Book contents
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Maps
- Contributors to Volume V
- General Preface
- Abbreviations
- General Editor’s Introduction
- Introduction to Volume V
- PART I The United States
- 1 Language Change and the History of American English
- 2 The Dialectology of Anglo-American English
- 3 The Roots and Development of New England English
- 4 The History of the Midland–Northern Boundary
- 5 The Spread of English Westwards
- 6 American English in the City: The Case of Pittsburgh
- 7 New York City and Baltimore
- 8 English in the Southern United States
- 9 Contact Forms of American English
- 10 The Roots of African American English
- 11 The Great Migration and Regional Variation in the Speech of African Americans
- 12 Rural African American English
- 13 Urban African American English
- 14 Puerto Rican English
- 15 The English of Americans of Mexican and Central American Heritage
- PART II Canada
- PART III The Caribbean
- Index
- References
11 - The Great Migration and Regional Variation in the Speech of African Americans
from PART I - The United States
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 April 2026
Book contents
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Maps
- Contributors to Volume V
- General Preface
- Abbreviations
- General Editor’s Introduction
- Introduction to Volume V
- PART I The United States
- 1 Language Change and the History of American English
- 2 The Dialectology of Anglo-American English
- 3 The Roots and Development of New England English
- 4 The History of the Midland–Northern Boundary
- 5 The Spread of English Westwards
- 6 American English in the City: The Case of Pittsburgh
- 7 New York City and Baltimore
- 8 English in the Southern United States
- 9 Contact Forms of American English
- 10 The Roots of African American English
- 11 The Great Migration and Regional Variation in the Speech of African Americans
- 12 Rural African American English
- 13 Urban African American English
- 14 Puerto Rican English
- 15 The English of Americans of Mexican and Central American Heritage
- PART II Canada
- PART III The Caribbean
- Index
- References
Summary
Over a half century of sociolinguistic work has addressed various aspects of the speech of African Americans, often called African American Language (AAL) or African American English (AAE). While linguists were studying AAL for educational and theoretical linguistic purposes, demographic changes in the United States, including the Great Migration of African Americans, in combination with long-standing segregation, were creating situations in urban environments that helped establish and fortify what we know of as AAL in twenty-first-century America. The current chapter focuses on the twentieth-century development of AAL, using evidence from the Corpus of Regional African American Language (CORAAL; Kendall and Farrington 2021), a publicly available corpus of conversational speech, with data from several African American communities, including the Lower East Side of New York City (Manhattan), Princeville, NC; Rochester, NY; Valdosta, GA; and Washington, DC, to highlight the influence of the Great Migration on AAL and the development of regional sound patterns.
Keywords
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The New Cambridge History of the English LanguageNorth America and the Caribbean, pp. 329 - 365Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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