Dialects
African American English Bibliography
Click on a topic category below to view a subset of the larger bibliography or download a PDF of the biliography in its entirety. (163 KB) 
Topic Categories
Assessment
References on the assessment of speakers of AAE (often school-age children).
Bidialectalism
References on dialect shifting and teaching Standard English.
Discourse
AAE at the level of discourse; ways of communicating, narrative styles, and cultural practices.
Dissertations on African American English
Abstracts and some full text available from the University of Michigan Dissertation Services or a university.
Divergence
Is African American English diverging from other American English varieties?
Edited volumes on African American English
Individual chapters from these volumes are not listed in the bibliography.
Hip-hop
Scholarly articles on AAE and hip-hop culture.
Language Ideology
Beliefs and attitudes about AAE or AAE language ideology.
New developments
Recent publications from 2003 through 2007.
Origins
The history of AAE, including the creole/anglicist debates in sociolinguistics.
Pathology
Writings on the diagnosis of pathology in AAE speakers.
Policy
Policy decisions, public controversy (including the Ebonics controversy), and AAE and the law.
Reading
The relationship between AAE and reading skills.
Structure
Linguistic variation in AAE at the levels of phonology, morphology, and syntax.
Writing
The relationship between AAE and writing skills.
Download a PDF of the bibliography in its entirety.
CAL's bibliography provides a selection of references related to African American English and education. For a comprehensive list of references on AAE and education through 2004, see Rickford, J.R., Sweetland, J. & Rickford, A. (2004). African American English and other vernaculars in education: A topic-coded bibliography. Journal of English Linguistics, 32 (3), 230-320. (also forthcoming as a book from NCTE press).
This list was compiled by Kara Becker, Peter Patrick, and Jonathan Rosa.