She first heard Barbara Walters use the phrase “scream” on television, noted Tracey Weldon.
Weldon, a linguist who studies African-American English, says: “I said, “Oh my, it’s over! “.
English has many words and expressions like “scream,” she said, starting with Black communities, traveling across the country and then through the English-speaking world. The process, linguists say, has been going on for generations, adding countless contributions to the language, including hip, nitty gritty, cool and provincial.
Now, a new dictionary – the Oxford Dictionary of African American English – will attempt to systematize contributions and capture the rich relationship black Americans have with the English language.
A project of Harvard University’s Center for African American and African American Studies and Oxford University Press, the dictionary will not only collect spellings and definitions. Henry Louis Gates Jr., the project’s editor-in-chief and director of the Hutchins Center, said it will also create a historic record and as a tribute to the people behind the words.
In the same way that Louis Armstrong took the trumpet and turned it inside out compared to the way people play classical European music, Gates said, The Negro took English and “reinvented it, to make it reflect their sensibilities and make it reflect their culture selves. “
The idea was born when Oxford asked Gates to join forces to better represent African-American English in its existing dictionaries. Instead, Gates suggested they do something more ambitious. The project was announced in June, and the first version is expected in three years.
While Oxford’s won’t be the first dictionary to focus on African-American speech, it will be a well-funded effort – the project has received funding from the Mellon and Wagner Foundation – and will be able to attract the resources of large organizations.
Danica Salazar, executive editor of World Englishes for Oxford Languages, says the dictionary will contain words and phrases that were originally, primarily or exclusively, used by African Americans. That could include a word like “kitchen,” which is a term used to describe the hairs that grow on the nape of the neck. Or it could be phrases like “party hustle,” which were created in the Black community and are now widely used.
Some of the research involved in making dictionaries involves figuring out where and when a word originated. To do this, researchers often turn to books, journals and newspapers, says Salazar, because those written materials are easy to update.
Resources may also include books like “Cab Calloway’s Cat-ologue: a Hepster’s Dictionary,“A set of words used by musicians, including “beat” to mean tired; “Dan Burley’s Original Handbook of Harlem Jive,” published in 1944; and “Black Talk: Words and Phrases from Roof to Amen,” published in 1994.
Researchers could look at recorded interviews with former slaves, Salazar said, and for music, such as the lyrics of old jazz songs. Salazar said the project’s editors also plan to gather information, with calls on the Oxford website and on social media, asking black Americans what words they would like to see in the dictionary and for help with historical documents.
“There might be a diary in your grandmother’s attic that has proof of the word,” Salazar said.
The Oxford English Dictionary has been provided to the community since the 19th century, she added. When the first edition was created, inserts were put into the book, looking for volunteers to read specific titles, write down phrases they found interesting, and send it back to Oxford. The OED editor received so much mail that he put his own mailbox on his doorstep.
Gates explains that the Oxford Dictionary of African American English will not only give a definition of a word, but also describe where it came from and how it came about.
“You wouldn’t think of a dictionary as a way to tell the story of African-American evolution, but it is,” Gates said. “If you sit down and read a dictionary, you will understand the history of African Americans from A to Z.”
Sonja Lanehart, professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and member of the dictionary advisory board, says differences in language form from separation. Those barriers can be geographical, like oceans or mountains, but they can also be social or institutional.
“In this country,” she said, “the descendants of enslaved Americans, they grow, they thrive, they live in separate spaces. Although they are both geographically located in Georgia, their lives and communities in those spaces are very different. “
Weldon, dean of graduate studies at the University of South Carolina and a dictionary advisory board member, says African-American English is diverse with its own syntax, word structure and pronunciation. But it has long been seen as inferior, stigmatized or ignored.
“There is almost never a case where African-American English is recognized as legal, much less ‘good’, or something worthy of praise,” she said. “And it is vocabulary, it is the vocabulary most imitated and celebrated – but the African American language community is not recognized for it. “
This dictionary will provide a lot of insight, Gates said, but one general lesson has been overlooked.
“The bottom line for African Americans, when you read this dictionary,” said Gates, “you would say these are language lovers.”
