The development of rating scales for Black English grammar, pronunciation, rhythm/intonation, and overall Black English usage

The purpose of this study was to develop four rating scales to measure listener perception of Black English (1) grammar, (2) pronunciation, (3) rhythm/intonation, and (4) overall Black English usage.

Elicited language samples of 30 Black children between the ages of 4 years 3 months to 5 years 4 months were audio—video taped. These language samples were reviewed by three expert judges and placed into one of three categories. Least, Moderate, and Most, based on the amount of Black English present in the sample. The category placement of the language samples was used for comparison purposes in this study.

Ten speech-language pathologists served as judges, the listeners, in this study. The judges were equally divided into two groups: trained and untrained. The trained group of judges underwent a training procedure for the identification of Black English grammar, pronunciation, rhythm/intonation, and overall Black English usage.

The two groups of judges made numeric estimations via the method of direct magnitude estimation for the 30 language samples. A language sample from the Moderate category was randomly selected to serve as the standard referent for this procedure. The referent was assigned a numeric estimation of 50. Each of the Black English factors-grammar, pronunciation, rhythm/intonation, and overall Black English-usage were judged separately during each viewing of the audio-video taped samples.

The following conclusions may be drawn from the results of this study:

1. Responses of judges via numeric magnitude estimation produced rating scales for measurement of Black English grammar, pronunciation, rhythm/Intonation, and overall Black English with moderately high internal consistency reliability and high test-retest reliability.

2. Listeners, judges, could perceive differences among language samples grouped by category Least, Moderate and Most for grammar, pronunciation, rhythm/intonation, and overall Black English. However, listeners did not perceive differences for grammar between the Least and Moderate categories or perceive differences for pronunciation, rhythm/intonation or overall Black English between the Moderate and Most categories.

3. Untrained listeners could not identify differences for Black English rhythm/intonation among categories Least, Moderate and Most.

4. The average magnitude estimations of trained judges were consistently higher than those of untrained judges. Trained judges were more sensitive to detection of the amount and type of Black English characteristics present in the samples whereas untrained judges tended to rate each characteristic of Black English similarly.

5. The amount of Black English grammar, pronunciation or rhythm/intonation differences perceived by a group of listeners correlates highly with the overall amount of Black English usage perceived by the same group of listeners.

6. Pronunciation accounted for the majority of variability in listener perception of Black English.

7. Pronunciation and rhythm/intonation are closely related to each other with respect to listener perception of Black English.