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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1338

Part of Session 148: Child Language Variation (Other abstracts in this session)

Intra- and inter-dialectal variation in African American English across the early lifespan

Authors: Van Hofwegen, Janneke
Submitted by: Van Hofwegen, Janneke (Stanford University, United States of America)

Although the vernacular structures of African American English (AAE) have been scrutinized in great detail over the last half-century, the phenomenon of whether/how the dialect is co-acquired and co-utilized alongside mainstream American English has only recently been studied in a truly longitudinal framework. Although many of the canonical studies of AAE (e.g. Labov, Cohen, Robins and Lewis 1968; Wolfram 1969; Fasold 1972; Rickford 1999) have posited a correlation of age with vernacular dialect variables, there has been disagreement about how to address the following questions: 1) Is there a way to quantify the extent to which a non-standard variety is acquired and used across the lifespan? 2) Are there uniform or heterogeneous trajectories of usage exemplified by different individuals? 3) What models do children emulate in their usage at different points in time? 4) Do bi-dialectal children exhibit metalinguistic awareness and the ability to style shift?

Drawing upon a unique longitudinal database, a series of studies (e.g., Van Hofwegen and Wolfram 2010; Van Hofwegen 2011; 2012; Van Hofwegen and Stob 2012; Renn and Terry 2009; Renn 2011; Callahan-Price 2011; Kohn and Farrington 2012) have embarked on the task of answering these questions. This remarkable dataset, compiled by researchers at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA, comprises natural language samples from 67 African American children, gathered yearly from birth in 1991 to the present day. The data set also includes language samples of the subjects’ primary caregivers and peers in adolescence. Finally, academic, social, and psychological measures were also collected regularly for each child. In sum, this database is the most comprehensive longitudinal corpus of African American language development ever collected. 

These studies have used a Dialect Density Measure (DDM) to quantify non-standard linguistic usage at the different longitudinal time points. The DDM is a token-based calculation in terms of dialect features per communication unit or word, based on an inventory of canonical vernacular AAE features (cf. Renn 2009; Craig and Washington 2006; Oetting and McDonald 2002). As such, the DDM can be statistically analyzed as a composite or in terms of individual features. 

Using the DDM, these studies have been able to identify a “roller-coaster” trajectory of vernacular dialect usage over time. Before schooling, AAE vernacular usage is quite high, but dips sharply (to near zero in some cases) once formal schooling (in the standard variety) begins. In early adolescence, the trend reverses, with most children exhibiting their most vernacular usage at that time. Finally, in later adolescence, a majority of children reduce their vernacular usage to level closely approximating their parents’. While the children are highly variable in their usage of morphosyntactic AAE features, they show very stable phonetic variation over their lifespan. Additionally, children show greater metalinguistic awareness as they age, illustrated in increased abilities to style-shift between varieties as needed.