How Will the Oxford Dictionary of African American English Work?

A team of experts has come together to create a scholarly work that's long overdue: a dictionary detailing the historical and modern use of African American English. Learn more in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://people.howstuffworks.com/oxford-dictionary-african-american-english.htm

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogelbaum here. Oxford University Press is the publisher that
compiles the Oxford English Dictionary. This reference work not only
updates is new words and meanings and to our lexicon.
For example, their word of the Year for twenty twenty

(00:23):
two was goblin mode, but it's also a historical guide
to how our language has developed over the past millennia
or so. And now they are teaming up with the
Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard
University for a new project creating the Oxford Dictionary of
African American English. It's being spearheaded by the Hutchins Center's director,

(00:48):
Henry Lewis Gates Junior. He's known for lots of stuff
helping people explore their ancestry, writing books, and hosting documentaries,
among other things, and he's already served as the co
editor of the Dictionary of African Biography. But this current
project is a scholarly initiative meant to be, to quote
Oxford's website, the definitive reference for information about the meaning, pronunciation, spelling, usage,

(01:13):
and history of African American English words entries in the work.
In addition to the words, their definitions and pronunciations will
include usage examples, serving to quote acknowledge the contributions of
African American writers, thinkers, and artists, as well as everyday
African Americans to the evolution of the US English lexicon

(01:34):
and the English lexicon as a whole. Perhaps the most
exciting part of the project is that the editors are
asking the public to submit words and ideas. It's planned
to be a three year project. It got off the
ground in twenty twenty two and is slated for publication
in twenty twenty five. Gates actually approached the Oxford University

(01:56):
Press about creating the dictionary after he proposed the idea.
The project received grant funding from the Melon and Wagner
Foundations for the article. This episode is based on hosta
Fork spoke with Jennifer K. Nhin Miller, the executive editor
of the Oxford Dictionary of African American English at Oxford
University Press. As she said, the pieces have fallen into

(02:19):
place nicely. Our advisory board is made up of some
of the top scholars in the fields of linguistics, African
American studies, and African American History studies. The team of
editors at Oxford University Press is working in collaboration with
Gates and the Advisory Board to provide a portrait of
how language is and was used by the various communities,

(02:40):
emphasizing celebrating and documenting Black history and giving credit where
credit is due. Gates explained in a press release, every
speaker of American English borrows heavily from words invented by
African Americans, whether they know it or not. A words
with African origins such as gouber, gumbo, and okra survived
the passage along with our African ancestors, and words that

(03:03):
we take for granted today such as cool and crib,
pocum and dis hip and hep bad meaning good, and
dig meaning to understand. These are just a tiny fraction
of the words that have come into American English from
African American speakers, neologisms that emerge out of the Black
experience in this country over the last few hundred years.

(03:27):
This new work will join other dictionaries of varieties of English,
but like Oxford's own Australian Oxford Dictionary or the Dictionary
of Southern Appalachian English from the University of North Carolina Press,
for which hine Miller was a co editor. Oxford also
has a division of World Englishes, which they define as
a localized or indigenized varieties of English spoken throughout the

(03:48):
world by people of diverse cultural backgrounds in a wide
range of sociolinguistic contexts. Including words from various world englishes
has been an Oxford practice eighteen eighty four, when the
first Oeed included the Tagalog word abaca, a banana plant
or its fiber gets native to the Philippines. Today, there

(04:09):
are resources for words from Australian to Ugandan English, with
many in between, and several others coming soon. But the
Oxford Dictionary of African American English will be even broader
in scope. Each inclusion will have the typical format of
a dictionary entry and include real life examples from various
types of sources to give as complete a picture as possible.

(04:32):
There will be pronunciation guides which may include different regional
pronunciations as well as audiophiles, and the online version. Oh
when possible. The entries will have etymological notes too. Heine
Miller said, in the instances where we can trace that history,
I think it's important. We want to give a well
rounded sketch of the language variety, both in historic and

(04:54):
contemporary usage. From a descriptive perspective. There will also be
crossover with other dictionaries, so if a word makes it
into the Oxford Dictionary of African American English, it could
likely appear in the regular OEED as well, either as
a dedicated entry or a new sense of an existing entry.
While the dictionary is intended as a scholarly resource of

(05:15):
value to researchers and members of the speech community, the
editors want it to be equally usable by the general public.
To achieve the aims of accessibility and applicability, the editors
are looking to the public for suggestions. Anyone who has
an idea for a word or phrase to include can
submit it through a form on the OED's website. If

(05:36):
you google the Oxford Dictionary of African American English, it'll
pop right up. This sort of public input is a
tradition that goes back to the early days of the
OED in the eighteen hundreds. Hein Miller said it was
very much a community project. We really find that's one
of the best ways to get ideas of terms. How
the terms are used in natural speech and their significance

(05:58):
within the communities. Everyone is so passionate about this project,
we can't wait to release it to the public. Today's
episode is based on the article new Oxford Dictionary will
document African American English lexicon on houstaforks dot com, written
by Kerry Whitney. Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership

(06:20):
with houstaforks dot com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.