Black English by Deborah Sears Harrison, Tom Trabasso

When this volume was originally published in 1976, it contained completely new and original essays on the language of Black speakers of English. The contributors offer different ethnic and professional perspectives, representing fields such as linguistics, psychology, anthropology, sociolinguistics, speech and communication and their essays range from the topic of African origins to social and educational consequences that relate to grammatical and phonological aspects of Black American speech and language use. Also included are discussions of the problems of definition, historical origins, and the implications of speaking a dialect in the United States, from the political, psychological and social view.

The treatment is direct and often personal, revealing the political and ethnocentric views of language, the persistence of historical influences in the face of language change, and the mutual language influence of White and Black communities. The role of language in reading, listening, speaking, writing, teaching and testing is discussed. The advantages and disadvantages of being bidialectal in a monolingual society are explored in the context of the attitudes of Blacks and Whites toward the standard and vernacular varieties of English spoken in the USA. The importance of Black folklore as an important and creative means of social and political communication is demonstrated, and the process of decreolization of languages is illustrated by using both West Indian and New World pidgins and creoles.

This classic volume continues to be an important part of the literature which critically appraises Black culture.