The Longitudinal Development of African American English and its Role in School Achievement

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This research examines the development of African American English (AAE) from childhood through adolescence and its potential impact on literacy acquisition and school achievement based on a unique, longitudinal database of 70 African American adolescents from low-and middle-income families. For 17 years, the language, the school achievement, and the social development of these youth have been progressively documented, from infancy through childhood and adolescence. Interviews have also been conducted with mothers during childhood and with peers as children progress in school in order to compare the speech of these youth with family and friends. Family, school, and social background factors that may affect the development of AAE and school achievement during this period have also been documented longitudinally in order understand the variety of background social and educational factors that might influence vernacular language changes that occur through childhood and adolescence. This project completes the data collection for the final phase of the longitudinal study and undertakes the detailed analysis of language change and variation during childhood and adolescence. The study examines different paths of change in the use of AAE during childhood and adolescence and how these trajectories are linked to selected family, peer, and school factors. Patterns of language change may include the stable use or non-use of AAE through childhood and adolescence, the decline in the use of AAE over childhood and into adolescence, and a curvilinear trajectory in which AAE variants intensify in early adolescence after a period of decline or stability during the early elementary school years. The research further examines how the use of AAE shifts in formal and informal situational contexts through childhood and adolescence. The use of AAE is correlated with youth, family, and school characteristics, and examined in terms of the development of reading skills and other dimensions of school achievement. Growth curve methods are used to quantify patterns of change in the development of specific aspects of youths' vernacular dialect to determine their relation to literacy development and school achievement. The findings should be of great interest to parents, educators, and researchers concerned with risk issues related to the school success of African American youth.