Title:	Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture
Authors:	Marjorie Goodwin Marcyliena, Morgan Judith T. Irvine Bambi Schieffelin
Keywords:	Black English
Issue Date:	2002
Publisher:	Cambridge
Description:	African American language is central to the teaching of linguistics and language in the United States, and this book, in the series Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language, is aimed specifically at upper-level undergraduates and graduates. It covers the entire field – grammar, speech and verbal genres – and it also discusses the various historical strands that need to be identified in order to understand the development of African American English. The book deals with the social and cultural history of the American South, urban and Northern black popular culture as well as policy issues. Morgan examines the language within the context of the changing and complex African American and general American speech communities, and their culture, politics, art and institutions. She also covers the current heated political and educational debates about the status of the African American dialect The study of African American language is the study of how people of African descent use language as a cultural resource that in turn represents, constructs and mediates social reality. I learned this truth as I was growing up on Chicago’s segregated South Side in the late 1950s. When people in my childhood neighborhood talked about language and communication, as they frequently did, they referred to racial, social and regional differences and the importance of style and ambiguity in conversing with those in positions of power, especially under white supremacy. They also expressed great love and respect for conversations that were deeply ambiguous. Everyday conversations were always filtered through proverbs, references to past events and people. The past was never a concept about time but about perspective, the type of perspective that meant that even young children were told the truth about life in America – “All you have to do is stay black and die.”
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/10102
ISBN:	0 521 00149 8
Appears in Collections:	African Studies

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