Top Lang Disorders
Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 90–108
c 2015 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright Pragmatic Features in Original
Narratives Written by African
American Students at Three
Grade Levels
Jessica M. Kersting, Michele A. Anderson,
Brandi L. Newkirk-Turner, and Nickola W. Nelson
African American English has a rich oral tradition, with identifiable features across all 5 systems of
language—phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. This is an investigation of
the extent to which pragmatic features of African American oral storytelling traditions are apparent in the written stories of African American students (n = 30) at fourth-, sixth-, and ninth-grade
levels in an urban school district in the Midwest compared with stories written by 61 European
American students in the same urban (n = 20) and a nearby rural school district (n = 41). Results
showed that African American students use significantly more pragmatic features characteristic of
the African American oral tradition than European American students. In particular, differences
were found for the use of cultural references and parallelism. Grade level was significant for
simple frequency counts of oral tradition features, but when the pragmatic codes were normalized for story length, the grade-level effect disappeared. These results add to prior research on
cultural-linguistic influences on story writing that go beyond counts of morphosyntactic variation.
Key words: African American, pragmatic features, school-age, written language
W
RITTEN EXPRESSION is a language skill
that is essential for academic success.
Teachers and language specialists, including
speech–language pathologists, must be aware
of cultural-linguistic influences on the development of written expression to understand
Author Affiliations: Department of Speech
Pathology and Audiology (Drs Kersting and
Anderson), PhD program in Interdisciplinary Health
Sciences (Dr Nelson), Western Michigan University,
Kalamazoo; and Department of Communicative
Disorders, Jackson State University, Jackson,
Mississippi (Dr Newkirk-Turner).
The authors disclose no financial or nonfinancial conflicts of interest. Dr. Nelson discloses that she is Editor
of this journal, Topics in Language Disorders.
The authors acknowledge the assistance of graduate
assistant, Bridget Peters, in conducting this research.
Corresponding Author: Jessica M. Kersting, PhD, Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, Western
Michigan University, 1903 W. Michigan, Kalamazoo,
MI 49008 ([email protected]).
DOI: 10.1097/TLD.0000000000000044
typical development and use that information to identify students with diverse experiences who may require intervention. Much
prior research on the writing of speakers of
African American English (AAE) has focused
on the influences of phonological and morphosyntactic features of AAE on students’
written language (Cronnell, 1984; Green,
2002; Horton-Ikard & Pittman, 2010; Nelson,
2010; Rickford, 1999; Wolfram & SchillingEstes, 2005). As an alternative to such studies, Smitherman (2000) called for research
that would address sociolinguistic components such as pragmatic elements and other
discourse features.
Although less studied than AAE grammatical features, some prior research has
described pragmatic elements as adding to
richness of discourse quality in the written
language of African American students
(Ball, 1992; Campbell, 1983; Champion,
2003; Chaplin, 1988; Noonan-Wagner,
1981; Richardson, 2003; Smitherman, 2000;
90
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Pragmatic Features of African American Written Narratives
Troutman-Robinson, 1987; Visor, 1987).
Citing an old proverb, “The blacker the berry,
the sweeter the juice,” Smitherman (2000
[1994]), observed that such stylistic features
should be encouraged because they enhance
the written message.
Champion (2003) identified stylistic discourse features that have been passed down
from generation to generation among African
American families, including the following:
(a) repetition, (b) parallelism, (c) piling and
association, (d) tonality, (e) ideophone (using
sound to convey meaning), (f) digression (a
departure from the main theme to address or
comment to a person or object), (g) imagery,
(h) allusion, and (i) symbolism. Similarly,
Smitherman (2000) identified stylistic features
that differentiated African American discourse
in essays written by 17-year-old students from
1969 to 1989 for the National Assessment
of Educational Progress (NAEP) as including (a) rhythmic, dramatic, evocative language, (b) reference to color/race/ethnicity,
(c) use of proverbs, aphorisms, Biblical verses,
(d) sermonic tone reminiscent of traditional
Black Church rhetoric, especially in vocabulary, imagery, metaphor, (e) direct addressconversational tone, (f) cultural references,
(g) ethnolinguistic idioms, (h) verbal inventiveness, unique nomenclature, (i) cultural values–community consciousness, and
(j) field dependency.
Other researchers have described AAE
stylistic and rhetoric features that may be
found in the writing of African American
students at middle school, high school, and
college levels. Troutman-Robinson (1987)
found that eighth-grade African American students addressed readers directly more often
than non-AAE-speaking comparative groups.
Chaplin (1988) also found that African American eighth- and ninth-grade students used significantly more cultural vocabulary (defined
as words and phrases that are specific to
African American culture) and a conversational tone more frequently than same-age
European American students. Cooper (1977)
identified common stylistic features used by
African American college students, which included extensive use of imagery in expos-
91
itory and argumentative writing, presentation of a rhythmic pattern in writing, and
a tendency toward personal involvement in
the content of the writing. Noonan-Wagner
(1981) found that African American college
freshman used a moralistic tone, moral statements, idioms, repetitions, free association,
and shifts to personal perspective significantly
more frequently than European American
students.
The purpose of this research was to determine whether AAE pragmatic features would
appear more frequently in the original written narratives of African American students.
This work was important to update research
conducted several decades ago and to add
information about narratives written by students from later elementary school grades to
high school (fourth, sixth, and ninth grades).
Our reasoning was that differences may exist
in the pragmatic features utilized by African
American students in the 21st century compared with those found in samples gathered
in the 1960s to 1980s.
One possibility was that fewer pragmatic
distinctions would be found between the written compositions produced by African American and European American students because
of mutual borrowing of pragmatic features.
Sociolinguistic work on language contact indicates that borrowing can be expected when
sociolinguistic groups interact (Wolfram &
Schilling-Estes, 2005). Although borrowing
is more evident between two different languages (e.g., English and French), it also can
occur among those who speak varieties of the
same language. When African American and
European American students are educated together in the same schools and classrooms,
eat lunch together, live in the same neighborhoods, and socialize in the same venues, the
likelihood of shared features across dialects
may be heightened. Specific research questions guiding this study, then, were the following:
1. Are AAE oral pragmatic features used
with a greater frequency in the written narratives of African American urban
(AA-U) fourth-, sixth-, and ninth-grade
students than same-grade European
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92
TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY–MARCH 2015
American peers in the same urban and
a different rural school district?
2. Are there other written pragmatic features of General American English (GAE;
i.e., not associated specifically with the
African American oral tradition) that
differentiate the written narratives of
African American fourth-, sixth-, and
ninth-grade students, compared with
same-grade European American peers in
the same urban and in a different rural
school district?
METHODS
This study used a descriptive cross-sectional
design. It was a study of pragmatic stylistic
features in original stories written by fourth-,
sixth-, and ninth-grade urban African American students compared with stories written
by European American students in urban and
rural school districts. The research was based
on secondary analysis of an existing data set.
That is, it was based on written narrative samples that were gathered in 2005 as part of pilot
research aimed at developing a standardized
test of written language. Administrators and
teachers in two school districts, one urban
and one rural, had agreed to participate in the
original study, and parental permission and
child assent were obtained under the original
Human Subjects Institutional Review Board
approval. Renewed approval was gained before conducting this study.
Participants and school settings
The participants were 91 fourth-, sixth-, and
ninth-grade students who were attending one
of two school districts (one urban and one
rural) in a Midwestern state (see Table 1 for
distribution and demographics). The demographics of the urban district showed that 73%
of the students were European American and
18% were African American. In comparison,
95% of the rural school district students were
European American and less than 1% of these
were African American. The urban school district had more than 11,000 students, whereas
the rural school district had just over 1,000
students. All of the 30 African American participants and 20 of the 61 European American
students came from the urban school district.
The students were self-identified as African
American or Caucasian. Small numbers of Hispanic, Asian, and Native American students
were removed from the sample. Our rationale
for including the European American students
from the rural school district was that, because of the demographics of this particular
rural school district, they would be less likely
to have been exposed to the discourse styles
of African American classmates than the European American students in the urban district.
Written story probe procedures
Original narrative stories were obtained in
the students’ fourth-, sixth-, and ninth-grade
classrooms in 1-hr sessions at the beginning of
the academic school year. First, we reminded
the students their stories would be used for
research and we would not be giving them
a grade but it was important to do their best
work. We explained the voluntary nature of
the project and asked for their written assent
if they agreed to participate. Parental consent had been obtained previously under a
protocol approved by a university’s Human
Subjects Institutional Review Board. Samples
were gathered using procedures described by
Nelson, Bahr, and Van Meter (2004). The instructions went as follows:
We are interested in the stories fourth [sixth or
ninth] graders write. You probably already know
something about stories. A story tells about a problem and what happens. The problem does not have
to be something bad someone did. Your story can
be real or imaginary.
Preparation of the samples
All written samples were transcribed for the
original analysis using the software, Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT;
Miller & Iglesias, 2012). Any existing codes
or group identifiers were removed from the
SALT transcripts for the current analysis by a
research assistant who also modified any AAE
grammatical features to be consistent with
standard edited English. This prevented the
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93
Pragmatic Features of African American Written Narratives
Table 1. Demographic characteristics by grade level and school district type
Fourth Grade
Group
African American
European American
Total
Sixth Grade
Ninth Grade
Rural
Urban
Rural
Urban
Rural
Urban
Total
0
8
8
12
10
22
0
14
14
11
5
16
0
19
19
7
5
12
30
61
91
researchers from being influenced by grammatical features of AAE when coding and to be
blind to race/ethnicity, grade level, and type
of school district (urban or rural).
Pragmatic coding procedures
One set of codes was developed for macrolevel global features (i.e., a code that could be
assigned once per story), which could characterize any narrative but which might be
used at different rates by students from different sociolinguistic communities. As shown in
Table 2, these included elements such as narrative subgenre (seven subtypes), the voice
in which the story was told (first, second, or
third person), and other features that would
be coded only once per story.
A second set of codes was developed to
represent pragmatic elements of the AAE tradition. These were the AAE pragmatic codes
that were of primary interest for this study
(Table 3). They were based on the review
of literature on pragmatic features associated
with African American oral traditions (e.g.,
Champion, 2003; Smitherman, 1977). These
were the features that we had hypothesized
might be observed with a greater frequency in
the written narratives of AA-U fourth-, sixth-,
and ninth-grade students than of same-grade
European American peers in either urban or
rural school districts.
A third set of codes was developed to represent pragmatic elements at the micro level
that might characterize any student’s narrative discourse, although they had not been
specifically associated with AAE in prior literature. These more generic codes are labeled
as GAE codes to differentiate them from the
AAE-specific codes. As shown in Table 4, they
include direct and indirect quotations, listing
friends in the story, and adding embellishment
or exclamations.
The codes were fine-tuned through an iterative process. After developing an initial set
of codes based on literature, the four authors
independently applied these codes to 10 stories written by third graders whose work was
not part of this study. We then compared ratings and discussed differences. This resulted
in modifications to definitions and decision
rules within coding categories to facilitate
consistency. Some categories were collapsed
or deleted; others were added to the GAE code
set. Using the modified definitions, seven additional written samples from fifth graders were
analyzed independently and then compared.
This resulted in further refinements to coding
definitions. The final coding system, as presented in Tables 2–4, was used to code the 91
stories used in the analyses.
Coding reliability
Following the code development process
described previously, a subset of 10 written
samples (11%) was randomly selected from
the full set of 91 stories to be used for evaluating coding reliability. Because our reliability
data contained coding from three coders (the
first three authors), Fleiss’s κ values (Fleiss
& Cohen, 1973) were calculated for each
code using SAS software. Landis and Koch
(1977) provided guidelines for interpreting
κ values, which ranged as follows: less than
0, poor agreement; 0.01–0.20, slight agreement; 0.21–0.40, fair agreement; 0.41–0.60,
moderate agreement; 0.61–0.80, substantial
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SCIFI
TT
FT
FAB
PAR
RTN
Macro: Genre
RTE
ID
Realistic tale expository. Purpose to
inform; unfamiliar schema content;
variable text structures; focus on
factual information and abstract ideas
Realistic tale narrative. Purpose to
entertain; familiar schema content;
consistent text structure; focus on
character motivations, intentions,
goals
Parable (fiction). Human character set
in short tale that illustrates a universal
truth
Fable (fiction). Contains animals with
human characteristics and lesson
Fairy tale (fiction). Presence of magic;
happy ending
Imaginative/tall tale (fiction). Relating
unbelievable events as if true
Science fantasy (fiction). Supernatural
characters, and elements from both
science fiction and/or fantasy
Definition
Macro Codes
17% (5)
3% (1)
6% (2)
0% (0)
0% (0)
70% (21)
3% (1)
AA-U
(n = 30)
5% (1)
10% (2)
5% (1)
5% (1)
0% (0)
75% (15)
0% (0)
EA-U
(n = 20)
5% (2)
7% (3)
2% (1)
0% (0)
5% (2)
78% (32)
2% (1)
EA-R
(n = 41)
% Students Using Featuresa
(continues)
0.57, p < .0001
moderate
agreement
Reliability κ b
Table 2. Macro-level codes (one per story) for narrative genre, voice, and binary feature codes with group frequencies, and coding
reliability
94
TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY–MARCH 2015
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Play format. Written in the format of a
play with direct quoted dialogue; may
include narrator
10% (3)
7% (2)
10% (3)
7% (2)
0% (0)
60% (18)
Second person author perspective
Third person author perspective
Presupposition. Author presupposed
too much and doesn’t provide
adequate background information for
reader/listener
Violence. Contains elements of
realistic, everyday violence (not
superhero violence)
Rich. Written work has a poetic quality;
is clever, creative, or special
40% (12)
AA-U
(n = 30)
First person author perspective
Definition
5% (1)
0% (0)
0% (0)
10% (2)
0% (0)
55% (11)
45% (9)
EA-U
(n = 20)
2% (1)
0% (0)
10% (4)
2% (1)
0% (0)
56% (23)
44% (18)
EA-R
(n = 41)
% Students Using Featuresa
1.0, p < .0001
almost perfect
agreement
1.0, p < .0001
almost perfect
agreement
1.0, p < .0001
almost perfect
agreement
0.25, p < .078 fair
agreement
1.0, p < .0001
almost perfect
agreement
Reliability κ b
Note. AA-U = African American in urban school; EA-R = European American students in rural school; EA-U = European American in urban school.
a Frequency is expressed as the percentage of students using the feature (n in parentheses).
b Reliability is expressed as the κ statistic, followed by p value for significance and interpretation based on guidelines for interpreting κ (Landis & Koch, 1977—i.e., <0.01 =
poor agreement; 0.01–0.20 = slight agreement; 0.21–0.40 = fair agreement; 0.41–0.60 = moderate agreement; 0.61–0.80 = substantial agreement; and 0.81–1.00 = almost
perfect agreement).
PLAY
RICH
VIOL
V2
V3
Macro: Binary
PSUP
Macro: Voice
V1
ID
Macro Codes
Table 2. Macro-level codes (one per story) for narrative genre, voice, and binary feature codes with group frequencies, and coding
reliability (Continued)
Pragmatic Features of African American Written Narratives
95
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Key phrase repetition. Narrator uses
the same key phrase throughout the
narrative, at least three times (code
one time for the first three repetitions
(to meet the definition) and then code
each subsequent time the same key
phrase is used)
Piling and association. Heaping one
detail onto another to build the
narrative into a climax or at least three
sentences with a key word
Parallelism. Playing one set of words
or images against another without
changing the theme of the narrative;
can be within same or adjacent
sentences; code each event one time
Call-response. Spontaneous verbal
interactions between speaker and
listener; also, a question with no clear
speaker and a response by no clear
listener
Signifying. Teasing or taunting speech
used most specifically for language
that goads another into an aggressive
act. Dozens/sounding: form of
signifying with insults on family
members
KPR
PLL
SIG
CR
PAA
Definition
ID
C Hey why don’t I ask her to
marry me? Yeah!
C Then today we got a game
today with Woods Lake at
5:00. How are we going to get
there? On a bus.
Did not occur
C He took a deep breath, went
over to her. And stopped the
swing, took her right hand.
And asked “Lisa will you
marry me?”
C I don’t really fit in with the
cheerleaders. And I don’t really
fit in with the punks.
C But panther replied I don’t like
light. [five lines later] Panther
said sorry I don’t like light.
[three lines later] But still
panther said I don’t like light.
Example From Current
Samples
Micro Codes From the Literature on African American Oral Traditions That
Could be Assigned More Than Once per Utterance
Table 3. African American English oral tradition pragmatic codes
0% (0)
3% (1)
43% (13)
3% (1)
17% (5)
AA-U
(n = 30)
0% (0)
5% (1)
20% (4)
5% (1)
5% (1)
EA-U
(n = 20)
0% (0)
2% (1)
17% (7)
2% (1)
7% (3)
EA-R
(n = 41)
% Students Using Featurea
(continues)
1.0, p < .0001
almost
perfect
agreement
1.0, p < .0001
almost
perfect
agreement
.75, p < .0001
substantial
agreement
1.0, p < .0001
almost
perfect
agreement
1.0, p < .0001
almost
perfect
agreement
Reliability κ b
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TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY–MARCH 2015
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Did not occur
C He got the ball back and took it
to the hole.
Reference to color-race-ethnicity.
Reference occurs when the main
story topic doesn’t call for it
Cultural references. Used for
cultural vocabulary and idioms
Verbal inventiveness, unique
nomenclature. Unique word
choices
Field dependency. Involvement in
and immersion in events and
situations; personalizing
phenomena; lack of distance from
subjects and topics
Rhetorical style. Sermonic tone
REF
CREF
VIUN
FD
RHET
C Wesley and Cody found a way
out. They went into a closet
and hid. The man found them
and put them in the dungeon.
One year and 2 months went
past. And we’re still in the
dungeon.
C I’m not just talking two or
three ants walking on the
counter. I’m talking ants
shooting out of the
milkshake machine.
C She was brought up to never
step down from a female or
male.
C Iesha came home from work
tired and slumish.
C So let the lesson be to you don’t
speed because it is deadly.
Example From Current
Samples
Moral. Moral of the story stated
explicitly
Definition
MOR
ID
Micro Codes From the Literature on African American Oral Traditions That
Could be Assigned More Than Once per Utterance
Table 3. African American English oral tradition pragmatic codes (Continued)
0% (0)
3% (1)
3% (1)
37% (11)
0% (0)
0% (0)
AA-U
(n = 30)
5% (1)
5% (1)
0% (0)
0% (0)
0% (0)
0% (0)
EA-U
(n = 20)
0% (0)
7% (3)
0% (0)
2% (1)
0% (0)
5% (2)
EA-R
(n = 41)
% Students Using Featurea
1.0, p < .0001
almost
perfect
agreement
(continues)
1.0, p < .0001
almost
perfect
agreement
1.0, p < .0001
almost
perfect
agreement
1.0, p < .0001
almost
perfect
agreement
1.0, p < .0001
almost
perfect
agreement
−.0014, p =
.51 poor
agreement
Reliability κ b
Pragmatic Features of African American Written Narratives
97
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Ideophone. Using sound to convey
meaning; “idea-in-sound;” add
vividness and drama to a
storytelling event
Off-narrative comment
(digression/aside). A departure
from the main theme of a narrative
to address or comment to a person
or object related to the theme of
the narrative
Figurative language (including
imagery, allusion, symbolism).
Using words (similes and
metaphors) to create images in the
mind of the listener to appeal to
feelings and understanding, but
not codable as CREF.
Evaluative language. Positive or
negative language that judges the
worth of something; can express
feelings or opinions; can judge
aspects of people including
behavior; can assess the quality of
objects.
IDP
EVAL
FIG
ONC
Topic associative shift. Shifts topic
away from primary story theme
without providing transition
Definition
TOPS
ID
C The US is just too powerful. It
is killing way too many
people.
C Her mom was going to say no
because Sally is too young to
be using makeup.
C It even gave their teacher
Mrs. Algood the creeps. And
she was a very thoughtful
woman. So at 4:00 after school
we all meet at McJohn’s
mansion.
C And when Angie saw all that
candy she was going to
explode.
C And that/s why I will never
ride on a[n] airplane.
Although I did like that I can
play video game/s. They have
real cool game/s like NBA
street, NBA shootout 2002, xx
basketball and all different
kind/s of crash game/s.
C I could have sworn that I
heard a deer. Crack crack.
My brother looks back.
Example From Current
Samples
Micro Codes From the Literature on African American Oral Traditions That
Could be Assigned More Than Once per Utterance
Table 3. African American English oral tradition pragmatic codes (Continued)
3% (1)
33% (10)
3% (1)
10% (3)
10% (3)
AA-U
(n = 30)
0% (0)
40% (8)
0% (0)
20% (4)
0% (0)
EA-U
(n = 20)
10% (4)
34% (14)
5% (2)
7% (3)
0% (0)
EA-R
(n = 41)
% Students Using Featurea
(continues)
−0.0013, p =
.51 poor
agreement
.67, p < .0001
substantial
agreement
1.0, p < .0001
almost
perfect
agreement
.60, p < .0001
moderate
agreement
1.0, p < .0001
almost
perfect
agreement
Reliability κ b
98
TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY–MARCH 2015
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Direct address. Talking directly to
the audience in a conversational
tone.
Tonality. Intonation changes
throughout the narrative,
especially in the last syllable of a
line; in written narratives, code for
spelling or punctuation that shows
tonality.
DA
TOON
C Hi, my name is Tylor. I would
like to begin the story by
telling you about the summer I
turned 14.
C AAAA we all said.
Example From Current
Samples
7% (2)
23% (7)
AA-U
(n = 30)
10% (2)
20% (4)
EA-U
(n = 20)
5% (2)
22% (9)
EA-R
(n = 41)
% Students Using Featurea
.50, p < .0001
moderate
agreement
.71, p < .0001
substantial
agreement
Reliability κ b
Note. AA-U = African American in urban school; EA-R = European American students in rural school; EA-U = European American in urban school; ID = code abbreviation
associated with the definition to its right in the table.
a Frequency is expressed as the percentage of students using the feature (n in parentheses).
b Reliability is expressed as the κ statistic, followed by p value for significance and interpretation based on guidelines for interpreting κ (Landis & Koch, 1977).
Definition
ID
Micro Codes From the Literature on African American Oral Traditions That
Could be Assigned More Than Once per Utterance
Table 3. African American English oral tradition pragmatic codes (Continued)
Pragmatic Features of African American Written Narratives
99
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C She was the most spoiled girl in
the world.
C The killer come to her home
and stab/ed Cindy. We ran
together, me and Jazmin.
C Ryan!
C He planned to impress her, so
something to make her melt in
his arms. Something amazing,
original. Hey why don’t I ask
her to marry me!”
C Her friends’ names were
Aurora, Chris, and Rico.
C Throw it all away.
C Then I asked my sisters and
brother if they wanted to rest.
C Let’s go and hunt for some
breakfast said lynx.
Example from Current
Samples
7% (2)
3% (1)
7% (2)
10% (3)
13% (4)
26% (8)
26% (8)
60% (18)
AA-U
(n = 30)
35% (7)
0% (0)
5% (1)
30% (6)
10% (2)
50% (10)
10% (2)
70% (14)
EA-U
(n = 20)
0% (0)
7% (3)
5% (2)
7% (3)
15% (6)
27% (11)
34% (14)
60% (25)
EA-R
(n = 41)
% Students Using Featurea
.50, p < .0001
moderate
agreement
1.0, p < .0001 almost
perfect agreement
1.0, p < .0001 almost
perfect agreement
1.0, p < .0001 almost
perfect agreement
.69, p < .0001
substantial
agreement
.80, p < .0001
substantial
agreement
.25, p < .0001 fair
agreement
.93, p < .0001 almost
perfect agreement
Reliability κ b
Note. AA-U = African American in urban school; EA-R= European American students in rural school; EA-U = European American in urban school.
a Frequency is expressed as the percentage of students using the feature (n in parentheses).
b Reliability is expressed as the κ statistic, followed by p value for significance and interpretation based on guidelines for interpreting κ (Landis & Koch, 1977).
EXCL
PERS
EMB
LIST
ID
DIR
Listing of friends’ names. At
least three names, can
include self
Embellishment. Clear
element of exaggeration
Person shift. Changes person
within the narrative (e.g.,
from third to first)
Exclamation
Direct quote. Clear quotations
of what characters in the
story actually said
Indirect quote. Telling what
someone else said without
quoting it directly.
Directiveness of dialogue.
Code every imperative used
in dialogue.
Internal dialogue. Use same
rules/codes (DQ, IQ, DIR) as
external dialogue
DQ
IQ
Definition
ID
Micro Codes Not Based on the African American Oral Tradition
Table 4. General American English pragmatic feature codes
100
TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY–MARCH 2015
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Pragmatic Features of African American Written Narratives
agreement; and 0.81–1.00, almost perfect
agreement. Table 2 shows the results of the
reliability calculations for the macro-level
codes, which indicate that almost perfect
agreement was found for the majority of these
codes. The exception was the type of narrative genre, for which seven choices were possible. In this case, the κ value of 0.57 was evaluated as representing moderate agreement.
Table 3 shows the data for interrater reliability. In this case, agreement on the majority of
structures was high; however, this was influenced by the fact that most of the microstructures occurred with a low frequency, which
may have contributed to high agreement. Two
microstructures that occurred with a higher
frequency proved especially problematic for
coding. They were cultural references (CREF)
and evaluative language (EVAL). (See Table 3
for definitions.) One issue was that cultural
references often could be coded alternatively
as figurative language (FIG) due to their
nonliteral meanings. The two author/coders
who are European American tended to code
cultural references as FIG, whereas the author/coder who is African American tended
to code them as CREF. These discrepancies
were resolved by using CREF as the priority
code if a feature involved the use of culturally
influenced idioms or symbolism. This decision
was consistent with Champion’s (2003) identification of imagery, allusion, and symbolism
as features typical of West African oral storytelling traditions. This minor coding issue
highlighted the need to recognize the role of
cultural-linguistic experience of researchers,
an issue we consider again in the discussion.
Table 4 summarizes the reliability results
for the more generic GAE micro-level codes.
Among this set, almost perfect interrater
agreement was calculated for the variables
of direct quotes (DQ), lists of friends’ names
(LIST), embellishment (EMB), and person shift
(PS); however, as summarized in Table 4,
lower levels of agreement were found for the
dialogue features of tonality (moderate agreement) and indirect quotes (fair agreement).
After reliability was evaluated, all four authors met to discuss each point of disagree-
101
ment and to form consensus on the codes in
the final set of students’ writing samples. The
consensus codes were inserted into the SALT
transcripts that were used for analysis.
Statistical analysis
The SPSS statistical software package was
used to calculate standardized variables adjusted for story length. This was done by dividing the number of codes for each story by
the number of T-units. “T-unit” stands for minimal terminable unit, which is defined as a
main clause and any subordinated or embedded clauses or phrases (Hunt, 1977).
Composite variables were created for the
two sets of micro-codes: the AAE pragmatic
codes in Table 3 and the additional GAE
codes in Table 4. These values then were
used in the univariate analyses of variance
(ANOVAs) to answer the research question
about whether frequency of coded feature
use in either set would be associated with
sociolinguistic group (African American urban [AA-U], European American urban [EAU], and European American rural [EA-R]), or
grade level (fourth, sixth, and ninth), or if an
interaction effect might be found for group by
grade level. Analyses for significant composite scores were followed by one-way ANOVAs
and post hoc Bonferroni tests for individual
codes. Independent t tests also were used to
compare the results for the African American
students and the two European American student groups combined.
RESULTS
Tables 2–4 provide the code frequency data
for the percentages (and numbers) of participants in each group—AA-U, EA-U, and EA-R—
using each coded feature. Table 5 provides
the means and standard deviations for the two
composite values based on total codes in stories (AAE and GAE), as well as for the normalized values that were calculated by dividing
the total numbers of codes in a story by the
total T-units in that story.
The first research question asked whether
pragmatic features associated with the AAE
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102
TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY–MARCH 2015
Table 5. Means (and standard deviations) for AAE and GAE codes by group and grade
Raw Totals per Story, M (SD)
AA-U
Grade 4 (n = 12)
Grade 6 (n = 11)
Grade 9 (n = 7)
EA-U
Grade 4 (n = 10)
Grade 6 (n = 5)
Grade 9 (n = 5)
EA-R
Grade 4 (n = 8)
Grade 6 (n = 14)
Grade 9 (n = 19)
Proportion of Codes per T-Unit,
M (SD)
AAE Composite
GAE Composite
AAE Composite
GAE Composite
2.33 (2.06)
2.36 (3.01)
6.29 (1.98)
4.58 (6.33)
4.18 (3.37)
6.71 (8.16)
0.143 (.182)
0.105 (0.123)
0.179 (0.078)
0.223 (0.276)
0.168 (0.159)
0.223 (0.346)
1.30 (2.26)
2.60 (1.95)
3.20 (3.03)
5.90 (7.28)
20.20 (15.07)
10.80 (10.40)
0.054 (0.081)
0.063 (0.037)
0.069 (0.066)
0.264 (0.345)
0.532 (0.372)
0.223 (0.209)
1.38 (1.77)
1.71 (1.64)
1.63 (1.83)
1.38 (2.13)
12.21 (12.12)
6.68 (7.70)
0.093 (0.125)
0.057 (0.056)
0.064 (0.062)
0.087 (0.109)
0.355 (0.316)
0.235 (0.270)
Note. AAE = African American English; AA-U = African American in urban school; EA-R = European American students
in rural school; EA-U = European American in urban school; GAE = General American English.
oral tradition (summarized in Table 3) would
be evident with a greater frequency in the
original written narratives of African American students than in stories of their EA-U and
EA-R peers. We also asked whether grade level
would make a difference. We hypothesized
that the African American students would use
more of the AAE oral tradition features than
their European American age peers, particularly when compared with European American students from the rural community, who
would have had less history of shared sociolinguistic community. A secondary graderelated hypothesis was that African American
students in later grades might use more AAEassociated pragmatic features than those in
earlier grades.
The descriptive results showed that most
of the AAE oral tradition pragmatic features
were being used in the original written narratives of both African American and European
American students, with a few exceptions.
The ANOVA to answer the first research question about group differences by grade level
used the composite total for the AAE-related
codes in Table 3 as the dependent variable,
with sociolinguistic group (AA-U, EA-U, and
EA-R) and grade level (4, 6, and 9) as independent variables (see Table 5 for means and
standard deviations). This analysis showed a
significant main effect for group, F(2, 82) =
7.578, p = .001, and grade, F(2, 82) = 5.990,
p = .004, as well as a significant interaction
effect for group by grade level, F(4, 82) =
2.982, p = .010. Post hoc tests showed that
the AA-U students used significantly more of
the AAE discourse features than their EA-R
peers (p = .005) but not their EA-U peers (p
= .188). This seemed to support our original
hypothesis that greater sociolinguistic mixing
might have occurred for the urban students
who attended school together. Post hoc analyses of grade-level differences, however, were
not significant when comparing fourth and
sixth graders (p = 1.000), fourth and ninth
graders (p = .094), or sixth and ninth graders
(p = .394). The significant interaction effect
appeared to reflect a pattern in which the
composite feature mean score for AA-U students showed little change from fourth to
sixth grades but then jumped at ninth grade,
which was consistent with our age-related hypothesis. In contrast, this composite mean
score increased slowly across grades for the
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Pragmatic Features of African American Written Narratives
EA-U students and changed minimally across
the three grades for the EA-R students. These
differences in pattern of grade-level differences, as well as the significant group differences, are apparent in Figure 1.
We then considered that the results based
on coding totals might have been confounded
by differences in the total numbers of utterances across grade level, which could influence mean total feature use per story. To investigate this possibility, we ran a separate
ANOVA to analyze the total number of utterances as the dependent variable and group
and grade level as the independent factors. In
this case, significant main effects for Group,
F(2, 82) = 6.169, p = .003; Grade, F(2, 82) =
23.016, p = .0001; and Group × Grade interactions, F(4, 82) = 3.709, p = .008, were
found again. The post hoc analyses for Group
did not reach significance for any of the pairwise comparisons related to total utterances,
but the Grade-level comparisons showed significant differences between fourth and sixth
grades and between fourth and ninth grades
(p = .0001) but no differences between sixth
and ninth grades (p = 1.000).
Because of evidence that the AAE pragmatic
feature total composite score may have been
103
confounded by the significant grade-level differences in total utterances, we conducted another ANOVA using the number of utterances
as a covariate. When controlling for utterance
length for this significant covariate (p = .005),
only Group remained significant, F(2, 81)
= 7.582, p = .001. The main effects for Grade
(p = .208) and the Group × Grade interaction (p = .131) were no longer significant.
This led us to rerun the one-way ANOVA using
the composite variable that was standardized
as a percentage of total utterances (T-units)
as the dependent variable (see Table 5 for
means and standard deviations). This analysis
showed a significant main effect for Group,
F(2, 82) = 4.969, p = .009, but not for Grade
(p = .591) or Group × Grade interactions
(p = .746). In this case, post hoc analysis
revealed significant differences between the
composite percentage values for the AA-U and
EA-U groups (p = .031), as well as for the AA-U
and EA-R groups (p = .016). The difference between the EA-U and EA-R groups was not significant (p = 1.000). These relationships are
illustrated in Figure 2, which shows the significantly higher AAE pragmatic feature composite scores for the African American students.
It also shows the similarities between the
Figure 1. Illustration of the Group × Grade interaction effect for mean African American English composite
raw score totals. Sample sizes are unequal. AA = African American; AA-U = African American urban;
EA-R = European American rural; EA-U = European American urban.
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104
TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY–MARCH 2015
Figure 2. Illustration of significantly higher mean composite scores for AAE feature use by the AA-U group
when scores were standardized by calculating the proportion of AAE codes per total T-units. Sample sizes
are unequal. AA = African American; AA-U = African American urban; EA-R = European American rural;
EA-U = European American urban.
two European American groups (urban and
rural).
Subsequent one-way ANOVAs were conducted for each of the key pragmatic variables
listed in Table 3. The one-way ANOVAs for
three of the AAE feature use variables (standardized as % per utterance) were significant.
These were parallelism (PLL%), F(2, 88) =
4.781, p = .011, cultural references (CREF%),
F(2, 88) = 11.259, p < .0001, and topic associative shift (TOPS%), F(2, 88) = 3.277,
p = .042. However, in this case, findings of unequal variance led us to use of Games-Howell’s
(rather than Bonferroni’s) statistic for the post
hoc analyses. In these analyses, pairwise comparisons for the PLL% variable did not reach
significance when comparing the AA-U students with either the EA-U (p = .102) or EA-R
(p = .090) group. On the contrary, when the
two EA subgroups were collapsed, the independent t test for group differences on the
PLL% variable (equal variance not assumed,
with adjusted degrees of freedom in parentheses and effect sizes calculated as Cohen’s d)
was significant, t(36.505) = 2.256, p = .030,
d = .75. Post hoc Games-Howell analyses for
the CREF% variable showed significant differences between AA-U and EA-U students
(p = .008) and between AA-U and EA-R students (p = .011). In addition, the independent
t test for the CREF% variable, equal variances
not assumed, showed t(29.277) = 3.167,
p = .004, d = 1.17. Finally, post hoc analyses for the TOPS% variable did not reach
significance for comparison either of the AAU and EA-U or AA-U and EA-R pairs (p =
.202 in both cases). Also, the independent
t test, equal variances not assumed, t(29) =
1.756, p = .090, d = 0.65, did not reach
significance.
The second research question asked
whether there were differences in the use of
the more generic GAE pragmatic features in
the narrative samples completed by African
American students and two groups of European American peers. The hypothesis for
these more general features was that differences would not be found, adding credence
to findings of differences for the other variable set (from Table 3) that were associated
in the literature more uniquely with AAE discourse. To answer this question, we examined
the composite scores for the set of microcoded percentage standardized variables in
Table 4. In this case, neither Group (p =
.246) nor Grade level (p = .098) had a significant effect on feature use, supporting the
hypothesis of no difference for features that
were not specific to the literature on AAE.
We also examined individual micro-pragmatic
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Pragmatic Features of African American Written Narratives
structures, and no individual feature showed
significant group differences.
DISCUSSION
In this study, the writing samples of urban
African American students in Grades 4, 6, and
9 were examined to answer questions about
whether they demonstrated greater use of
AAE pragmatic discourse features than their
same-grade European American peers in the
same urban or a nearby rural school district.
The data revealed that most of the AAE pragmatic features coded were used in written
narratives by both African American and European American students. When story length
was controlled by dividing the total number
of tokens for each code by the total number of utterances in the sample, the results
showed that the African American students
used the composite AAE discourse features in
their written narratives significantly more frequently than their European American peers
(urban or rural). The two specific features that
emerged as being used significantly more by
the African American students than the European American students were parallelism and
culture references. On the contrary, consistent with our hypothesis related to the second
research question, the African American and
European American students did not differ in
their use of the GAE discourse features, such
as direct quotes and indirect quotes.
Ongoing questions about sociolinguistic
borrowing
One finding of this study was that both the
urban African American and European American students (rural and urban) used discourse
features summarized in Table 3 that had been
documented in prior literature as characteristic of the AAE oral tradition (Champion,
2003; Smitherman, 2000). From a sociolinguistic perspective, we expected that the
urban European American students might be
more likely to do this than the rural European American students because of having
had greater linguistic contact with speakers of
AAE through their school years. When using
105
simple frequency counts, this hypothesis initially appeared to be supported for the African
American and European American students
in the ninth grade in the urban school district (see Figure 1). That is, according to simple frequency counts, ninth-grade students
in those groups appeared to be more alike
than the African American and EA-R students.
After controlling for story length, however,
the Group × Grade interaction effects disappeared and it was apparent that differences
in frequency usage were between the African
American students and both groups of European American students. The failure to support the hypothesis of cultural-linguistic contact (or borrowing) could be explained in
several ways. One possibility is that contact
between the African American and European
American students in the urban schools was
insufficient to lead to borrowing of pragmatic
features, especially in written narratives. Issues of group separation associated with racial
identity have been explored in prior literature
(e.g., Tatum, 1997). Caution, however, should
be exerted in drawing such conclusions from
this relatively small data set, gathered in one
Midwestern region of the United States.
The most important finding from this study
was the evidence that the African American
students showed more frequent use of a selected set of features that have been traced
through generations of African American families and are associated with the pragmatics of AAE (Champion, 2003; Smitherman,
2000). This finding was specific to the composite score for the AAE discourse features
summarized in Table 3. It did not apply for
the more generic set of GAE discourse features in Table 4. It held even when the feature codes were standardized for story length.
Post hoc analyses added further support for
the higher proportional use of parallelism
and cultural references by the African American students. These results also could be interpreted reciprocally as suggesting that the
majority of features in Table 3 are used by
European American and African American students. For example, ideophones, figurative
language (other than that classified as making
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TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY–MARCH 2015
cultural references), and direct address could
be argued to be generic discourse features
that cut across all students’ written discourse.
Alternatively, their use across groups could
be interpreted as supporting the hypothesis
of greater cultural-linguistic borrowing within
the 21st century than in earlier decades.
Future studies should expand on this work
to determine whether parallelism and cultural
references prove to be distinctive features
in the written narratives of African American students in other geographic regions or
to compare samples gathered across decades
directly. Repeating Smitherman’s (2000) analyses of stories written across the nation for
the NAEP also would be timely and could
add understanding about the generalizability
of these findings and the tenability of the
cultural-linguistic borrowing hypothesis. Current inventories of unique African American
discourse features may be more limited than
the inventory lists generated in the 1960s and
1970s, when Smitherman’s original work was
conducted.
Moving beyond an inventory list of discourse features and tokens of use, future research also should explore features such as figurative language use that appear to be shared.
Deeper analyses may show that features used
by European American students appear on the
surface to be like the features used by African
American students, but turn out, upon closer
analysis, to lack some of the subtle elements
that add to the richness of the African American oral tradition. Some examples of cultural
references and parallelism from our students’
written works can make this point best. Examples of cultural references included, “She was
brought up to never step down [CREF] from
a female or male,” and “Laura knew she could
sing [CREF].” Parallelism examples included,
“and all she could think about was that sixth
grade was such a drag, that she hated her family, that she hated her teacher [PLL],” and “it
got faster and faster and faster [PLL] until I
crashed into the dock.”
When differentiating oral and written communication, Tannen (1983) described parallelism (in the general population) as associ-
ated with the rhythms of oral communication.
She observed further that the same speakers who use parallelism in oral conversation
would be likely to communicate the same information without the parallelism in writing.
Tannen was making the point that literary language (such as narratives and poetry) might
have more in common with oral conversation
than expository written language. She noted
that this may be because literary language is
“dependent for its effect on interpersonal involvement” (p. 90). Tannen added that “Successful writing requires not the production
of discourse with no sense of audience but
rather, the positing of a hypothetical reader
and playing to the needs of that audience”
(p. 91). The greater use of parallelism by the
African American authors could be viewed as
a strategy for connecting interpersonally with
their audience when writing.
Implications for writing assessment and
instruction
The findings of this study support a conclusion that some features of the African American oral tradition continue to influence the
written language of African American students into the 21st century, even though post
hoc analyses showed that the list may be
shorter than in the past. Specifically, significant differences were limited to codes for cultural references and parallelism in this study’s
post hoc analyses. It is good news that neither
of these features would be likely to be perceived by teachers as evidence of problems,
as might be more likely if students were to
use morphosyntactic variants typical of AAE.
In this study, only the use of topic shifting,
which was significantly different between the
African American students and the collapsed
urban and rural groups of European American
students, might be viewed as a problem by
teachers who do not recognize it as a culturallinguistic variation. Care should be taken that
such features not be penalized. They reflect
cultural-linguistic diversity rather than problems of story construction. In any case, culturally specific pragmatic features should be
recognized and encouraged for the richness
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Pragmatic Features of African American Written Narratives
that they may add to writing pieces and their
manner of connecting the author to the audience.
One interesting issue that arose during
coding was that European American coders
tended to code instances of cultural references as figurative language, whereas the
African American coder tended to code these
same utterances of cultural references, perhaps showing greater sensitivity to subtle cultural differences in expression. This issue has
implications for future research. Although being a native speaker of a given language or
dialect does not equate to scholarly expertise, it may be beneficial to employ research
teams that reflect various sociolinguistic backgrounds (as in this study) or to utilize native
speakers as consultants (e.g., Oetting & Gar-
107
rity, 2006; Oetting & McDonald, 2001). These
strategies may be particularly important when
the topic is semantic or pragmatic in nature,
making coding decisions more subtle.
Appreciating features associated with discourse traditions of AAE as strengths is consistent with previous researchers’ recognition that cultural stylistic features can enhance students’ writing (Ball, 1992; Delpit,
2006; Gorman, Fiestas, Pena, & Clark, 2011;
Smitherman, 2000). As this study shows,
African American students employ discourse
features in their original story writing that
have a richness of style associated historically
with African American oral storytelling traditions. The take-home point is that the sociolinguistic richness associated with such features
should be recognized and encouraged.
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