Introduction
African American literacies refers to the concept that African American cultural identities, social locations, and social practices influence ways that members of this discourse group make meaning and assert themselves sociopolitically in subordinate as well as official contexts. This definition includes but goes beyond making meaning out of and producing print and language in their strict and broadly defined senses, to include the contemporary context rooted in technological dominance which promotes multimodal meaning making. The term African American literacies encapsulates the sociocultural approaches to African American literacy education advanced by the various subfields: including sociolinguistics, rhetoric and composition, and New Literacies Studies. As Americans of African descent had been enslaved and marginalized within American society, the early scholarly thinking about Black language and culture reflected the common prejudices of the time: Blacks were...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Auerbach, E.: 2005, ‘Connecting the local and the global: A pedagogy of not‐literacy', in J. Anderson, (eds.), Portraits of Literacy Across Families, Communities, and Schools: Intersections and Tensions, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ.
Alim, H.S.: 2006, Roc the Mic: The Language of Hip Hop Culture, Routledge, New York and London.
Alim, H.S.: 2005, ‘Critical language awareness in the United States: Revisiting issues and revising pedagogies in a resegregated society', Educational Researcher 34.7, 24–31.
Androutsopoulos, J.: 2004, ‘Non‐native English and sub‐cultural identities in media discourse', in H. Sandøy (ed.), Den Fleirspråklege Utfordringa, Novus, Oslo, 83–98. http://www.fu‐berlin.de/phin/phin19/p19t1.htm
Bailey, B.: 1965, ‘Toward a new perspective in negro English dialectology', American Speech 40, 171–7.
Ball, A. and Lardner, T.: 2005, African American Literacies Unleashed: Vernacular English and the Composition Classroom, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbonade, IL.
Ball, A.: 1995, ‘Text design patterns in the writing of urban African American students: Teaching to the cultural strengths of students in multicultural settings', Urban Education 30.3, 253–289.
Baugh, J.: 1995, ‘The law, linguistics, and education: Educational reform for African,American language minority students', Linguistics and Education 7, 87–105.
Baxter, M. and Reed, C.: 1973, Teachers Manual for Teaching Standard English Writing to Speakers Showing Black English Influences in Their Writing, Language Curriculum Research Group, Department of Educational Services, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY.
Bereiter, C. and Engelmann, S.: 1966, Teaching Disadvantaged Children in Preschool, Prentice‐Hall, NJ, New York.
Berlin, J.: 1996, Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College English Studies, National Council of Teachers of English, Urbana, IL.
Blake, R. and Cutler, C.: 2003, ‘AAE and variation in teachers’ attitudes: A question of school philosophy', Linguistics and Education 14.2, 163–194.
Camitta, M.: 1993, ‘Vernacular writing: Varieties of literacy among Philadelphia high school students', in B. Street (ed.), Cross‐Cultural Approaches to Literacy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Canagarajah, A.S.: 1997, Safe houses in the contact zone: Coping strategies of African American students in the academy, Journal of the Conference on College Composition and Communication 48.2, 173–96.
Dillard, J.L.: 1972, Black English: Its history and usage in the United States, Random House.
Engs, R.F.: 1987, Historical perspectives on the problem of black literacy, Educational Horizons 66.1, 13–17.
Gadsden, V.L., and Wagner, D. (eds.): 1995, Literacy Among African American Youth: Issues in Learning, Teaching, and Schooling, Hampton Press, Creskill, NJ.
Gates, H.L.: 1988, The Signifyin(g) Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Gee, J.: 1989, Orality and literacy: From the savage mind to ways with words, Journal of Education 171.1, 39–60.
Gilyard, K.: 1991, Voices of the Self: A Study of Language Competence, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI.
Goodman, K. and Buck, C.: 1973, ‘Dialect barriers to reading revisited', Reading Teacher 27.1, 6–12.
Haas Dyson, A.: 2003, The Brothers and Sisters Learn to Write: Popular Literacies in Childhood and School Cultures, Teachers College Press, New York.
Harris, V.: 1992, ‘African American conceptions of literacy: A historical perspective', Theory into Practice 31.4, 276–286.
Heath, S.B.: 1983, Ways With Words: Language, Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Herskovits, M.: 1941, The Myth of the Negro Past, Harper & brothers, New York and London.
Hoover, M.: 1982, A culturally appropriate approach to teaching basic (and other) critical communication skills to black college students, Negro Educational Review, 33.1, 4–27.
Jackson, A., Michel, T., Sheridan, D. and Stumpf, B.: 2001, ‘Making connections in the contact zones: Towards a critical praxis of rap music and hip hop culture', Black Arts Quarterly, 6.2; H. Samy Alim (ed.), Hip Hop Culture:Language, Literature, Literacy and the Lives of Black Youth. Committee on Black Performing Arts‐Stanford University, Stanford, CA (Special Edition).
Labov, W.: 1969, The Study of Nonstandard English, Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC.
Labov, W. 1972, Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA.
Ladson‐ Billings, G.: 1995, ‘Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy', American Educational Research Journal, 32.3, 465–491.
Lanehart, S. (ed.): 2001, Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English, John Benjamins, Philadelphia, PA and The Netherlands.
Lanehart, S.: 2002, Sista Speak!: Black Women Kinfolk Talk about Language and Literacy, University of Texas Press, Austin, TX.
Lee, C.D.: 1993, Signifying as a Scaffold to Literary Interpretation: The Pedagogical Implications of an African American Discourse Genre, NCTE, Urbana, IL.
Morgan, M.: 2002, Language, Discourse, and Power in African American Culture, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Morrell, E. and Duncan‐Andrade, J.: 2002, Promoting academic literacy with urban youth through engaging hip hop culture', English Journal 89–92.
Ogbu, J.: 1979, Social stratification and the socialization of competence, Anthropology and Education Quarterly 10.1, 3–20.
Ogbu, J.: 1983, Minority status and schooling in plural societies, Comparative Education Review 20.2, 168–190.
Pennycook, A.: 2003, ‘Global Englishes, Rip Slyme, and Performativity', Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(4), 513–533.
Richardson, E.: 2006, Hiphop Literacies, Routledge, New York and London.
Richardson, E.: 2003, African American Literacies, Routledge, New York and London.
Rickford, J., Sweetland, J., and Rickford, A.: 2004, ‘African American English and other vernaculars in education: A topic‐coded bibliography', Journal of English Linguistics 32.3, 230–320.
Royster, J.: 2000, Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA.
Simpkins, C., Simpkins, G., and Holt, G.: 1977, Bridge, A Cross‐Culture Reading Program: Study Book, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA.
Smitherman, G.: 1977/1986, Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America. Hougton Mifflin, Boston, MA; reissued, with revisions, Wayne State University Press, Detroit.
Smitherman, G.: 2000, ‘The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice', in Talkin that Talk: Language, Culture, and Education in African America, Routledge, New York and London, 176–191.
Street, B. (ed.): 1993, Cross‐Cultural Approaches to Literacy, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Street. B.: 1999, ‘The meanings of literacy', in D. Wagner, R.L. Venezky, and B. Street (eds.), Literacy: An International Handbook, Westview Press, Boulder, CO and UK, 34–40.
Tatum, A.: 2005, Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males: Closing the Acheivement Gap, Stenhouse Publishers, Portland, ME..
Turner, L.D.: 1949, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
UNESCO: 1953, The Use of Vernacular Language In Education. UNESCO, Paris.
Yasin, J.: 2003, ‘Hip Hop meets the Writing Classroom’, in C. Coreil and A. Moulton (eds.), Multiple Intelligences, Howard Gardner and New Methods in College Teaching, New Jersey City University, New Jersey City, NJ, 75–82.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC
About this entry
Cite this entry
Richardson, E. (2008). African American Literacies. In: Hornberger, N.H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_55
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_55
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-32875-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-30424-3
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law