Effect of Segregated and Integrated Educational Settings upon Selected Dialectal Features

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of a segregated educational setting versus an integrated educational setting upon selected dialectal characteristics of 60 black children in elementary school. Half of the children were selected from an all-black school and half from an integrated school. The subjects repeated 13 sentences from the Carrow Elicited Language Inventory. Instances of three commonly identified dialectal variations (zero copula, omission of /s/ and /z/ inflections, and substitution of /d/ for voiced “th”) were recorded and statistically treated through the use of an analysis of variance. Analysis indicated that in neither group of subjects was there a statistically significant decline in the presence of zero copula. However, regarding the omission of /s/ and /z/ inflections, only in the language of subjects from the integrated school was there a decrease in dialectal responses. Finally, with regard to the substitution of /d/ for voiced “th,” there was a statistically significant decline in dialectal responses for both groups of subjects. The results are discussed as they pertain to trends and important research needs in the area of social dialects, particularly black English.

Variation in Vowel Duration Among Southern African American English Speakers

“…This result will need to be verified with school-age children who are currently enrolled in classrooms which have a greater and a smaller percentage of AAE classmates. It has been shown that AAE students with more AAE classmates in the same classroom use a comparatively greater number of morphosyntactic AAE forms and phonological AAE features (e.g., Bountress, 1983; Terry et al, 2010). Along with these patterns, these children may also produce significantly longer vowels when compared with AAE students with fewer AAE classmates in the classroom.…”

“…We further expect smaller differences between the speakers in the integration group. As shown in a study by Bountress (1983), we might expect selected dialectal characteristics of AAE to be reduced in an integrated educational setting (where there is greater linguistic diversity) compared to a segregated setting. Consequently, we expect no significant differences between the vowel duration in AAE and WAE speakers in that group.…”

Dialectal Forms During Discourse of Poor, Urban, African American Preschoolers

“…In this sense, the clusters may represent subgroupings on a continuum, and each subject's relative order within this continuum may be influenced by other unknown status variables. This research design controlled some possibilities noted in previous literature, particularly subject differences in SES (Ratusnik & Koenigsknecht, 1976), general exposure to SE (Bountress, 1983), and the geographic location of the subjects (Cole & Taylor, 1990;Washington & Craig, 1992a), but others await investigation.…”

Variable Production of African American English Across Oracy and Literacy Contexts

“…Findings from prior research investigations have shown that during the early elementary grades, students who speak a nonstandard dialect of SAE demonstrate a gradual shift in dialect use to reflect the language of the majority culture (Bountress, 1983;Wolfram, Adger, & Christian, 1999). This dialectal shift generally is evident by the time children reach 7-8 years of age (Bountress, 1984;Fishman, 1991;Isaacs, 1996).…”

“…African American students from LSES homes produce more AAE than their peers from middle-income homes (Dillard, 1972;Ratusnik & Koenigsknecht, 1976;. Additionally, African American children who reside in segregated, predominately African American communities produce greater amounts and different types of dialect than their peers who live in mainstream or integrated environments (Bountress, 1983;Dillard, 1972).…”