Can I read Spoken Soul : The Story of Black English on EtoBox?

Spoken Soul : The Story of Black English by Rickford, Russell John;Smitherman, Geneva;Rickford, John R is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is Spoken Soul : The Story of Black English about?

SPOKEN SOUL: The Story of Black English is a comprehensive introduction to African-American Vernacular English by the father-and-son writing team of John Russell Rickford and Russell John Rickford, one a journalist and the other a linguist. It was published by Wiley in 2000. SPOKEN SOUL essentially consists of three distinct parts that may not all appeal to the same audience. The first part is a basic presentation of AAVE as a phenomenon in the African-American community, with a history of how it has been embraced or shunned by African-American intellectuals. Much of this part seems essentially directed to AAVE-speaking Americans in an attempt to instill pride in their heritage. What I take issue with, however, is the author's tendency to praise AAVE as more expressive than Standard English. African-Americans must retain AAVE, they write, because with it they can say more than speakers of Standard English. Now, this may be in some sense true, but it needs a boatload of qualifications. One shouldn't reinforce the public's tendency to hold the Sapir-Whorf fallacy, and the authors seem to perpetuate stereotypes that African-Americans are naturally smooth and suave, "soulful", while w

Who reads Spoken Soul : The Story of Black English?

Author

Rickford, Russell John;Smitherman, Geneva;Rickford, John R

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Published

2000

Language

EN

ISBN

9780471323563

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Language Learning, Political Science, Literary Fiction

Rating

3.83 / 5 (3 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14