What do you think?
Rate this book
Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English
Renowned linguist John R. Rickford and journalist Russell J. Rickford provide the definitive guide to African American vernacular English from its origins and features to its powerful fascination for society at large.
288 pages, Paperback
Published December 1, 2000
23 people are currently reading
652 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
June 30, 2018
Dated in its examples, but very passionate.
February 12, 2011
I read this book over winter break in preparation for this winter quarter. It's a beautiful celebration of the African American Vernacular. It gives detailed information concerning its grammar, its origins, its history, and its forms (music, poetry, speech, and writings). It gets to the truth about ebonics and the need to preserve this beautiful America dialect. An uplifting read.
February 17, 2010
SPOKEN SOUL: The Story of Black English is a comprehensive introduction to African-American Vernacular English by the father-and-son writing team of John Russell Rickford and Russell John Rickford, one a journalist and the other a linguist. It was published by Wiley in 2000. SPOKEN SOUL essentially consists of three distinct parts that may not all appeal to the same audience.
The first part is a basic presentation of AAVE as a phenomenon in the African-American community, with a history of how it has been embraced or shunned by African-American intellectuals. Much of this part seems essentially directed to AAVE-speaking Americans in an attempt to instill pride in their heritage. What I take issue with, however, is the author's tendency to praise AAVE as more expressive than Standard English. African-Americans must retain AAVE, they write, because with it they can say more than speakers of Standard English. Now, this may be in some sense true, but it needs a boatload of qualifications. One shouldn't reinforce the public's tendency to hold the Sapir-Whorf fallacy, and the authors seem to perpetuate stereotypes that African-Americans are naturally smooth and suave, "soulful", while white Americans are square and lack some essential mojo.
The second part of the book is a linguistic description of AAVE. The authors attempt to outline the ways in which AAVE differs from Standard English in a fashion easy for layman to understand. I nonetheless think that most readers are going to find this too hard going unless they have prior training in basic linguistics. For me, the diachronic dimension in this description was especially interesting, presenting how the community is split between some scholars who see a great deal of influence on AAVE from West African languages, and others who feel that AAVE is based more on the non-standard British dialects of their neighbouring whites.
The third part is an ample history of the Ebonics controversy of the 1990s, when the Oakland School Board's consideration of using AAVE in instruction got picked up by the media and generated controversy all over the US. This history even includes a detailed description of Ebonics jokes that appeared in newspapers and how faithfully they represented AAVE as it really is. I personally found this section the most unpleasant to read, as I've tried hard to retreat into the ivory tower and ignore how the general public inevitably mangles any linguistic matter that reaches them. Sociolinguistically-minded readers, however, will find this a useful summary.
The authors' sources are listed in detail at the end of the book. All in all, this is a book with a great deal of useful information, but no readership is going to be entirely satisfied. As a linguist, I dislike some of the oversimplifications, while readers without any real training in linguistics may find even this relatively simple to be too abstruse. Also, it would be good to see a second edition of this book, as I'm sure scholarship has moved much further over the last ten years.
The first part is a basic presentation of AAVE as a phenomenon in the African-American community, with a history of how it has been embraced or shunned by African-American intellectuals. Much of this part seems essentially directed to AAVE-speaking Americans in an attempt to instill pride in their heritage. What I take issue with, however, is the author's tendency to praise AAVE as more expressive than Standard English. African-Americans must retain AAVE, they write, because with it they can say more than speakers of Standard English. Now, this may be in some sense true, but it needs a boatload of qualifications. One shouldn't reinforce the public's tendency to hold the Sapir-Whorf fallacy, and the authors seem to perpetuate stereotypes that African-Americans are naturally smooth and suave, "soulful", while white Americans are square and lack some essential mojo.
The second part of the book is a linguistic description of AAVE. The authors attempt to outline the ways in which AAVE differs from Standard English in a fashion easy for layman to understand. I nonetheless think that most readers are going to find this too hard going unless they have prior training in basic linguistics. For me, the diachronic dimension in this description was especially interesting, presenting how the community is split between some scholars who see a great deal of influence on AAVE from West African languages, and others who feel that AAVE is based more on the non-standard British dialects of their neighbouring whites.
The third part is an ample history of the Ebonics controversy of the 1990s, when the Oakland School Board's consideration of using AAVE in instruction got picked up by the media and generated controversy all over the US. This history even includes a detailed description of Ebonics jokes that appeared in newspapers and how faithfully they represented AAVE as it really is. I personally found this section the most unpleasant to read, as I've tried hard to retreat into the ivory tower and ignore how the general public inevitably mangles any linguistic matter that reaches them. Sociolinguistically-minded readers, however, will find this a useful summary.
The authors' sources are listed in detail at the end of the book. All in all, this is a book with a great deal of useful information, but no readership is going to be entirely satisfied. As a linguist, I dislike some of the oversimplifications, while readers without any real training in linguistics may find even this relatively simple to be too abstruse. Also, it would be good to see a second edition of this book, as I'm sure scholarship has moved much further over the last ten years.
October 8, 2010
Overall, it was an engaging, enlightening and enjoyable read. Part 3 might be a challenge to readers who haven't ever taken a course in linguistics or grammar. The explanations are really quite good though, so if you've ever studies another language I think you'll be able to understand most of what's discussed.
Part 1 introduces the purpose of the book. Part 2 discusses the artistic and cultural history of African American vernacular English (AAVE). Part 3 discusses the vocabulary, phonetics and grammar of AAVE. Part 4 explores the political controversy surrounding an initiative to use Ebonics (AAVE) as a teaching tool in Oakland, CA, classrooms in the mid-1990s. Part 5 briefly explains the importance of AAVE to the cultural identities of many African Americans, particularly those in the lower and working classes.
Part 1 introduces the purpose of the book. Part 2 discusses the artistic and cultural history of African American vernacular English (AAVE). Part 3 discusses the vocabulary, phonetics and grammar of AAVE. Part 4 explores the political controversy surrounding an initiative to use Ebonics (AAVE) as a teaching tool in Oakland, CA, classrooms in the mid-1990s. Part 5 briefly explains the importance of AAVE to the cultural identities of many African Americans, particularly those in the lower and working classes.
June 10, 2012
This is a fantastic intro to African American English. Rigorous enough for linguists but also highly engaging and accessible to nonlinguists. Wonderful book.
October 2, 2022
In 1996, the Oakland School Board resolved to recognize Ebonics (a poetic portmanteau of "ebony" and "phonics") as a second language in its district and accordingly to provide additional teaching support to African American students with special language-focused curricular programs. This act was intended to redress issues in language proficiency among black students who were less familiar with standard English, but the rhetoric of the proposal was based on a well-meaning but shaky idea that African American vernacular was rooted in West and Niger-Congo African languages, and consequently, even though it might use English words, phrases and grammatical structures, it was a different language preserving the substratum of a foreign language family. While the resolution was largely symbolic and primarily intended to secure federal funding ear-marked for bilingual education, the school board's action ignited a political maelstrom, speaking to reactionary fears of dumbing down education (four years later, George W Bush would coin the infamous expression, "the soft bigotry of low expectations) and appealing to the racist paranoia of white America and its sublimated fears of urban gangsterism, coupling "broken English" with hooliganism and moral delinquency.
This book seeks to provide a redemptive story of black vernacular English, celebrating the preachers, musicians and writers who used it. It is a fascinating story and a useful resource. Its chapters on phonetics and grammar provide a wealth of insights into the diction of Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison, who themselves sought to preserve and archive the linguistic vitality of their black heritage. It gives a nuanced description of a number of grammatical features of African American vernacular (is-levelling, loss of copula, use of be for habitual aspect or hypothetical mood), noting the expressiveness of these locutions. The authors' discussion of preachers and singers calls attention not just to the grammatical features of black speech but its creative diction and performative delivery. John and Russell Rickford trace interesting connections between the oratorical style of preachers and the verbal artistry of singers, arguing that the vernacular is not just a variant dialect but the soul of black identity throughout generations.
I did, however, have reservations to its discussion of the history of African American vernacular—like the Oakland School Board, John and Russell Rickford both seem invested in the idea that the vernacular has roots in the languages of West Africa (they point to the distribution of zero-copula sentences in African American vernacular and in other African creoles to showcase its statistical similarity to West African languages). But this seems to be a faulty methodology. Creole languages often innovate rather than preserve linguistic features. A creole may grammaticalize words as entirely new inflections, and new syntactic structures often emerge. Creoles are invented in polyglottal spaces, often in circumstances of displacement and deracination, where speakers are forced to borrow and recombine lexemes and morphemes and co-construct new grammars. Similarities aren't necessarily inheritance. On the other hand, as the authors admit, overall, African American vernacular closely resembles standard English grammar and many of its variant features also developed independently in other English dialects (for example, non-rhoticism, metathesis of "ask" as "aks", and the simplification of consonant clusters are also found in colloquial "ocker" Australian). The hypothesis of black vernacular as a vestige of African heritage seems to me a misguided sentimentalism, representing the nostalgic desire to recover a sense of transatlantic communion with Africa. But what the authors better show is the agency and creativity of African American speakers cultivating their own sociolect over the centuries, fashioning a shibboleth of shared identity, a language that resisted and subverted the cold meanness of their white oppressors. Historical linguistics doesn't confer legitimacy on vernacular black English; its speakers do.
As an addendum, I would have been interested to read about the uses of African American Vernacular in other marginalized communities, such as among gay men, and the politics of this linguistic appropriation.
This book seeks to provide a redemptive story of black vernacular English, celebrating the preachers, musicians and writers who used it. It is a fascinating story and a useful resource. Its chapters on phonetics and grammar provide a wealth of insights into the diction of Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison, who themselves sought to preserve and archive the linguistic vitality of their black heritage. It gives a nuanced description of a number of grammatical features of African American vernacular (is-levelling, loss of copula, use of be for habitual aspect or hypothetical mood), noting the expressiveness of these locutions. The authors' discussion of preachers and singers calls attention not just to the grammatical features of black speech but its creative diction and performative delivery. John and Russell Rickford trace interesting connections between the oratorical style of preachers and the verbal artistry of singers, arguing that the vernacular is not just a variant dialect but the soul of black identity throughout generations.
I did, however, have reservations to its discussion of the history of African American vernacular—like the Oakland School Board, John and Russell Rickford both seem invested in the idea that the vernacular has roots in the languages of West Africa (they point to the distribution of zero-copula sentences in African American vernacular and in other African creoles to showcase its statistical similarity to West African languages). But this seems to be a faulty methodology. Creole languages often innovate rather than preserve linguistic features. A creole may grammaticalize words as entirely new inflections, and new syntactic structures often emerge. Creoles are invented in polyglottal spaces, often in circumstances of displacement and deracination, where speakers are forced to borrow and recombine lexemes and morphemes and co-construct new grammars. Similarities aren't necessarily inheritance. On the other hand, as the authors admit, overall, African American vernacular closely resembles standard English grammar and many of its variant features also developed independently in other English dialects (for example, non-rhoticism, metathesis of "ask" as "aks", and the simplification of consonant clusters are also found in colloquial "ocker" Australian). The hypothesis of black vernacular as a vestige of African heritage seems to me a misguided sentimentalism, representing the nostalgic desire to recover a sense of transatlantic communion with Africa. But what the authors better show is the agency and creativity of African American speakers cultivating their own sociolect over the centuries, fashioning a shibboleth of shared identity, a language that resisted and subverted the cold meanness of their white oppressors. Historical linguistics doesn't confer legitimacy on vernacular black English; its speakers do.
As an addendum, I would have been interested to read about the uses of African American Vernacular in other marginalized communities, such as among gay men, and the politics of this linguistic appropriation.
April 26, 2024
Spoken Soul is an informative writing on the history and linguistic features of, and people who use African American English (AAE). The authors wrote this book to alleviate some of the misunderstandings and remove some of the controversy associated with AAE. The authors achieve this purpose by applying their expertise and covering several broad topics - history, linguistics, education, and culture - in an approachable and understandable way. Spoken Soul is a great introductory resource for those looking to learn more about AAE.
April 10, 2024
Even though I picked this book from a list we could choose from for my university linguistics class, I did not expect how textbook-like this book would be. It was full of facts but a ton of swayed opinion and it was pretty much a textbook timeline of Ebonics. When the authors wrote about history, that was interesting and I liked that. But it wasn’t a “story”; it was a textbook without bullet points.
February 28, 2023
this book is about the language and culture between black and white people. A person can learn a lot with this book.
October 27, 2023
This is one of those books I’d be dropping at little free libraries around town if I won the lottery.
October 1, 2013
Very simplistic reading that proves that I ain't talkin' wrong...
A great beginner book to open the eyes of Ebonics speakers worldwide so that they may never shun their own language again. Awesome book to lead upto further hardcore "linguistic" research about this unique system of communication.
The one issue with this book is it's inconsistency with whether Spoken Soul is that or "Black English."
A great beginner book to open the eyes of Ebonics speakers worldwide so that they may never shun their own language again. Awesome book to lead upto further hardcore "linguistic" research about this unique system of communication.
The one issue with this book is it's inconsistency with whether Spoken Soul is that or "Black English."
May 30, 2007
Good, informed source material - a little lackluster in the writing department, though.
December 20, 2014
Very technical.
January 15, 2016
Should be required reading for anyone who teaches English at whatever level
May 29, 2016
Illuminating.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews