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Letts - Phonology, Varieties of English, and Orthography Letts - Phonology, Varieties of English, and Orthography The Intersection of the Phonologies of Standard American English and African American Vernacular English as Seen Through Orthography Allison Letts, Haverford College 0. Abstract This thesis addresses the orthography of young African American Vernacular English speakers. The subjects are first grade students at a charter school in Philadelphia, and the study examines the relationship between the students’ orthography and orthographic errors, the teacher’s models of orthography and the spelling strategies she provides, and the varieties of English spoken by the teacher and the students as they relate to students’ pronunciations of specific words and their spelling attempts. This will build on research on literacy in early elementary students (Terry et al. (2010)) that compares students across many schools, socioeconomic statuses, and risk factors and allow for a more in-depth account of students from a relatively homogenous school where more factors can be controlled for. The students involved are all African American and speakers of African American Vernacular English, and the school has a high population of students with low socioeconomic status. Consideration of the cultural issues inherent in teaching a language minority in the dominant language led to discussion of the Oakland Ebonics Controversy and the Ann Arbor Decision. To conduct the research, I listened to students as they participated in normal discussions with their peers and their teacher, and transcribed salient words and phrases into IPA. I also documented writing samples and examined the types of errors that were made for patterns related to African American Vernacular English phonology, as defined by Labov (1972), Sligh & Conners (2003), and Wyatt (2001). I conducted a sociolinguistic interview with the teacher to determine her accent, and a content interview to learn more about her approach to spelling and AAVE. I expected that the spelling of both vowels and consonants would be influenced 1 Letts - Phonology, Varieties of English, and Orthography primarily by the students’ speech, and secondarily by the teacher’s speech and the spelling strategies available. I found that there was a large gap between the best and worst spellers, and that familiarity with English spelling patterns enabled some students to write clearly with phonetically-motivated errors, while many students had such variation in how they represented each vowel sound that most vowel data was inconclusive. Consonant data was more consistent, with a key finding that students could spell consonant clusters and syllables with multiple consonants as long as they had access to a pronunciation where all of the necessary phonemes existed. I found unusual invented spellings that represented a stronger phonemic awareness in the stressed syllable than the unstressed syllable of disyllabic words, such as <on crism I am gon to duw nufin!> for ‘on Christmas I am going to do nothing!’ and <we dite> for ‘we didn’t’. This research follows from Treiman et al’s (1993) work on the relationship between stress patterns and phonemic awareness, but also addresses issues of rule-based spelling in a typical classroom environment, unlike Sligh & Conners (2003). 2 Letts - Phonology, Varieties of English, and Orthography Table of Contents 1. Literature Review .............................................................................................................. 3 1.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 3 1.1.1 Sociolinguistics Terminology .............................................................. 3 1.1.2 Background on the Classroom ............................................................. 3 1.1.3 Other Education Terminology .............................................................. 3 1.2 African American Vernacular English vs. Standard American English: Cultural Issues ................................................................................................................................... 3 1.3 African American Vernacular English in Educational Contexts: Legislative Action ................................................................................................................................... 3 1.3.1 Oakland Ebonics Controversy .............................................................. 3 1.3.2 Michigan Court Case, 1979 .................................................................. 3 1.3.3 Discussion ............................................................................................ 3 1.3.4 Cultural Issues for Modern Teachers ................................................... 3 1.4 African American Vernacular English Phonology .............................................. 3 1.5 Literacy ............................................................................................................... 3 1.5.1 Spelling strategies for SAE speakers (and AAVE speakers) ............... 3 1.5.2 Teaching writing and writing fluency .................................................. 3 1.5.3 What spelling mistakes to expect from first graders ............................ 3 1.5.4 International Examples ......................................................................... 3 1.6 Previous Studies on AAVE and Literacy ............................................................ 3 2. Study ................................................................................................................................. 3 2.1 Description of Context ........................................................................................ 3 2.2 Method ................................................................................................................ 3 2.2.1 Participants ........................................................................................... 3 2.2.2 Procedure .............................................................................................. 3 2.2.3 Sources of Error/Minimizing Error ...................................................... 3 2.2.3 Results .................................................................................................. 3 2.2.3.1 Students ................................................................................. 3 2.2.3.2 Teacher - Linguistic Profile ................................................... 3 2.2.3.3 Teacher - Attitudes, Experience of Students, and Educational Practice .............................................................................................. 3 2.2.4 Discussion ............................................................................................ 3 3. Conclusion and Pedagogical Recommendations ............................................................... 3 4. Appendix ........................................................................................................................... 3 4.1 Sociolinguistic Interview .................................................................................... 3 4.1.1 Prompt List ........................................................................................... 3 4.1.2 Word List ............................................................................................. 3 4.2 Content Interview ................................................................................................ 3 4.3 Word Study Handout (words in parentheses denote pictures) ............................ 3 5. References ......................................................................................................................... 3 3 Letts - Phonology, Varieties of English, and Orthography 1. Literature Review 1.1 Introduction This thesis will examine the spelling mistakes made by a group of first grade students in a charter school in Philadelphia. It seeks to determine how they relate to the African American Vernacular English spoken by the students, the Standard American English spoken by their teacher, and the spelling strategies that the teacher explains to her students. The background research for this study covers two interconnected disciplines. In Sociolinguistics, Labov (1972) addresses the defining characteristics of African American Vernacular English. In Education, research on spelling development (Gentry 1982, Treiman 1992) and literacy acquisition (Aaron & Joshi 2006) provide a framework for the kinds of writing processes that the students might have access to at this point in their academic careers. 1.1.1 Sociolinguistics Terminology To briefly lay out the terminology to be used here, African American Vernacular English (AAVE) will be the primary term used for “that relatively uniform grammar found in its most consistent form in the speech of black youth from 8 to 19 years old who participate fully in the street culture of the inner cities” (Labov 1972).1 Historically, this term has evolved from “Nonstandard Negro English” to “Black English Vernacular” to “African American Vernacular English,” and is often called “ebonics” in popular culture. The terminology will shift throughout the Literature Review to reflect the popular term at the time of publication of various sources because this also allows for some insight into the cultural atmosphere surrounding AAVE. When 1 Labov’s term for AAVE at the time of publication was Black English Vernacular, or BEV, but his characterization still holds. 4 Letts - Phonology, Varieties of English, and Orthography presenting the study and
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