Issue 2: Language, Literacy, and Identity: Clinical and Educational Perspectives on African American English in Child Development

Building on the groundwork laid in issue 1 to describe the rich linguistic heritage of children from the Black diaspora, the papers in issue 2 continue the conversation of how the language strengths and weaknesses of child African American English (AAE) speakers are to be assessed, interpreted, and redefined. Entitled, “Language, Literacy, and Identity: Clinical and Educational Perspectives on African American English in Child Development,” issue 2 presents studies of child AAE speakers in the context of the United States, spanning California, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, New York, Texas, and Wisconsin. Through case studies and studies that are correlational, descriptive, and experimental, the papers in issue 2 provide perspectives of child AAE in the context of parent–child dyads, elicitation tasks, free play, language sampling, and language input from adults.

The studies in issue 2 cover child AAE speakers from preschool to school-age. For example, using “crip language” as a theoretical framework, Privette (this forum) takes a strengths-based approach to describing how Black child AAE speakers with developmental language disorder (DLD) communicate during play. Through a case study of two children (family SES not reported), Privette (this forum) illuminates the nuanced ways in which each child collaborates and aligns with their interlocutor to repair conversations that break down. If communication breakdown is a hallmark of conversation, we may need to renegotiate norms for what it means to express communicative competence or to converse in a manner that is pragmatically appropriate, especially for children who are marginalized linguistically and otherwise.

Case studies are also employed in a paper by Moland (this forum) to highlight the utility of dialect worksheets for describing the relative language strengths and weaknesses of low-income AAE speakers with and without DLD. In their study, Moland and Oetting present the performance of four 5-year-old AAE speakers (race not reported) on several elicitation tasks probing inflectional morphemes that mark tense and aspect, such as the following: “is, are, was, were, -ed.” Results indicate that children with DLD tended to produce fewer forms and variation of forms by linguistic context than did children with typical development. Thus, dialect worksheets hold promise as a tool that speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and preservice SLPs may use to hone their language science knowledge and assess the language ability of child AAE speakers.

To provide guidance on how to code “of-preposition” use in narrative language, Finneran et al. (this forum) examined this linguistic phenomenon in low-income child AAE speakers, ages three through 6 years. Interestingly, the of-preposition was examined in contrastive contexts—present only in AAE and in noncontrastive contexts—present in AAE and Mainstream American English (MAE).

In another group of low-income 5-year-olds, Saechao et al (this forum) examined AAE within the context of parent–child dyads. Results indicated that parents and children did not differ in their production of AAE when engaging in a shared book reading interaction. However, during free play, a greater rate of AAE was produced across parents and children than in the shared book reading interaction. Moreover, mothers produced significantly more AAE than did children during free play. This study highlights the importance of examining language input to child AAE speakers and of gathering data on AAE production across multiple communicative contexts.

Arecy and Hendricks (this forum) examine how novice teachers report on the language and literacy skills of child AAE speakers—ages 5 to 7 years (kdg through grade 2). In contrast to their prior work and to the other of others (e.g., Hendricks & Jimenez, 2021; Scrivner et al this forum), the study found that child AAE dialect was unrelated to teacher ratings: dialect use—as gathered from listener judgments and dialect density—did not relate with teacher ratings of language and literacy when controlling for age/grade.

In an innovative study examining language production and processing in middle-income child AAE and MAE speakers, ages seven through 11 years, Byrd et al. (this forum) use eye-tracking technologies and criterion-referenced measures of language production to test the dialect mismatch theory. Are child AAE speakers at an educational disadvantage when they learn in MAE but speak AAE? The findings of this elegantly designed experiment suggest that the dialect mismatch is indeed observed: children's ability to parse sentences depended on their rate of AAE. That is, when African American children produced a lower rate of AAE, it was easier for them to make use of grammatical cues such as auxiliary verbs (e.g., “was, were”) to interpret ambiguous sentences than when they produced a higher rate of AAE.

Finally, to improve the understanding of linguistic concepts and language science, Green and Newkirk-Turner (this forum) call for precision in terminology to support content validity in clinical assessment and avoid mischaracterizations of AAE in the research canon. They clarify two linguistic phenomena: verbal -s and codeswitching. Drawing on data from adult- and child AAE speakers, the authors make the case that the term “verbal -s” is not synonymous with “third person singular -s” because, for adults, “-s” forms can appear outside of third person singular contexts (e.g., in hypercorrection and habitual contexts) and, for children, “-s” is not interpreted as a number marker in third person singular contexts. With regard to characterizing movement between AAE and MAE, the authors suggest the term “variable shifting” to describe variation within AAE and the term “codeswitching” to describe variation between AAE and MAE.

Publikationsverlauf

Artikel online veröffentlicht:
17. November 2025

• References

• Arecy, F. & Hendricks, A. (2025). Understanding teacher's rating s of language and literacy for students who speak AAE. Seminars in Speech and Language, 46(3)
• Byrd, A., Huang, Y.T., & Edwards, J. (2025). Understanding how dialect differences shape how AAE-speaking children process sentences in real time. Seminars in Speech and Language, 46(3)
• Finneran, D.A., Moyle, M.J., Nash, A., & Chen S. (2025). What of It? Coding the unmarked of-preposition in language samples form young AAE speakers. Seminars in Speech and Language, 46(3)
• Green, L. & Newkirk-Turner (2025). Terminology in child African American Language matters: Verbal -s and code shifting. Seminars in Speech and Language, 46(3)
• Hendricks, A. E., & Jimenez, C. (2021). Teacher report of students' dialect use and language ability. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 52(1), 131–138
• Mills, M. T. (2021). Forum: serving African American English speakers in schools through interprofessional education & practice. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 52(1), 1–3
• Moland, C. W. (2025). Using dialect discovery worksheets to learn about children's linguistic strengths and weaknesses. Seminars in Speech and Language, 46(3)
• Privette, C. (2025). Meaning-making and co-creation: Re-defining effective communication with Black, disabled AAE-speaking children. Seminars in Speech and Language, 46(3)
• Saechao, K., Matuszeski, M., Jackson, Y., & Selin, C. (2025). Parent child interactions: The effect of task and speaker on AAE use. Seminars in Speech and Language, 46(3)
• Scrivner, S., Lee, G., Moore, L.C., & Mills, M.T. (2025). Teachers' beliefs and child AAE speakers' language and narrative: A qualitative exploration of language beliefs and informal narrative assessment. Seminars in Speech and Language, 46(3)