre le narrateur et le narrataire. Dans le texte source, cette relation de solidarité s'établit par plusieurs formes d'hétéroglossie intra-et interlinguistique, qui déterminent la voix du narrateur comme une voix racialement et ethniquement marquée. Bien que la traduction neutralise dans une certaine mesure cette voix narrative, nous voulons souligner que l'effet produit par la version espagnole n'est pas tant la réduction mais plutôt le déplacement de la relation de solidarité entre le narrateur et le narrataire vers une relation entre l'auteur et le lecteur du texte cible. De plus, nous attirerons l'attention sur quelques différences entre les deux éditions existantes de la traduction d'Obejas, qui sont destinées, respectivement, à l'Europe et à l'Amérique latine (Mondadori) et aux États-Unis (Vintage Español). Il est surtout étonnant que cette dernière édition ait recours à plusieurs insertions paratextuelles, ce qui construit un lecteur impliqué paraissant aliéné à l'environnement bilingue dans lequel se situe le roman, lequel est pourtant très familier à de nombreux lecteurs hispanophones aux États-Unis. AbStRActThis article offers an analysis of the Spanish translation of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Dominican-American author Junot Díaz. We look at how the translation by Cuban author Achy Obejas affects the narrative situation, and in particular the solidarity relation between narrator and narratee. In the original, this solidarity relation depends on various forms of intra-and interlingual heteroglossia, which define the narrator's voice as ethnically and racially marked. While the translation does to some degree neutralize this narrative voice, we argue that the Spanish version does not so much reduce as displace the solidarity effects embedded in the ST onto the relation between the implied author and reader of the TT. We further point attention to some of the differences between the two editions of the translation, directed at European and Latin American markets (Mondadori) and the North American market (Vintage Español) respectively. Surprisingly, the latter uses various paratextual insertions to construct an implied reader at some remove from the bilingual milieu in which the novel is set, and with which many Spanish-language readers in North America are highly familiar. MOtS-cLÉS/KEYWORDSTraduction littéraire, littérature dominico-américaine, hétéroglossie intra-et interlinguistique, voix narrative, ethnicité Literary translation, Dominican-American literature, intra-and interlingual heteroglossia, narrative voice, ethnicity translating the watcher's voice 21 IntroductionThe translation of heterolingual literature has proven a particularly fruitful area of research for translation stu...

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African American English

Cited by 28 publications

References 0 publications

Teaching Phonemic and Phonological Awareness to Children Who Speak African American English

Teaching Phonemic and Phonological Awareness to Children Who Speak African American English

Dismantling Persistent Deficit Narratives About the Language and Literacy of Culturally and Linguistically Minoritized Children and Youth: Counter-Possibilities

Translating the Watcher’s Voice: Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao into Spanish

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