John Baugh is the Margaret Cush Wilson Professor in Psychology, Anthropology, Education, English, Linguistics, and African and African-American Studies. He researches the social stratification of linguistic behavior in multicultural and multilingual nations, drawing extensively on related work in the fields of anthropology, ethnography, linguistics, and sociology.

This presentation examines some of the linguistic consequences of the African slave trade, with primary attention to sociolinguistic circumstances in the United States. Dimensions of linguistic racism will be introduced, thereby revealing some similarities and differences between African American linguistic experiences and those of other indigenous and immigrant groups whose speakers have been criticized for what Ana Celia Zentella has identified as “TWB” (i.e. Talking while bilingual). Three areas of intellectual inquiry will be shared: linguistic evidence, corresponding educational policies and their limitations, and brief illustrations of ways in which linguistic research has had legal relevance.