Washington, J. A. & Craig, H. K. (1998). Socioeconomic status and gender influences on children’s dialectal variations. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Speech, 41 (3), 618-626.
This study investigated how dialectal use of African American English (AAE) is influenced by socioeconomic status (SES) and gender in African American children. In total, 66 kindergarteners (30 boys and 36 girls) with their age ranged from 63 to 76 months were recruited. Spontaneous data were collected in adult-child discourse via free-play. These samples were then transcribed using CHILDES and chunked into Communication Units (C-units) for further categorization. Reliability reached 95% for types and 82% for samples. Results showed that both factors were influential on the tokens these AAE-speaking children produced in their spontaneous discourse. Children from lower income families used more AAE than their middle-class peers. In addition, gender distinction was already apparent at this age that boys produced more AAE tokens than their girl peers.
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