Coming of age in African American English: A longitudinal study¹

Abstract

This study examines trajectories of development in the use of African American English (AAE) for 32 speakers through the first 17 years of their lives based on a unique, longitudinal database. Temporal data points in the analysis include 48 months, Grade 1 (about age 6), Grade 4 (about age 9), Grade 6 (about age 11), Grade 8 (about age 13), and Grade 10 (about age 15). Complementary methods of analysis for assessing AAE include a tokenbased Dialect Density Measure (DDM), a type-based vernacular diversity index, and frequency-based variation analysis. The study reveals different trajectories and peak periods for the use of AAE, including a 'roller coaster' and a curvilinear trajectory; at the same time, there is a common dip among speakers in the overall use of vernacular AAE from Grade 1 through Grade 4. Examination of a selective set of demographic and self-regard measures shows no significant differences for gender, school racial density, racial peer contacts, and measures of Afro-centrality, but does show a significant correlation between mothers' and child use of AAE as well as age/grade.

Real-time evidence for age grad(ing) in late adolescence

“…The present study represents a step forward in our understanding of (ing) use over the life span. It complements Van Hofwegen and Wolfram's (2010) study, which followed its 196 S U Z A N N E E VA N S W A G N E R subjects up to the age of approximately 15 years, by looking at speakers in the next stage of adolescence (17 to 19 years old). The study confirmed, using real-time panel data, that by this stage in the life course, most speakers register a retreat from the higher rates of nonstandard [ɪn] use that were characteristic of their middle adolescent years.…”

Neighborhood effects on use of African-American Vernacular English

“…All else equal, that would lead us to predict that children who are relatively younger at baseline should exhibit more pronounced changes in AAVE use. Conversely, being relatively older at the time of our MTO long-term data collection may moderate MTO's effects, because previous research suggests that AAVE use increases during adolescence but begins to decline as youth enter college or the labor market (25,(31)(32)(33)(34). Table 2 highlights the challenge of testing for age effects in the MTO data: We see signs that older age (17+) at the time of data collection is associated with larger increases in AAVE use compared with those <17, but this difference could be due to the fact that youth of different ages at the time of our survey also had different average baseline ages.…”

“…Tokens were coded for use of AAVE rather than SAE for 10 language features (five grammatical and five phonological) that have been shown in previous research to distinguish the two dialects (5,8,25). Of the 14,191 tokens we analyzed in our dataset, 1,492 (11%) represented grammatical features and 12,699 (89%) were phonological (pronunciation) features (SI Appendix, Table S2).…”

Reaching out to the other side: Formal-linguistics-based SLA and Socio-SLA

“…Though a related line of inquiry in first dialect acquisition is of increasing interest (e.g. Chambers 1992;Nyzc 2011;Payne 1980;Pearson et al 2009;Rys 2007;Siegel 2010;Van Hofwegen and Wolfram 2010), dialect acquisition in SLA remains under-researched. 6 By looking into multiple TL variety exposure, the present study aims to address this gap.…”