Talkin and Testifyin

Talkin and Testifyin
Author: Geneva Smitherman
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 1986
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780814318058

In this book, Smitherman makes a substantial contribution to an understanding of Black English by setting it in the larger context of Black culture and life style. In her book, Geneva Smitherman makes a substantial contribution to an understanding of Black English by setting it in the larger context of Black culture and life style. In addition to defining Black English, by its distinctive structure and special lexicon, Smitherman argues that the Black dialect is set apart from traditional English by a rhetorical style which reflects its African origins. Smitherman also tackles the issue of Black and White attitudes toward Black English, particularly as they affect educational policy. Documenting her insights with quotes from notable Black historical, literary and popular figures, Smitherman makes clear that Black English is as legitimate a form of speech as British, American, or Australian English.

Word from the Mother

Word from the Mother
Author: Geneva Smitherman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2021-11-26
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1000472523

This classic text by Geneva Smitherman, pioneering scholar of Black Talk, is a definitive statement on African American Language (AAL). Enriched by her inimitable writing style, the book outlines past debates on the speech of African Americans and provides a vision for the future. As global manifestations of AAL increase, she argues that we must broaden our conception of the language and its speakers, and further examine the implications of gender, age and class on AAL. Perhaps most of all we must appreciate the "artistic and linguistic genius" of AAL, from Hip Hop lyrics to the rhyme and rhetoric of the broader Black speech community. Smitherman explores AAL's contribution to American English, includes a summary of expressions as a suggested linguistic core of AAL, and features cartoons that educate readers on the broader relationship between language, race, and racism. This classic edition features a new foreword by H. Samy Alim, celebrating Smitherman's continuing impact on Black Language scholarship and her influence on the future of the field. Word from the Mother is an essential read for students of African American speech, language, culture and sociolinguistics, as well as the general reader interested in the worldwide "crossover" of Black popular culture.

Articulate While Black

Articulate While Black
Author: H. Samy Alim
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2012-10-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0199812969

In Articulate While Black, two renowned scholars of Black Language address language and racial politics in the U.S. through an insightful examination of President Barack Obama's language use-and America's response to it.

Talkin that Talk

Talkin that Talk
Author: Geneva Smitherman
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2000
Genre: African Americans
ISBN:

A collection of essays in which Geneva Smitherman, a native speaker of African American Language, presents her opinions about Ebonics and related issues.

Discourse and Discrimination

Discourse and Discrimination
Author: Geneva Smitherman
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 1988
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780814319581

Lingusitic and communicative dimensions of the propagation of racism through the media, everyday language, and the educational curriculum.

Language Diversity in the Classroom

Language Diversity in the Classroom
Author: Geneva Smitherman
Publisher: SIU Press
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2003-11-05
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0809388995

It’s no secret that, in most American classrooms, students are expected to master standardized American English and the conventions of Edited American English if they wish to succeed. Language Diversity in the Classroom: From Intention to Practice works to realign these conceptions through a series of provocative yet evenhanded essays that explore the ways we have enacted and continue to enact our beliefs in the integrity of the many languages and Englishes that arise both in the classroom and in professional communities. Edited by Geneva Smitherman and Victor Villanueva, the collection was motivated by a survey project on language awareness commissioned by the National Council of Teachers of English and the Conference on College Composition and Communication. All actively involved in supporting diversity in education, the contributors address the major issues inherent in linguistically diverse classrooms: language and racism, language and nationalism, and the challenges in teaching writing while respecting and celebrating students’ own languages. Offering historical and pedagogical perspectives on language awareness and language diversity, the essays reveal the nationalism implicit in the concept of a “standard English,” advocate alternative training and teaching practices for instructors at all levels, and promote the respect and importance of the country’s diverse dialects, languages, and literatures. Contributors include Geneva Smitherman, Victor Villanueva, Elaine Richardson, Victoria Cliett, Arnetha F. Ball, Rashidah Jammi` Muhammad, Kim Brian Lovejoy, Gail Y. Okawa, Jan Swearingen, and Dave Pruett. The volume also includes a foreword by Suresh Canagarajah and a substantial bibliography of resources about bilingualism and language diversity.

An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States
Author: Kyle T. Mays
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2021-11-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807011681

The first intersectional history of the Black and Native American struggle for freedom in our country that also reframes our understanding of who was Indigenous in early America Beginning with pre-Revolutionary America and moving into the movement for Black lives and contemporary Indigenous activism, Afro-Indigenous historian Kyle T. Mays argues that the foundations of the US are rooted in antiblackness and settler colonialism, and that these parallel oppressions continue into the present. He explores how Black and Indigenous peoples have always resisted and struggled for freedom, sometimes together, and sometimes apart. Whether to end African enslavement and Indigenous removal or eradicate capitalism and colonialism, Mays show how the fervor of Black and Indigenous peoples calls for justice have consistently sought to uproot white supremacy. Mays uses a wide-array of historical activists and pop culture icons, “sacred” texts, and foundational texts like the Declaration of Independence and Democracy in America. He covers the civil rights movement and freedom struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, and explores current debates around the use of Native American imagery and the cultural appropriation of Black culture. Mays compels us to rethink both our history as well as contemporary debates and to imagine the powerful possibilities of Afro-Indigenous solidarity. Includes an 8-page photo insert featuring Kwame Ture with Dennis Banks and Russell Means at the Wounded Knee Trials; Angela Davis walking with Oren Lyons after he leaves Wounded Knee, SD; former South African president Nelson Mandela with Clyde Bellecourt; and more.

My Soul Look Back in Wonder

My Soul Look Back in Wonder
Author: Geneva Napoleon Smitherman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2022-01-31
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1000534073

This is the story of Dr. Geneva Smitherman, aka "Dr. G," the pioneering linguist often referred to as the "Queen of Black Language." In a series of narrative essays, Dr. G writes eloquently and powerfully about the role of language in social transformation and the academic, intellectual, linguistic, and societal debates that shaped her groundbreaking work as a Black Studies O.G. and a Womanist scholar-activist of African American Language. These eleven essays narrate the development of Dr. G’s race, gender, class, and linguistic consciousness as a member of the Black Power Generation of the 1960s and 70s. In My Soul Look Back In Wonder, Dr. G links the personal to the professional and the political, situating the struggles, and successes, of a Black woman in the Academy within the historical experiences and development of her people. As Dr. G enters her eighth decade, in this Black Lives Matter historical moment, she seeks to share the meaning and purpose of a life of study and struggle and its significance for all those who seek racial and social justice today.

Talking to Strangers

Talking to Strangers
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2019-09-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0316535621

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers and why they often go wrong—now with a new afterword by the author. A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Press How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to one another that isn’t true? Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland—throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.

Understanding African American Rhetoric

Understanding African American Rhetoric
Author: Ronald L. Jackson II
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2014-05-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136727361

This is an extraordinarily well-balanced collection of essays focused on varied expressions of African American Rhetoric; it also is a critical antidote to a preoccupation with Western Rhetoric as the arbiter of what counts for effective rhetoric. Rather than impose Western terminology on African and African American rhetoric, the essays in this volume seek to illumine rhetoric from within its own cultural expression, thereby creating an understanding grounded in the culture's values. The consequence is a richly detailed and well-researched set of essays. The contribution of African American rhetoric can no longer be rendered invisible through neglect of its tradition. The essays in this volume neither seek to displace Western Rhetoric, nor function as an uncritical paen to Afrocentricity and Africology. This volume is both timely and essential; timely in advancing a better understanding of the richly textured history that is expressed through African American discourse, and essential as a counterpoint to the hegemonic influence of Greek and Roman rhetoric as the origin of rhetorical theory and practice. Written in the spirit of a critical rhetoric, this collection eschews traditional focus on public address and instead offers a rich array of texts, in musical and other forms, that address publics.