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Papers: Articles & Reviews

1974 “The Insights of the Mesolect.” In Pidgins and Creoles: Current Trends and Prospects, ed. D. DeCamp and I. Hancock, 92-117. Washington, D. C.: Georgetown U. Press.
1975 “Carrying the New Wave into Syntax: the Case of Black English BIN.” In Analyzing Variation in Language, ed. R. Fasold and R. Shuy, 162-83. Washington, D. C.: Georgetown U. Press.
1976a “Communicating in a Creole Continuum.” In New Directions in Creole Studies. Papers from the first annual colloquium, Society for Caribbean Linguistics, ed. G. Cave. Georgetown: Society for Caribbean Linguistics.
1976b (With Angela E. Rickford). “Cut-Eye and Suck-Teeth: African Words and Gestures in New World Guise.” Journal of American Folklore, 89 (353): 194-309. Reprinted 1978 in Readings in American Folklore, ed. J. H. Brunvand, 355-73. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., Inc., Also reprinted 1980 in Perspectives on American English, ed. J. Dillard, 347-66. The Hague: Mouton.
1976c (With Barbara Greaves). “Non-Standard Words and Expressions in the Writing of Guyanese School-Children.” In A Festival of Guyanese Words, ed. J. R. Rickford, 25-45. Georgetown: University of Guyana. Reprinted in second edition, 1978: 40-56.
1977a “The Field of Pidgin-Creole Studies: a Review Article on Loreto Todd’s Pidgins and Creoles.” World Literature Written in English (MLA Division #33) 16: 477-513.
1977b “The Question of Prior Creolization in Black English.” In Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, ed. A. Valdman, 126-46. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana U. Press.
1980a “How Does DOZ Disappear?” In Issues in English Creoles: Papers from the 1975 Hawaii Conference, ed. R. Day, 77-96. Heidelberg: Julius Groos.
1980b “Analyzing Variation in Creole Languages.” In Theoretical Orientations in Creole Studies, ed. A. Valdman and A. Highfield, 165-84. New York: Academic Press.
1981 “A Variable Rule for a Creole Continuum.” In Variation Omnibus, ed. D. Sankoff and H. Cedergren, 201-8. Carbondale and Edmonton: Linguistic Research, Inc.
1983a "Review of M. Alleyne (1980) Comparative Afro-American Language." 59.3: 670-676.
1983b “Standard and Non-Standard Language Attitudes in a Creole Continuum.” Society for Caribbean Linguistics Occasional Paper 16. Mona, Jamaica: U. of the West Indies. Reprinted 1985 in Language of Inequality, ed. N. Wolfson and J. Manes, 145-60. The Hague: Mouton.
1983c “What Happens in Decreolization.” In Pidginization and Creolization as Language Acquisition, ed. R. Andersen, 298-319. Rowley, Ma.: Newbury House.
1985a "Review article on E. Woolford and W. Washabaugh," eds., The Social Context of Creolization. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 7:343-50.
1985b “Ethnicity as a Sociolinguistic Boundary.” American Speech 60 (3): 90-125.
1985c (With Elizabeth Closs Traugott.) “Symbol of Powerlessness and Degeneracy, or Symbol of Solidarity and Truth? Paradoxical Attitudes towards Pidgins and Creoles.” In The English Language Today, ed. S. Greenbaum. Oxford: Pergamon, 252-61.
1985d “Standard and Non-Standard Language Attitudes in a Creole Continuum.” in Language of Inequality, ed. N. Wolfson and J. Manes, 145-60. The Hague: Mouton. [Reprint of 1983b.]
1985e “Some Principles for the Study of Black and White Speech in the South.” In Language Variety in the South: Perspectives in Black and White, ed. M. Montgomery and G. Bailey. Tuscaloosa: U. of Alabama Press, 38-62.
1986a "Review of L. Carrington in collaboration with D. Craig and R. Todd-Dandaré, eds.," Studies in Caribbean Language. Journal of Caribbean Education.
1986b “Me Tarzan, You Jane: Cognition, Expression and the Creole Speaker.” Journal of Linguistics 22.2:281-310.
1986c “The Need for New Approaches to Social Class Analysis in Sociolinguistics.” Language and Communication 6.3:215-21.
1986d “Riddling and Lying: Participation and Performance.” In The Fergusonian Impact, vol. 2, ed. J. A. Fishman. The Hague: Mouton, 89-106.
1986e “Note (On the Significance and Use of Documentary Pidgin-Creole Texts).” Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 1.1:159-63.
1986f “Concord and Contrast in the Characterization of the Speech Community.” In Sheffield Working Papers in Language and Linguistics 3:87-119.
1986g “Social Contact and Linguistic Diffusion: Hiberno English and New World Black English” Language 62.2: 245-89.
1987a “The Haves and Have Nots: Sociolinguistic Surveys and the Assessment of Speaker Competence.” Language in Society 16.2: 149-77.
1987b “Decreolization Paths for Guyanese Singular Pronouns.” In Pidgin and Creole Languages: Essays in Honor of John E. Reinecke, ed. G. Gilbert. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 130-38.
1987c “Are Black and White Vernaculars Diverging?” (Contribution to NWAV-XIV panel discussion of topic.) American Speech 62.1: 55-62.
1987d “Past Marking in the Mesolect: A Close Look at Bonnette.” In Variation in Language, ed. K. Denning, S. Inkelas, F. McNair-Knox and J. R. Rickford. Stanford: Department of Linguistics, 379-94.
1987e “Social Class Groupings in Sociolinguistic Research.” (Response to recent paper by L. Davis.) American Speech 62.3: 281-85.
1988a “Language Contact, Variation and Diffusion: Microlevel Community Perspectives.” In Language Spread and Public Policy: Issues, Implications, and Case Studies, ed. P. Lowenberg. Washington, DC: Georgetown U. Press, 25-44.
1988b “Sociolinguistic Research on the Caribbean.” In Sociolinguistics: An International Handbook Q the Science of Language and Society, ed. U. Ammon, N. Dittmar, K. J. Mattheier. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, vol. 2: 1313-1324.
1988c “The Evolution of Creole Languages: Real and Apparent Time Evidence.” In Linguistic Change and Contact: NWAV-XVI, ed. K. Ferrara, B. Brown, K. Walters and J. Baugh. Austin: University of Texas, 298-309.
1990a "Review of P. Trudgill, Dialects in Contact." Language in Society 19.2:268-74.
1990b “Contraction and Deletion of the Copula in Barbadian English.” (With R. Blake.) In Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (=BLS 16). Berkeley, CA; Berkeley Linguistics Society, 257-268..
1990c “Number Delimitation in Gullah: A Response to Mufwene.” American Speech 65.2:148-163.
1991a “Contemporary Source Comparison as a Critical Window on the Afro-American Linguistic Past.” In Verb Phrase Patterns in Black English and Creole, ed. W. Edwards and D. Winford. Detroit: Wayne State U Press, 302-322.
1991b “Sociolinguistic Variation in Cane Walk: A Quantitative Case Study.” In English Around The World: Sociolinguistic Perspectives, ed. J. Cheshire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 609-616.
1991c “Representativeness and Reliability of the Ex-Slave Narrative Materials, with Special Reference to Wallace Quarterman’s Tape and Transcript.” In The Emergence of Black English: Texts & Commentary, ed. G. Bailey, N. Maynor and P. Cukor-Avila. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 191-212.
1991d “Pidgins, Creoles and Language Change.” In the Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, ed. William Bright, 224-232. Oxford: Oxford U Press. [Reprinted in 2003 second edition as well; see below.]
1991e “Implicational Scaling and Critical Age Limits in Models of Linguistic Variation, Acquisition and Change.” In Cross Currents in Second Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theories, ed. C. A. Ferguson and T. Huebner. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 225-246.
1991f “Rappin on the Copula Coffin: Theoretical and Methodological Issues in the Analysis of Copula Variation in African American Vernacular English." (With A. Ball, R. Blake, R. Jackson and N. Martin.) Language Variation and Change 3.1:103-132.
1992a “Grammatical Variation and Divergence in Vernacular Black English.” In Internal and External Factors in Syntactic Change, ed. Marinel Gerritsen and Dieter Stein. Berlin and New York: Mouton, 175-200.
1992b "The Creole Residue in Barbados." In Old English and New: Studies in Language and Linguistics in Honor of Frederic G. Cassidy, ed. by Joan Hall, Nick Doane, and Dick Ringler. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 183-201.
1993a “Phonological Features in Afro-American Pidgins and Creoles and their Diachronic Significance: Comments on the Papers by Holm and Carter.” In Africanisms in Afro-American Language Varieties, ed. S. Mufwene. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 346-63.
1993b "Comments on 'Ethics, Advocacy and Empowerment'." Language and Communication 13.2:129-131.
1993c "Linguistic and Cultural Diversity as Challenge and Opportunity: American and European Perspectives." In Migration in Europe: Challenges and Opportunities, ed. by Heike Dörrenbächer, Karen Kramer, and Steve Baughman, 70-84. Berlin: Stanford Program in Berlin.
1993d “Concord and Conflict in the Speech Community.” [Revised version of Rickford 1986f “Concord and Contrast in the Characterization of the Speech Community,” prepared for the Dean's Symposium on Competition and Cooperation in the Context of the Social Sciences, University of Chicago, April 1993.]
1994 "Addressee- and Topic-Influenced Style Shift: A Quantitative Sociolinguistic Study." (With Faye McNair-Knox.) In Perspectives on Register: Situating Register Variation within Sociolinguistics, ed. by Douglas Biber and Edward Finegan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 235-76.
1995a "Syntactic Variation and Change in Progress: Loss of the Verbal Coda in Topic-Restricting As far As Constructions." Language 71.1:102-131. (With Tom Wasow, Norma Mendoza-Denton, and Juli Espinoza.)
1995b "Textual Evidence on the Nature of Early Barbadian English, 1676-1870." (With Jerome S. Handler.) Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 9.2:221-55.
1995c "Dialect Readers Revisited." (With Angela E. Rickford.) Linguistics and Education 7:107-128.
1996a "Regional and Social Variation in Language." In Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching ed. by Sandra McKay and Nancy Hornberger, 151-194. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
1996b "Negative Inversion in African American Vernacular English." (With Peter Sells and Thomas A. Wasow.) Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 14.3:591-627.
1996c "Foreword to Sociolinguistic Variation: Data, Theory and Analysis: Selected Papers from NWAV23 at Stanford."  Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information, ix-xiii.
1996d "Copula Variability in Jamaican Creole and African American Vernacular English: A Reanalysis of DeCamp's Texts." In Towards a Social Science of Language: A Festschrift for William Labov, ed. by Gregory R. Guy, John G. Baugh, Deborah Schiffrin and Crawford Feagin, 357-372. Philadelphia and Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
1996e "Language Contact and Language Generation: Pidgins and Creoles." (With John McWhorter.) In The Handbook of Sociolinguistics, ed. by Florian Coulmas, 238-256. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
1996f “Preterit had in the Narratives of African American Adolescents.” (With Christine Theberge Rafal.) American Speech. 71:227-254.
1996g "Ebonics Succeeds where Traditional Methods do not." San Jose Mercury News, December 26, 1996, page 8B.
1997a "Suite for Ebony and Phonics." Discover 18.12 (December):82-87.
1997b "Unequal Partnership: Sociolinguistics and the African American Speech Community." Language in Society. 26:161-197.
1997c "Prior Creolization of AAVE? Sociohistorical and Textual Evidence from the 17th and 18th Centuries." Journal of Sociolinguistics 1.3:315-336.
1998 "The Creole Origins of African American Vernacular English: Evidence from Copula Absence." In African American English, ed. by Salikoko S. Mufwene, John R. Rickford, Guy Bailey and John Baugh, 154-200. London: Routledge.
1999a "Using the Vernacular to Teach the Standard." In Ebonics in the Urban Education Debate, ed. by David Ramirez, Terrence Wiley, Gerda de Klerk, and Enid Lee, 23-41. Long Beach: Center for Language Minority Education and Research, California State University, Long Beach.
1999b "The Ebonics Controversy in my Backyard: A Sociolinguist's Experiences and Reflections."  Journal of Sociolinguistics 3.
1999c "Language Diversity and Academic Achievement in the Education of African American Students: An Overview of the Issues." In Language Diversity and Academic Achievement in the Education of African American Students, ed. by Carolyn Adger, Donna Christian, and Orlando Taylor. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics, in conjunction with Delta.
1999d "Variation in the JC copula: New Data and Analysis." In "Creole Genesis, Attitudes and Discourse: Studies Celebrating Charlene Sato, ed. by John R. Rickford and Suzanne Romaine, 143-156. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
1999e “Phonological and Grammatical Features of African American Vernacular English.” In African American English, by John R. Rickford, 3-14. Malden, MA, and Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
2000 “The Living Language.” Introductory essay, and Living Language notes, in the 4th edition of The American Heritage Dictionary. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
2001a “Sociolinguistics and the public: Digging and being dug in return.” American Speech 75.3:273-275.
2001b “Ebonics and Education: Lessons from the Caribbean, Europe and the USA." In Ebonics and Language Education, ed. by Clinton Crawford, 263-284. New York and London: Sankofa World Publishers.
2001c “The Ubiquity of Ebonics." American Language Review 5.2: 20-23. (With Russell J. Rickford.)
2001d "Style and Stylizing from the Perspective of a Non-Autonomous Sociolinguistics." In Style and Sociolinguistic Variation, ed. by Penelope Eckert and John R. Rickford, 220-231. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2001e "Introduction." (With Penelope Eckert.) In Style and Sociolinguistic Variation, ed. by Penelope Eckert and John R. Rickford, 1-18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2002a “Implicational Scales." In The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, ed. by James K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill & Natalie Schilling-Estes, 142-67. Oxford: Blackwell.
2002b “Linguistics, Education, and the Ebonics Firestorm.” In Round Table on Languages and Linguistics, 2000: Linguistics, Language and the Professions, ed. by James E. Alatis, Heidi E. Hamilton & Ai-Hui Tan, 25-45. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
2002c "Language mastery, cultural affirmation, and the success of African American and other students." In Proceedings of the Los Angeles Unified School District Conference on Developing a Culturally Relevant Education Program that Benefits African American and All Other Students, ed. by Floraline I. Stevens.
2003a "African American Vernacular English." In the Oxford Encyclopedia of Linguistics, second edition, Oxford University Press.
2003b "Pidgins and Creoles." In the Oxford Encyclopedia of Linguistics, second edition, Oxford University Press, ed. by William Bright, 340-344 [excluding list of pidgins and creoles added by editor].
2003c "What is Ebonics (African American Vernacular English)?" In Linguistic Society of America's Frequently Asked Questions series, at: http://www.lsadc.org/.
2004a "Introductions" to thirteen of the twenty-six chapters in Language in the USA: Themes for the Twenty-First Century, ed. by Edward Finegan and John R. Rickford. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2004b "Spoken Soul: The Beloved, Belittled Language of Black America." In Carmen Fought, ed., Sociolinguistic Variation: Critical Reflections, 198-208. New York: Oxford U Press.
2004c “African American English and other vernaculars in education: A topic-coded bibliography.” Journal of English Linguistics 32.3:230-320.
2005 "Using the Vernacular to Teach the Standard." In Ebonics in the Urban Education Debate, ed. by David Ramirez, Terrence Wiley, Gerda de Klerk, Enid Lee and Wayne E. Wright, 2nd edition, 18-40. Long Beach: Center for Language Minority Education and Research, California State University, Long Beach. [Significantly revised version of Rickford 1999a]
2006a "Down for the Count? The Creole Origins Hypothesis of AAVE at the Hands of the Ottawa Circle, and Their Supporters."  Review article on The English History of African American English, ed. by Shana Poplack. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 21.1:97-154.
2006b "Against consensus: Challenging the New Anglicists' contentions concerning the development of AAVE." In Texas Linguistic Forum 49:22-38. [= Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Symposium on Language and Society, Austin, April 15-17, 2005 ed. by Vivian Newdick et al. Austin, TX: University of Texas.]
2006c Preface to and editing of two papers by S.R. Richard Allsopp, "The Case for Afrogenesis" and "The Afrogenesis of Caribbean Creole Proverbs." Society for Caribbean Linguistics Occasional Papers Nos. 33 and 34, 3-52.
2006d “Foreword” to Rebecca S. Wheeler and Rachel Swords, Code-Switching: Teaching Standard English in Urban Classrooms, xi-xii. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
2006e “African American English: Roots and Branches.” In English and Ethnicity, ed. by Janina Brutt-Griffler and Catherine Evans Davies. Palgrave Macmillan.
2006f “African American English: Roots and Branches.” [Powerpoint with slides not included in Rickford 2006e.]
2006g "The creolist/anglicist quest for the roots and branches of AAVE." In Linda Thornburg and Janet M. Fuller, eds., Studies in Contact Linguistics: Essays in Honor of Glenn G. Gilbert, 27-43. Bern/New York: Peter Lang.
2007a “Intensive and quotative ALL: Something old, something new.” (Lead author, with Isabelle Buchstaller, Tom Wasow, and Arnold Zwicky.) American Speech 82.1:3-31.
2007b "Variation, versatility, and contrastive analysis in the classroom.” (With Angela E. Rickford.) In Sociolinguistic Variation: Theories, Methods and Applications, ed. by Robert Bayley and Ceil Lucas, 276-96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2009a "AAVE/Creole copula absence: A critique of the imperfect learning hypothesis." (With Devyani Sharma.) Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 24.1:53-92.
2009b “White Paper on African American Vernacular English [AAVE] and its Relevance to Elementary School Teachers of Reading and the Language Arts in the USA.” (With Angela E. Rickford.) For SRA/McGraw Hill in connection with the launch of their new Imagine It! readers, for which we served as language consultants.
2010a “Geographical diversity, residential segregation, and the vitality of AAVE and its speakers.” Transforming Anthropology 18.1 (special issue focusing on Languages and speakers: Confronting endangerment, seeking equality, ed. by Arthur Spears).
2010b “The sociolinguistics of a short-loved innovation: Tracing the development of quotative all across spoken and usernet data.” (With Isabelle Buchstaller, Elizabeth Closs Traugott, Thomas Wasow, and Arnold Zwicky.) Language Variation and Change 22:1-29.
2010c “From outside agitators to inside implementers: Improving the literacy education of vernacular and creole speakers.” (With Angela E. Rickford.) In Ethnolinguistic Diversity and Literacy Education, ed. by Marcia Farr and Lisya Seloni. London: Routledge.
2011a "Relativizer omission in Anglophone Caribbean Creoles, Appalachian, and African American Vernacular English."  In Language from a Cognitive Perspective: Grammar, Usage and Processing (Studies in Honor of Thomas Wasow), ed. by Emily M. Bender and Jennifer E. Arnold, 139-160. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
2011b “LePage’s theoretical and applied legacy in sociolinguistics and creole studies.” In Variation in the Caribbean, ed. by Lars Hinrichs and Joseph Farquharson. Creole Language Library. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
2011c Revised version of “The Living Language.” Introductory essay, and Living Language notes, in the 5th edition of The American Heritage Dictionary. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2011. [Revisions completed in 2009.]
2013a “Girlz II women: Age-grading, language change and stylistic variation.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 17.2:143-179.
2014

“Teaching English to Vernacular Speakers in US and Caribbean Schools.” (With Angela E. Rickford.) In Education Issues in Creole and Creole-Influenced Vernacular Contexts, ed. by Ian F. Robertson and Hazel Simmons-McDonald. Mona: University Press of the West Indies.
2014a "Situation: Stylistic Variation in Sociolinguistic Corpora and Theory." Language and Linguistics Compass 8/11 (2014): 590-603.
2014b "An Early Study of the Speech of Young Black Children in California: Why it Matters." American Speech 89.2:121-142.
2015a "The Creole Origins Hypothesis." Chapter 2 in The Oxford Handbook of African American Language, ed. by Sonja Lanehart. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2015b "African American Vernacular English in California: Over Four Decades of Vibrant Variationist Research." Chapter 15 in The Oxford Handbook of African American Language, ed. by Sonja Lanehart. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2016 "Foreword" to Robert Lawson and Dave Sayers, Sociolinguistic Research: Application and Impact. New York, NY: Routledge.
2016 "Language and linguistics on trial: Hearing Rachel Jeantel (and other vernacular speakers) in the courtroom and beyond." Language 92.4:948-988
In prep. a “Sentence Processing, Sociolinguistic Variation, and the Independence of Social and Linguistic Constraints.”
In prep. b “Age-Grading, Language Change, and Stylistic Variation.” (Submitted to a journal for review, and possible publication)
In prep. c “Sociolinguistic Lessons in A Lesson Before Dying.” (With Lisa Young.)