African Amer Engl in Diaspora - (Language in Society) by Shana Poplack & Sali A Tagliamonte (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This provocative volume investigates the origins of contemporary African American Vernacular English (AAVE), one of the oldest, yet unsolved, questions in sociolinguistics.

From the Back Cover

This provocative volume investigates the origins of contemporary African American Vernacular English (AAVE), one of the oldest, yet unsolved, questions in sociolinguistics.

Exploring the hypothesis that contemporary AAVE is a direct descendant of colonial British English rather than of a widespread Creole precursor, this volume presents a comprehensive analysis of tense and aspect as manifested in recorded conversations with 101 former slaves and their descendants. The study is staged in three distinct "diaspora" enclaves in Canada and the Caribbean, whose language has evolved independently of AAVE, modern Creoles and neighboring speech varieties.

Advanced quantitative methodology, combined with linguistically precise analyses of English dialects in historical context, make this an essential text for researchers and students of linguistics, the history of English and African American Studies.

Review Quotes

"This exhaustive and compelling study includes numerous charts, tables, and figures that aid comprehension. Strongly recommended for advanced sociolinguists." Choice

"[African American Eglish in the Diaspora] constitutes both a treasure of information and an indispensable tool for linguistic investigation." Canadian Journal of Linguistics

"The present reviewer, accustomed to the scarcity of data presented by colleagues and scholars engaged in building hypotheses on the diachronic French connections in the Americas, popular, vernacular or creole, and to the paucity of the methodological apparatus exhibited, found this reading of Poplack and Tagliamonte's book a veritable delight; it is a welcome model in our field." The Carrier Pidgin

"This book is a milestone in the development of the historical and evolutionary approach to linguistic analysis. I would like to think that this clear demonstration ...would close at least one chapter in the history of the creole controversies. . . Poplack and Tagliamonte have done a splendid job of bringing people back into the study of change and variation."
William Labov, University of Pennsylvania.

"From now on, no serious inquiry into the nature and history of African-American Vernacular English can afford not to use this book as a benchmark. At last, a thorough and closely reasoned case that despite this dialect's current status as a crucial marker of African-American identity, its main roots are in Great Britain."
John McWhorter, University of California at Berkeley.

"African American English in the Diaspora is well researched, easy to read, and a significant contribution to understanding the impact of social relations on the linguistic development of African American English in the Diaspora. The original research goes beyond a linguistic study, it is a treasure for historians as well."
Patrick Kakembo, Director of African Canadian Services Division, Department of Education, Nova Scotia.

About the Author

Shana Poplack is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Linguistics and Director of the Sociolinguistics Laboratory at the University of Ottawa. An expert in linguistic variation theory and its application to diverse areas of language contact, she has published widely on code-switching, Hispanic linguistics, Canadian French, and numerous aspects of African American English. She is editor of The English History of African American English (Blackwell 1999).

Sali Tagliamonte is based at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on morph-syntactic variation and change in the evolution of English. Currently she is investigating British dialects and conducting cross-variety comparisons amongst British and North American dialects.