title: Influences of social and style variables on adult usage of African American English features.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  In this study, the authors examined the influences of selected social (gender, employment status, educational achievement level) and style variables (race of examiner, interview topic) on the production of African American English (AAE) by adults.
  
  
  METHODS
  Participants were 50 African American men and women, ages 20-30 years. The authors used Rapid and Anonymous Survey (RAS) methods to collect responses to questions on informal situational and formal message-oriented topics in a short interview with an unacquainted interlocutor.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Results revealed strong systematic effects for academic achievement, but not gender or employment status. Most features were used less frequently by participants with higher educational levels, but sharp declines in the usage of 5 specific features distinguished the participants differing in educational achievement. Strong systematic style effects were found for the 2 types of questions, but not race of addressee. The features that were most commonly used across participants-copula absence, variable subject-verb agreement, and appositive pronouns-were also the features that showed the greatest style shifting.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The findings lay a foundation with mature speakers for rate-based and feature inventory methods recently shown to be informative for the study of child AAE and demonstrate the benefits of the RAS.
authors.affiliation: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA. hkc@umich.edu
authors.forename: Holly K
authors.initials: HK
authors.lastname: Craig
authors.forename: Jeffrey T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Grogger
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American / Q000523:psychology*; D003142:Communication; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D012919:Social Behavior; D012923:Social Class; D055815:Young Adult