Language beliefs, attitudes, opinions and choices: The case of self-identified bi-dialectal African-American undergraduates

A common notion in research and world experience is that a bi-dialectal speaker of any language will automatically and simultaneously deal with various advantages and disadvantages of bi-dialectalism. This is also true of African-American bi-dialectal speakers of English. These speakers of African American English (AAE) and the Standard American English (SAE) are sometimes favorably considered as having the best of two worlds and often times criticized as not being true to one form of English. There are many sociolinguistic factors, such as the milieu of speech and intended audience, that will be expected to affect the choice of dialect for these speakers. There has been very little research, indeed if any, to determine the beliefs and choices of these speakers about their own bi-dialectal proficiency, especially those of undergraduate African American students.;The examination of the general beliefs about African American bi-dialectalism and the speakers' intuitions (and dialect choices when given particular speech contexts) of thirty-two students in two universities in the Southern part of the United States of America is the focus of this study. Using various instrumentation methods, the study randomly selected speakers from both a historically black college and a non-historically black college. The study was able to identify and match the language beliefs, attitudes, and choice of African American Undergraduates, first with the public opinion (as presented in the literature) and then with specific speech situations. This was done by the adoption of a neoteric theoretical framework, Standpoint theory, from the field of Women Studies. This framework allowed the study to generate its findings primarily from the participants' perspectives.;The study achieved four specific objectives. First is the identification of the general beliefs and attitudes within American society about the language use of African American speakers. The second objective is the establishment of some of the various forms of beliefs and attitudes of bi-dialectal African Americans about AAE, AAE use, and SAE. The third is the comparison of these two sets of beliefs and attitudes and the Illustration of the similarities and differences. The final objective is the examination, from the speakers' perspectives, of the various factors that affect the choice and use of language among bi-dialectal African-American undergraduates, especially in certain speech situations.