Linguistics/African American Studies 160: Introduction to African American English

Faculty: William Labov
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This course was conceived as an introduction to African American English, stimulated by the general interest evoked by the “Ebonics”
Controversy. As the syllabus and reading list of Pages 2-3 show, the course begins in the present with a review of this controversy, and then expands to get a clear view of research on African American English in the inner cities of the North. It then considers the migration of African Americans to the large cities of the North, and the linguistic effects of this migration. Further back in time, it considers the evidence we now have on the English spoken by the slave population before the civil war, and then to whatever evidence we have for African influence on the formation of the Present dialect.