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Ebonics: The True Language of Black Folks

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First edition
(publ. Institute of Black Studies)

Ebonics: The True Language of Black Folks is a 1975 book written by the American psychologist Robert Williams. Williams coined the term Ebonics two years earlier at a conference he organized on the topic of the "cognitive and language development of the African American child".[1] This book defines the term (which Williams translated as "black sounds"[2]) as the "linguistic and para-linguistic features which on a concentric continuum represent the communicative competence of the West African, Caribbean, and United States slave descendants of African origin".[3]

References

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  1. ^ Yancy, George (2011). "'The Scholar Who Coined the Term Ebonics: A Conversation with Dr. Robert L. Williams". Journal of Language, Identity, and Education. 10 (1): 41–51. doi:10.1080/15348458.2011.539967. S2CID 142788341.
  2. ^ Johnson, Sylvia T. (1998). "Editor's Note: The Evolution of Ebonics". The Journal of Negro Education. 67 (1): 1. doi:10.2307/2668233. JSTOR 2668233.
  3. ^ Lippi-Green, Rosina (1997). "What We Talk About When We Talk About Ebonics: Why Definitions Matter". The Black Scholar. 27 (2): 7–11. doi:10.1080/00064246.1997.11430852. JSTOR 41068724.