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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 112 414 CS 202 268 AUTHOR Hoover, Mary Eleanor Rhodes TITLE 'Appropriate Use of Black English by Black Children as Rated by Parents. Technical Report No. 46. INSTITUTION Stanford Univ., Calif. Stanford Center for Research and Development in Teaching. SPONS AGENCY National Inst. of Education (DREW), Washington, D.C. REPORT NO TR-46 PUB DATE Sep 75 CONTRACT NIB-C-74-0049 NOTE 161p. EDRS PRICE MF-$0.76 HC-$8.24 Plus Postage DESCRIPTORS *Child Language; Classrooms; Elementary Education; Family Environment; Listening; *Negro Attitudes; *Negro Dialects; Neighborhood; Parental Background; *Parent Attitudes; Reading; Speaking; Writing ABSTRACT The short-range purposes of this study were (1) to determine parental attitudes about the appropriateness of two varieties of Black English for their children in three contexts (classroom, neighborhood, and home) and in four language arts areas (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), and (2) to show how parents' attitudes are related to their demographic, socioeconomic, political, and linguistic characteristics. Eighty parents of first- and sixth-grade children, randomly selected in two cities, provided data through interviews and a questionnaire. Eighteen independent variables were operationalized, with eight of the variables showing a significant relationship to parents' attitudes on the chi-square test of significance. Findings showed that parents have rules for the use of several varieties of Black English; accept Africanized English ii listening and speaking, but not in reading and writing; accept Africanized English in the home and some community contexts, but not in schools; and accept Africanized English in informal settings, but seldom in formal ones.(A bibliography, nine appendixes, and twenty-two tables are included.)(Author/JM) *********************************************************************** Documents acquired, by ERIC include many informal unpublished * materials not available from other sources. ERIC makes every effort * * to obtain the best copy available. Nevertheless,,items of marginal * * reproducibility are often encountered and this affects the quality * * of the microfiche and hardcopy reproductions ERIC, makes available * * via the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS). EDRS is not * responsible for the quality of the original document. Reproductions * * supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original. ********************************************************************** U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION I WELFARE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION STANFORD CENTER THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRO DUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM FOR RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGIN ATING IT POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS IN TEACHING STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRE SENT OFFICIAL NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY 0 Technical Report No. 4.6 APPROPRIATE USE OF BLACK ENGLISH BY BLACK CHILDREN AS RATED BY PARENTS Mary Eleanor Rhodes Hoover School of Education Stanford University Stanford, California September 1975 Published by the Stanford Center for Research and Development in Teaching, supported in part as a research and development center byfunds from the National Institute of Education, U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the position, policy, or endorsement of the National Institute of Education. (Contract No. NIE-C-74-0049.) INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT ft The Center's mission is to improve teaching in American schools. Its work is carried out through three research and development programs--Teaching Effectiveness, The Environment for Teaching, and Teaching and Linguistic Pluralism--and a technical assistance program, the Stanford Urban/Rural Leader- ship Training Institute. A program of Exploratory and Related Studies includes smaller studies not included in the major programs. The ERIC Clearinghouse on Information Resources is also a part of the Center. This report, which reproduces the author's dissertation -(Stanford University, 1975), is based on research carried out in the Program on Teaching and Linguistic Pluralism. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author wishes to express sincere thanks and deep appreciation to Professor Robert L. Politzer, Chairman of the Dissertation Committee, for his guidance and support through the myriad stages of this dissertation, from the course work to the last draft, and for his early recognition and support of community-based research; to Professor Robert Calfee, for his patient assistance in the design of the study and the data analysis; to Professor Alfred Grommon, for his sugges- tions from the discipline of English Education and his editorial assistance; and to Professor Charles Ferguson for making available to me many useful resources in the area of language attitudes. Appreciation is expressed to Professors St. Clair Drake, Claudia Kernan, Robert Cooper, Victor Baldridge, Eduardo Herngndez-Chavez, and Clara Bush, for their assistance in questionnaire construction and instrument composition. A note of special thanks goes to Shirley Lewis, Warnell Coats, and Dolores Randall, who did the interviewing and tape recording, assisted me in the composition of the tape segments, and provided constant moral support through the data collection stages; to Mavis Knox, Faye Knox, and Mattie Flemming for the pilot study tapings; to the Danforth Foundation, the Proctor and Gamble Fund, and the Stanford Center for Research and Development in Teaching for supporting various aspects of the project. Thanks are also expressed to Oliver Lee and Laura Saltzmann, who helped in the coding of the data; to Bob Newby, Beverly Scott, Muata Weusi-Puryear, and Bill McKeown, who helped with various segments of the data analysis; to Warren Hayman, Superintendent, Ravenswood City School District, and Robert Hoover, former Director, Education Finance Reform Project, Nairobi College, for sharing some of their facilities; and to my neighbors in East Palo Alto and Oakland who so willingly accepted the rigors of a two-and-a-half-hour inter- view. iv ABSTRACT The short-range purposes of this study were (a) to determine parental attitudes about the appropriateness of two varieties of Black English for their children in three contexts, called "domains" (classroom, neighborhood, and home) and in four language arts areas or "channels" (listening, speaking, reading, and writing); and (b) to show how parents' attitudes are related to their demographic,socioeconomic, political, and linguistic characteristics. The long-range purposes of this report are to argue in favor of making the community a vital part of curriculum decision-making, to contribute to the literature on language attitude assessment, and to broaden the description of Black English. Eighty parents of first and sixth grade children were randomly selected in two cities, 64 in one city, 16 in the other. Data were gathered by means of a questionnaire and interviews. Taped and written speech samples were used in assessing attitude variation with regard to domain andchannel. The question "Would you object to your childhearing/speaking/ reading/writing as the tape/book/ note does in the home/ school/ community?" was asked about two sets of 22 sentences- - one set in Nonstandard BlackEnglish (or Africanized English), the other in Standard (Less Africanized). To ensure independent ratings, parents were asked all 22 questions about onevariety before they were asked about the other. Responses to the ques- tions were combined in a scale called Africanized Rate,the dependent variable. The following independent variables wereoperational- ized: Black Consciousness, Cultural Behavior, Political Behavior, Black English Proficiency, Social Scale, General Attitudes toward Black English, Residence, Marital Status, Age, Birthplace, Length of Time in Birthplace,Size of Birth- place, Previous Exposure to Black English Issues,Ambition for Child, Self Speech Proficiency Rating,Rating of Child's Speech Proficiency, Rating of Child's SchoolAchievement, and Basic Skills Orientation. The first eight variables were significantlyrelated to parents' attitudes on the chi-square test ofsignificance. Social Scale, Black Consciousness, Cultural Behavior,Political Behavior, and General Attitudes toward Black English showed that parents high in these measures were also high in their preference for Africanized English in the classroom. Parental proficiency in Africanized English was associated with low parental preference for it in the classroom, particularly for reading. Urban single parents tended to have a high preference for Africanized English in the classroom. The parents interviewed do not "hate their language," as so many linguists and educators have assumed. They do have rules for the use of the several varieties of Black English based on context and channel. They accept Africanized English in the listening and speaking channels, but not in the reading and writing channels; they accept Africanized English in the home and some community contexts, but generally not in the schools; they accept Africanized English in informal settings, but seldom in formal ones. vi 6 CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES ix CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1 Background of the Problem 1 Statement of the Problem 11 Statement of Purpose; Hypotheses 6 II. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE 19 Language Attitudes 19 General Language Attitudes 19 Teacher Attitudes 25 Children's Attitudes 29 Parents' and Black Community Attitudes 31 III. METHODS AND