How widespread is the use of African American Vernacular English?
As the result of the research of the past 30 years by teams of African-American and Euro-American linguists, we now know more about this dialect of English than any other non-standard dialect in any language. Research in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, Texas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities shows a remarkably uniform grammar throughout the country, spoken by African Americans who live and work primarily with other African Americans. Repeated studies in city after city show that about 60 percent of the African-American residents of the inner city speak this dialect at home and with intimate friends. What experiences enable African Americans brought up speaking dialect to shift to standard English? Exposure to standard English on the mass media, or from teachers in schools, has little effect upon the home language. Those African Americans who have extensive face-to-face dealings with speakers of other dialects show a shift of their grammar in the direction of the
