ABSTRACT
The study of the language behavior of African Americans that has been conducted over the past thirty years has produced a substantial body of research describing and analyzing the linguistic, sociolinguistic, and metalinguistic aspects of the community. In the main, these studies have disregarded variations in gender and social class. Most of the early work dealt with the language behavior of groups within the African American community which deviates most from the standard—the exotic, male-dominated street language of males and adolescents (Abrahams 1964; Folb 1980; Kochman 1972; Labov 1972a, b)—while ignoring the language behavior of “drylongso” (Gwaltney 1980), ordinary Black people, who make up the largest segment of the community. Although some of the early studies (Mitchell-Kernan 1971; Ward 1971) considered the language of children and the language of women, they are relatively rare.
