TWO REPORTERS
David K. Shipler & Daniel Zwerdling have spent their lives investigating thorny and neglected issues, winning journalism’s top awards along the way. Now join Dave and Danny on TWO REPORTERS, as they interview stellar guests about pressing social problems and solutions - and just fascinating stuff - in ways you haven’t heard before. Advisory: Episodes may contain laughing, arguing and moments of irreverence.
TWO REPORTERS
When many African Americans speak, what are they speaking?
They're speaking African American English, according to linguist Lisa Green at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Lisa grew up speaking AAE in Louisiana, and since then, her ground-breaking research has found that AAE is based on a system of consistent grammatical rules, pronunciations and definitions - in other words, Lisa's studies show, "it's not mainstream English with mistakes." Some call it a dialect, which evolved from the African languages that slaves spoke blended with plantation English; in fact, when someone says, "she aks" instead of "she asks," they might be echoing Old English from centuries ago. Lisa argues that schools need to acknowledge and respect black children's African American English, even while they teach them Standard American English that they need to succeed in broader society.