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Given the importance of the role of spelling in literacy, it is important to have knowledge of the linguistic features that allow students to be successful spellers. Having phonological, morphological, and orthographic knowledge is essentially important to spell conventionally. In the United States, the standard language is Academic English (AE). African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is considered a deviation from AE, with its own sound system. AAVE is the most widely used form of dialect in the United States. Many students who speak AAVE may have difficulties in producing the correct spelling of AE words. The overall purpose of this study was to provide sixth-grade students, who are speakers of AAVE, with an eight-week intervention in the principles of phonology, morphology, and orthography that would assist them in improving their spelling performance. Students had similar scores on all spelling and dialect pretest measures before the intervention began. The research design was a pretest/posttest/posttest design using waitlist- control. This study included 142 students divided into 14 class sections taught by two teachers. The two teachers provided the intervention to the students. The experimental group consisted of seven classes, and the control group consisted of seven classes. After the first implementation of the intervention, the study was replicated with the control group of students. MANOVA was utilized to determine the effect of the intervention. The intervention produced large effects for the students who received the spelling instruction. The results from the criterion-referenced spelling assessments and a sentence writing task revealed that students who received explicit instruction from the intervention made gains in their spelling performance from pretest/posttest 1/posttest 2 and maintained these gains after being tested eight weeks later. Practical and theoretical recommendations are provided for teachers and researchers. Suggested recommendations include: providing teacher training that will enable teachers to be more linguistically aware of AAVE and its features, making students aware of the difference in the AAVE and the AE sound system, and conducting more research-based studies that will assist speakers of AAVE in literacy and spelling.

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<p>African American Vernacular English, AAVE, is a variant of English spoken mostly by lower-class black citizens in the US. Since the most popular music genre among African Americans today is rap, this paper will describe what characterizes AAVE and rap music, and explore the use of AAVE in rap lyrics of both black and white rappers.</p><p>AAVE is different from Standard English in several respects; grammatically, phonologically and lexically. Examples of grammatical features in AAVE are invariant be, double negations and the differing use of possessive pronouns.</p><p>The hip hop industry has been, and still is, largely dominated by black performers, and white artists make up only a minority of rappers in the line of business today. Rappers being part of a larger culture, the hip hop nation, they have a language in common, and that language is AAVE. In this paper, a number of lyrics performed both by black and white rap artists have been compared and analyzed, in search of linguistic features of AAVE. This study provides evidence that AAVE is indeed used in rap lyrics, although the use of its features is often inconsistent. It is also shown that AAVE-presence in white rappers’ lyrics exists, but is sparser than in the works of their black equivalents.</p>

The growth of multicultural and multilingual student populations in community colleges has presented difficulties for instructors who teach academic writing. This study was motivated by the desire to understand the challenges faced by novice writers from diverse ethnolinguistic backgrounds, African-American, Haitian, and Hispanic, in a South Florida community college as they grappled with the register features which defined academic writing. One major challenge has been the tendency to transfer the register feature of clause structure typical of speech into academic texts. An analysis of clause structures using writing samples collected from 45 community-college students, 15 from African-American, Haitian and Hispanic students respectively, showed the degree to which the students relied on their speech by using hypotactic and paratactic clauses instead of the main and embedded clauses characteristic of the written academic register The study has expanded on previous research which had focused on native versus nonnative English speakers (ESL) in English-language programs, by including African American students who are speakers of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and, therefore, speak English as a second dialect (ESD) as well as Generation 1.5 students (Haitian and Hispanic), who have command of conversational English, come to the U.S. as first or second generation immigrants, and graduated from U.S. high schools, but they lack the written academic skills to perform at the college level. A challenge faced by African American AAVE speakers is that the dialect occurs predominantly in spoken discourse, and students may go to school without any exposure to written discourse in their home language. On the other hand, many Generation 1.5 students such as Haitians and Hispanics speak native languages, which have standardized orthographies, and these students may go to school having been exposed to register features of written discourse in Haitian Creole (or French) and Spanish.

African American Vernacular English, AAVE, is a variant of English spoken mostly by lower-class black citizens in the US. Since the most popular music genre among African Americans today is rap, this paper will describe what characterizes AAVE and rap music, and explore the use of AAVE in rap lyrics of both black and white rappers. AAVE is different from Standard English in several respects; grammatically, phonologically and lexically. Examples of grammatical features in AAVE are invariant be, double negations and the differing use of possessive pronouns. The hip hop industry has been, and still is, largely dominated by black performers, and white artists make up only a minority of rappers in the line of business today. Rappers being part of a larger culture, the hip hop nation, they have a language in common, and that language is AAVE. In this paper, a number of lyrics performed both by black and white rap artists have been compared and analyzed, in search of linguistic features of AAVE. This study provides evidence that AAVE is indeed used in rap lyrics, although the use of its features is often inconsistent. It is also shown that AAVE-presence in white rappers’ lyrics exists, but is sparser than in the works of their black equivalents.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the spoken variety African-American VernacularEnglish (AAVE) is used in entertainment. This is performed by comparing the spoken language oftwo fictional characters from two different sources of entertainment who are depicted as AAVEspeakers. The characters selected for the study are Stringer Bell from the TV-series The Wire andMama Odie from the movie The Princess and the Frog. Since the aim of this study is to compare andmeasure frequency of use of AAVE features amongst the two characters, a quantitative analysis hasbeen conducted. The findings show that the characters use similar features of AAVE but not to thesame extent. The results show that both characters use verb phrases, negations, and nominals. Theresults show that the characters have 6 grammatical features and 5 phonological features in commonin the selected material, where Stringer Bell uses more grammatical features and Mama Odie usesmore phonological features. Moreover, the results show that the depiction of the characters’ spokenlanguage varies due to the aim of the specific production and that the spoken language of the twocharacters is also affected by regional differences. / Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur den talade varianten afroamerikansk engelska (AAVE)används i underhållning. Detta utförs genom att jämföra det talade språket från två fiktivakaraktärer från två väldigt olika underhållningskällor där karaktärerna talar AAVE. Karaktärernasom är valda för studien är karaktären Stringer Bell från TV-serien The Wire och karaktären MamaOdie från filmen Prinsessan och grodan. Eftersom syftet med denna studie är att jämföra och mätafrekvensen av användandet av AAVE-funktioner mellan de två karaktärerna har en kvantitativinnehållsanalys tillämpats för detta ändamål. För att sammanfatta så använder sig karaktärerna avliknande särdrag men inte till samma utsträckning. Resultaten visar att båda karaktärerna användersig av verbfraser, negationer och nominaler. Resultaten visar att karaktärerna har 6 grammatiskafunktioner och 5 fonologiska särdrag gemensamt i det valda materialet, där Stringer Bells främstanvänder sig av grammatiska funktioner och Mama Odie använder främst fonologiska särdrag.Dessutom visar resultaten att skildringen av karaktärernas talade språk varierar beroende påproduktionens syfte. Följaktligen visar detta att det talade språket för de två karaktärerna också ärpåverkade av regionala varianter.

African American Vernacular English (AAVE) has been extensively explored in previous research in sociolinguistics. However, the portrayal of the sociolect in movies is still not widely researched. In order to address this gap, the purpose of this thesis is to study how AAVE is used in the movie Sextuplets (2019), directed by Michael Tiddes and co-produced by Marlon Wayans. The material used was the script excerpted from Subslikescript (2019) [www], and the study was delimited to the speech of the two characters Alan and Dawn. The method used was close reading of these two characters’ lines in order to identify four grammatical features identified in previous research as associated with AAVE: negation ain´t+ multiple negation with ain´t, multiple negation, copula BE absence and Invariant BE. In addition, the data analysis procedure also involved identification of AAVE avoidance, i.e., instances where the characters had the opportunity to use the AAVE features but opted for their General American counterparts instead. The results show that all four AAVE features occurred in the speech of both characters, and the structures in which these features occur conforms to findings from previous studies of AAVE usage in authentic contexts. The findings also display extensive differences in frequency between the two characters’ use of AAVE. These differences can be related to their social background. Alan is portrayed as a wealthy African American male, whereas Dawn is presented as a troublemaker who has been in and out of jail. The speech of these two characters is realistic in the sense that it reproduces grammatical features of AAVE noted in previous research on language use in authentic contexts. In addition, the differences between the two characters can be said to reproduce stereotypes of how African Americans from different social classes use AAVE.

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Background: Within the emerging field of cryptocurrencies, the sub-sector DeFi (decentralized finance) has experienced explosive growth over the last year, and its importance for crypto as a whole has grown with it. The currencies have developed from simple peer-to-peer transactions to complex applications such as lending and exchanges. Several studies have researched determinants of cryptocurrency prices, and a few have focused on metrics central to DeFi, such as total value locked (TVL). However, academia has aimed sparse attention to the relationships between these metrics, which this article seeks to amend.  Aim: The purpose of this essay is to research the relationship between total value locked (TVL) in DeFi, the prices of native tokens on related platforms, and the price of ether, which is the dominant currency across DeFi.  Methodology: This study is deductive and quantitative and categorized as a causal-comparative thesis. The purpose of causal-comparative research is to find relationships between variables, independent and dependent, over a certain period.  The authors used deductive reasoning to form the hypotheses and collect the data necessary to investigate the hypothesis. Additionally, the structure of the paper and the epistemological process is quantitative and based on the scientific method.  The sources used for data gathering have primarily been DefiPulse and their API:s, retrieved using simple python coding and different applications that parse JSON code into the excel format. The transparent nature of blockchain has provided easy access to data needed for this study. Once the data was collected, it was categorized and compiled into an Excel sheet.  Conclusions: It is a considerable result that the ratio of locked ETH to total supply lacks significance for the price of ether, as it is counterintuitive to the macroeconomic theory of demand and supply. Presumably, the locked eth is not to be considered as a corresponding decrease in supply. However, if that was the case, the locked ratio of 10% is considerable and should affect the price as there is less supply available to the market.  In accordance with hypotheses two, three, and four, changes in the price of ether, TVL, and utilization rate affect the price of the native token. A notable distinction between the three different platforms lies in what metrics correlate more strongly with price changes. It for Compound and Aave was TVL, but utilization rate for MakerDAO. What causes these differences between seemingly similar platforms is a subject for further study.