An informed lens on: African American english

Abstract

Anne, a speech-language pathologist, receives a request from the school special education team. They ask her to collect a language sample on a third-grade boy to determine eligibility for services. The SLP collects and analyzes the sample. She determines that the child exhibits the following linguistic and articulation patterns: Dropping of the "s" in regular plurals, omitting the "ed" in the past tense, dropping of the "s" in possessives, substitution of/f/for/в/ at the ends of words, and substitution of the /d/ for 1Ы at the beginning of words. In another school, SLP Brian acts on a similar request, collecting a language sample on a third-grade girl to help determine eligibility. He collects and analyzes the sample. He determines that the child exhibits the following linguistic and articulation patterns: Dropping of the "s" in regular plurals, omitting the "ed" in the past tense, dropping of the "s" in possessives, substitution of /f/ for /в/ at the ends of words, and substitution of the /d/for/0/ at the beginning of words.