How Will the Oxford Dictionary of African American English Work?

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, 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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. 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

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 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 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 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 with houstaforks dot com and is produced by Tyler Klang.

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