Communication development and disorders in African American children: Research, assessment and intervention Ed. by Alan G. Kamhi, Karen E. Pollock, and Joyce L. Harris (review)

BOOK NOTICES 455 academy by Wilkins, Defoe, Swift, and others, and the nature of seventeenth and eighteenth century grammars and early dictionaries. The essay also treats the development of the Philological Society and the OED, the study of Old English and Middle English in the nineteenth century, the beginnings of historical linguistics, and the rise of the study of the language in universities. Part ? is the bibliography (71-138). This aspect of the book is not intended to be comprehensive; rather the 71 sections designate supporting bibliographic material for the essay that makes up Part I. Included are sections on such topics as 'The study of French in medieval England' (with 12 entries), 'Shall and will' (5 entries), 'Punctuation' (5 entries), 'English pronouncing dictionaries' (13 entries), 'Dr. Johnson's Dictionary' (21 entries), "The beginnings of English palaeography' (9 entries), "The history of English semantics' (1 1 entries), and 'American English' (15 entries). To take just one illustrative sample, consider the section on punctuation. Here G refers readers (by number) to a range of entries (8017-93) in Arthur G. Kennedy's A bibliography ofwritings on the English languagefrom the beginning of printing to the end of 1922 (Cambridge, MA & New Haven, CT: Harvard University Press & Yale University Press, 1927), to The new Encyclopedia Britannica, to two books on punctuation (one from 1905 and one from 1992) and to a 1988 article by Vivian Salmon. The book concludes with indices to each part. In addition to the value of the essay and bibliography , G's approach has special merit also, I think. The combination of an essay with a supplementary bibliography allows readers to see where a writer has invested energy and how extensively he or she has investigated the literature. This is aformat worth emulating . [Edwin Battistella, Wayne State College.] Communication development and disorders in African American children: Research, assessment and intervention. Ed. by Alan G. Kamhi, Karen E. Pollock , and Joyce L. Harris. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes, 1996. Pp. xx, 374. As the recent media and public brouhaha over the Oakland school board position on ebonies suggests, there is still plenty of public confusion over issues of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Communication development and disorders in African American children, the proceedings of a 1994 conference in Memphis, TN, will be auseful resource for anyone involved in dispelling some ofthat confusion . The book takes as its point of reference the widespread misconception of African American speech which conflates difference and deficit, and it goes on to explore how bona fide communication disorders can be diagnosed and treated in African American speech communities and how those communities can be served by language professionals. The book contains a foreword by Orlando Taylor and Debra Garrett, an afterword by Ann Vaughn-Cooke, and fourteen papers that deal with linguistic, social, and clinical issues. The first group of papers treats issues of intervention, assessment, and research methodology. Holly Craig (1-17) discusses language research with African American children and the research agenda needed to distinguish dialect from pathology and to develop nonbiased research protocols. Joyce Harris (19-33) surveys issues surrounding the recruitment of research subjects, looking at ethical and legal concerns and the legacy ofmistrust arising from the Tuskegee experiments. Julie Washington (34-54) examines assessment instruments and developmental data underlying language assessment and advocates the analysis of samples rather than norm-based language tests. Sandra Terrell and Francis Terrell (55-72) discuss psychosocial, cultural, and behavioral factors that affect children's clinical services, including issues of self-esteem, anger, hostility, and mistrust; the chapter includes an appendix with a cultural mistrust inventory. Lynda Campbell (73-93) surveys a number of testing issues and social issues related to service delivery, including parent training, cultural misconceptions, and school culture. The second set of papers discusses linguistic aspects of AAVE and African American communication . Tonya Wyatt (95-115) describes the acquisition ofthe copula in AAVE, showing that the diagnostics oflanguage delay used in assessing Standard American English (SAE) don't apply to speakers of AAVE; the chapter includes an appendix on constraints on the zero copula. Ida Stockman (117-53) surveys phonological development and disorders in children, providing an in-depth contrastive analysis of SAE...