The Language of Professional Blackness

This supplement addresses "the need for a study of African American Language that de-essentializes the African American community and studies the ways in which the African American community is heterogeneous," as Jessica A. Grieser, the supplement editor, writes in the introduction. The supplement also examines middle- and upper-class African Americans in Anacostia, Washington, D.C.—a gentrifying neighborhood where class- and race-based identities must be negotiated—"via interviews with several of its long-term residents, using their talk about their history and the change in the neighborhood to unearth evidence for the social meaning of features of African American Language as they relate to identities of race, place, and especially class."

Contributor: Jessica A. Grieser