Semantics of African American English

Module code: LIN5203

Credits: 15.0
Semester: SEM2

Contact: Dr Hazel Pearson

With an estimated 30 million speakers, African American English is a major dialect of English. At the same time, it continues to suffer from the stigma of being considered 'bad English'. Yet just like with any other language, the surface variety that we see in AAE belies a complex, rule-governed system. We will study the grammar of AAE with a particular emphasis on those properties that determine how meaning is conveyed. An array of distinctive semantic features will be investigated, for example in the domains of tense, aspect, pronouns, quotatives and negation.

Connected course(s): UDF DATA
Assessment: 100.0% Coursework
Level: 5