AAE Morphosyntactic Feature Use Among High School Students: Effects on Sociolinguistic Awareness and School Discipline
Sabriya Fisher, Wellesley College
This talk examines use of AAE morphosyntactic features among high school students in two cities: Boston and Philadelphia. Using a Dialect Density Measure (DDM) and other measures of morphosyntactic feature use, I show (1) differences in use of features between the two cities, and (2) correlations between feature use and reports of code-switching in school and discipline that are modulated by location (Boston/Philly). As part of a Spencer Foundation funded project, this work represents a first step in identifying the specific linguistic features that may elicit negative evaluations in a school setting.
