John R. Rickford
Stanford University
In this presentation, I'll revisit the widespread controversy which erupted when the Oakland School Board resolved last December to recognize Ebonics as the primary language of African American students in their district and to take it into account in teaching reading and writing. Although most of the media and the public considered this a ridiculous idea, most linguists did not. And although many people think that Oakland quietly scuttled their resolution, they have not. Why Oakland and other school districts might have been led to as "radical" a resolution as this one, and why linguists differed from the general public as sharply as they did on this issue are two of the issues I will consider in this presentation. The "problems" that brought the Oakland School district to this "solution" are endemic througout urban America, and they are deserving of public attention and action.
John R. Rickford is Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University, where he has been a faculty member since 1980. His interests include sociolinguistics, especially the relation between language and ethnicity, social class and style, language variation and change, pidgin and creole languages, African American Vernacular English, and the applications of linguistics to educational problems. He has lectured and written a good deal on the Ebonics controversy of 1997, including a forthcoming article in the December 1997 issue of Discover magazine. He is currently co-authoring a book on African American Vernacular English, and co-editing three others on Stylistic Variation in Language, African American English, and Creole Genesis, Attitudes and Discourse.