New articles in the press: "The Ebonics Virus" pp. 26-27 and "Capital letters," p. 26. The Economist Jan 4, 1997

Date: Tue, 24 Dec 1996 18:26:01 -0600 From: rustyb@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Rusty Barrett) Subject: Re: Ebonics Sender: owner-linganth@galileo.cc.rochester.edu To: linganthro list MIME-version: 1.0 Precedence: bulk

Re Joe Foster's query about the term "Ebonics", Marcyliena Morgan has a very nice paper on African-American Vernacular English in the 1995 Annual Review of Anthropology. She does introduce the term "Ebonics" and I believe gives some sources for its origin. The review is especially useful in that it references a lot of literature that has been circulating mainly within the community of black scholars and intellectuals that I didn't know about. I recommend it highly. I hope I am right about the term "Ebonics" being in there -- I am knee-deep in holiday house guests right now -- but I'm pretty sure that Marcy's review was the first place that I ran into it. Jane Hill

Another reference concerning Ebonics Theory is Dorothy K. Williamson-Ige's "Approaches to Black Language Studies: A Cultural Critique" (Journal of Black Studies 15:1 1984). The term "Ebonics" originated with the book 'Ebonics: The True Language of Black Folks' ed by R. Williams (St. Louis: Institute of Black Studies 1975). According to Williamson-Ige, "Ebonics" differs from other studies of Black English in that it "traces black language to the West African Hamito-Bantu language families" (rather than as originating in a creole or pidgin). Ebonics is critical of other approaches to Black English for implying a discontinuity between African and African American culture. Also, (again according to Williamson-Ige) advocates of Ebonics oppose efforts to use "dialect readers" or teach non-standard English in the schools. Instead, they propose that teachers gain an acceptance and understanding of Black English in order to be better prepared to teach African American students. (In other words, basically what the Oakland School board is proposing, according to Leanne Hinton's helpful post). Rusty Barrett Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1996 16:19:42 -0800 From: hinton@violet.berkeley.edu (Leanne Hinton) Subject: A query Sender: owner-linganth@galileo.cc.rochester.edu To: linganth@cc.rochester.edu Cc: STEWAR7_@bentley.edu MIME-version: 1.0 Precedence: bulk Aaron Fox writes:

"All ideological and technical issues aside, what would any of y'all suggest as introductory readings for someone without any linguistic training or, I suspect, much social science background at all?"

One of my favorite introductory articles on Black English for non-linguists is Arthur K. Spears, "Black American English." in Anthropology for the Nineties, ed. by Johnnetta B. Cole. Free Press, 1988 (pp 96-113).

I am also very fond of Geneva Smitherman's book Talkin' and Testifyin: the Language of Black America. Wayne State University, 1985 (reprinted with new afterword from 1977).
Leanne Hinton <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Leanne Hinton, Professor Dept. of Linguistics University of California Berkeley, CA 94720-2650 email: hinton@violet.berkeley.edu fax: (510) 643-5688 phone: (510) 643-7621 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Date: Tue, 07 Jan 1997 11:39:28 -0500 (EST) From: "John T. Clark" Subject: References for my posting, 1/6 Sender: owner-linganth@cc.rochester.edu To: linganth@cc.rochester.edu MIME-version: 1.0 Precedence: bulk In my posting yesterday, I neglected to provide the references for my citations. here they are:

Ogbu, John and Signithia Fordham. "Coping with the Burden of Acting White" In Urban Review 18:3 1986.

Fordham, Signithia. "Those Loud Black Girls" (Black) Women, Silence and Gender Passing in the Academy In Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 24:1 1993

Fordham, Signithia. 1996 Blacked Out: Dilemmas of Race, Identity, and Success at Capital High. U. of Chicago Press.

Erickson, F. *Transformation and School Success: The Politics and Culture of Educational Achievement* In Anthropology and Education Quarterly, Volume 18, 1987

McDermott, R.P. and Kenneth Gospodinoff. *Social Contexts for Ethnic Borders and School Failure* In Trueba, H., G.P. Guthrie and Kathryn Hu-Pei Au, eds. _Culture and the Bilingual Classroom_ Newbury House 1981.
John T. Clark Georgetown University [Editor's note: Another late addition from Jane Hill and Bambi Schieffelin via Leila Monaghan: Morgan, Marcyliena. 1994. Theories and politics in African American English. Annual Review of Anthropology. Vol. 23:325-345.]