This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Pragmatic Language of AfricanAmerican Children andAdolescentsA Systematic Synthesis of theLiterature
Yvette D. Hyter, Kenyatta O. Rivers,and Glenda DeJarnette
Purpose: A systematic review and synthesis was performed on published articles and disser-tations produced between 1970 and 2013 that focused on selected pragmatic language behav-iors of African American children and adolescents. Methods: Electronic databases and handsearches of articles located in the databases were used to identify the published articles anddissertations. Each article or dissertation was reviewed by at least 2 of the authors to determinewhether it met the criteria for inclusion in this study. Selected observations of the documentsthat met criteria for inclusion were recorded on the Primary Research Appraisal Tool (PRAT;DeJarnette, Hyter, & Rivers, 2012), a data gathering and analysis framework developed by theauthors specifically for this systematic synthesis. Results: The literature search resulted in 92 re-search articles and dissertations, 37 of which were eliminated because they did not meet all of theinclusion criteria. The documents that met our inclusion criteria focused primarily on the struc-ture and/or content of narrative discourse rather than speech acts, other forms of discourse (e.g.,conversation, expository), and presupposition/perspective taking skills. Six major themes identi-fied in the major findings are used to summarize studies reviewed for this systematic synthesis.Conclusions: We (a) explain the current state of knowledge about African American pragmaticlanguage behaviors, (b) explain major findings and implications of the extant literature in this topi-cal area and how it may inform speech–language pathology practice, and (c) identify directions forfuture research on pragmatic language of African American children and adolescents. Key words:African American, communication functions, discourse, pragmatic language, presupposition,speech acts, systematic review and synthesis, theory of mind
Author Affiliations: Department of SpeechPathology and Audiology, Western MichiganUniversity, Kalamazoo (Dr Hyter); Department ofCommunication Sciences and Disorders, Universityof Central Florida, Orlando (Dr Rivers); andDepartment of Communication Disorders,Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven(Dr DeJarnette).
Yvette D. Hyter and Kenyatta O. Rivers have no finan-cial or nonfinancial relationships to disclose. GlendaDeJarnette discloses that she has received a facultyresearch grant from the Connecticut State UniversityAmerican Association of University Professors.
PRAGMATICS is an area of internationalinterest (Archer, Aijmer, & Wich-
mann, 2012), which is studied in various
Supplemental digital content is available for this ar-ticle. Direct URL citation appears in the printed textand is provided in the HTML and PDF versions ofthis article on the journal’s Web site (www.topicsinlanguagedisorders.com).
Corresponding Author: Yvette D. Hyter, PhD, CCC-SLP, Western Michigan University, 1903 W. MichiganAve, Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5355 ([email protected] and [email protected]).
disciplines, including speech–languagepathology, anthropology, linguistics, neu-roscience, philosophy of language, andsociology (Huang, 2012; Perkins, 2007; Xie& House, 2009). Scholars in each of thesedisciplines approach pragmatics from adifferent theoretical framework, resultingin varied conceptualizations of pragmatics.In general, however, pragmatics can bedescribed as a vast content area that consti-tutes a component of social communication(Adams, Baxendale, Lloyd, & Aldred, 2005;Coggins, Timler, & Olswang, 2007; Hyter,2007; Olswang, Coggins, & Timler, 2001).
According to Coggins et al. (2007), socialcommunication is the ability to use languageeffectively to influence others and to inter-pret situations. Social communication is notonly supported by pragmatics but also by so-cial cognitive skills and executive functioning(EF; Olswang et al., 2001; Timler, 2008), affectregulation (the reciprocal element of EF), andworking memory, which serves as the glueholding the other components of social com-munication together (Hyter, 2012; Hyter &Sloane, 2013). Perkins (2007) stressed the im-portance of approaches to pragmatics focus-ing, not only on the behaviors of individuals,but also on “underlying factors” (e.g., social–cultural, cognitive, and contextual) that moti-vate those behaviors (p. 32).
We use a holistic definition of pragmaticsin this article. This holistic definition is whatHuang (2012, p. 8) calls a “continental view.”It includes linguistic, nonlinguistic, and cog-nitive aspects of communication, as well asmacrolevel contexts (e.g., community, eco-logical, global, economic, political, or ideo-logical environments) that influence commu-nicative behaviors (Hyter, 2007, 2014; vanWormer & Besthorn, 2010).
Linguistic aspects of pragmatics refer tothe use of language to (1) communicate and(2) produce and regulate discourse in waysthat are effective on the basis of the require-ments of the communicative endeavor (deVilliers, 2004). This aspect of pragmatics in-cludes three components, the first of whichis speech acts or the communication of in-tentions (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969). The sec-
ond component is the regulation and struc-ture of discourse (such as conversation, oraland written narratives, expository, and class-room discourse), which includes turn takingand repair strategies (Spinelli & Ripich, 1985;Stockman, Karasinski, & Guillory, 2008). Thethird component of pragmatics is presuppo-sition. It refers to making inferences aboutwhat communication partners know, and itincludes register switching, dialect shifts, andcode switching (Atlas, 2004; Roth & Spekman,1984a, 1984b). Presupposition also requiressocial cognitive skills, such as perspective tak-ing and theory of mind (Bates, 1976a, 1976b;de Villiers, 2004; Prutting & Kirchner, 1987).
Nonlinguistic aspects of pragmatics pro-vide a bridge between language and con-text in that gestures and body movements,facial expressions, and prosody provide in-formation about a communicator’s intentions(Bates, 1976a, 1976b; Kelly, 2001). Theseserve to facilitate the communication part-ner’s comprehension (Goldin-Meadow, 1999;McNeill, 1996, 2005). Cognitive aspects ofpragmatics focus on the cognitive skills (e.g.,implicature, inference or intention reading,perspective taking, and theory of mind)needed to interpret and comprehend what issaid in a given context (Bara, 2010; Perkins,2007; Schmid, 2012; Sperber & Wilson, 2002,2005). One’s social cultural history and in-fluences make up the macrolevel contextsfor communicative practices, as well as de-termine the roles or status of interlocutors(Hyter, 2007; Rivers, Hyter, & DeJarnette,2012; Sperber & Wilson, 2002, 2005).
Pragmatic language is important for everyaspect of human interaction. It is importantfor communicating effectively in diversesituational contexts (Levinson, 1983), aswell as with a range of communicationpartners (Hyter, 2007). As an aspect ofsocial communication (Hyter, 2012; Olswanget al., 2001), pragmatics plays a role in helpingcommunicators to see the world from others’perspectives (Epley & Caruso, 2009) and toregulate social interaction (Weiner & Schnei-der, 2002). Positive social interactions facili-tate prosocial behaviors, such as developingand maintaining interpersonal relationships
10 TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY–MARCH 2015
(Brinton, Robinson, & Fujiki, 2004). In addi-tion, pragmatics helps communicators makesense of social cues (Weiner, 2004) and canplay a role in academic outcomes (Boudreau,2008; Donahue, 1985; Eder, 1982; O’Neill,2014). Presupposition and inferring others’intentions, both components of pragmaticlanguage, facilitate comprehension of oraland written discourse, as well as figura-tive language (Troia, 2011). Multiple areasof cognition support pragmatic language(Hyter, 2012; Olswang et al., 2001; Perkins,2007), and cognitive impairments can affectpragmatic functioning (Perkins, 2007).
In addition, cultural practices are man-ifested through pragmatics (Hyter, 2007;Rivers et al., 2012). Culture can be definedas the assumptions, values, belief systems,and worldviews that guide daily practice ofgroups of people with a shared history ofproblem solving (Lustig & Koester, 2012;Ting-Toomey, 1999). It is an essential gen-erator of pragmatic language, as culturedetermines how one interprets the contextsin which communicative interactions occur,how one changes his or her own behavior onthe basis of his or her interpretation of thecommunicative context, and how one com-municates using linguistic, paralinguistic, andnonlinguistic communicative behaviors (seeDeJarnette, Rivers, & Hyter, 2015). Linguisticculture, which includes the attitudes, beliefs,and assumptions that groups of people haveabout their own group’s and other groups’ways of using language (Schiffman, 1996),also influences beliefs and perceptions oflanguage variations.
Pragmatic elements play a crucial rolein the daily lives of all communicators.This factor motivates our advocacy formore focused study of pragmatic languagebehaviors of African American children andadolescents. Although the language devel-opment of African American children andadolescents has been the focus of researchfor decades, at least since the late 1960s, mostresearch has concentrated on the structure(phonology, morphology, and syntax) andmeaning (semantics) of African AmericanEnglish (AAE; e.g., the work of Craig &
Washington, 1994, 1995, 2002; Dandy, 1991;Green, 2002, 2003; Newkirk-Turner, Oetting,& Stockman, 2014; Oetting et al., 2010;Roy, Oetting, & Moland, 2013; Seymour &Roeper, 1999; Smitherman, 1994; Stockman,2010; Stockman, Guillory, Seibert, & Boult,2013; Stockman & Vaughn-Cook, 1992; VanHofwegen & Wolfram, 2010). In contrast,there has been limited research regarding thepragmatic components of AAE.
One reason for this may be that, to date,there has not been a unifying frameworkfor examining the pragmatic language ofAfrican American children and adolescents(DeJarnette et al., 2015; Hwa-Froelich, Kasam-bira, & Moleski, 2007; Rivers et al., 2012). As aconsequence, much of the published researchon this population consists of small data sets(Hwa-Froelich et al., 2007), using inconsis-tent coding systems that might not reveal rel-evant pragmatic features (DeJarnette et al.,2015), and anecdotal accounts of languageuse (Battle, 1996; Bliss & McCabe, 2006, 2008;Collins, 1985; Gee, 1989a; Wyatt, 1995).
Knowledge of African American pragmaticlanguage is particularly important for speech–language pathologists and educators, becausemany African American children and adoles-cents may exhibit pragmatic language behav-iors that are culturally unique or differentthan their Euro American (EA) counterparts(Bliss & McCabe, 2008; DeJarnette et al., 2015;Hwa-Froelich, Kasambira, & Moleski, 2007;Rivers et al., 2012). Unfortunately, in this 21stcentury, the pragmatic language of AfricanAmerican children and adolescents is still notcompletely understood (Green, 2002; Riverset al., 2012). Such problems can be associ-ated with both over- and under-referrals forspeech–language services, as well as negativeperceptions of the communicative abilities ofAfrican American children and adolescents(Hwa-Froelich et al., 2004; Kramer, Rivers, &Ratusnik, 2000; Rivers et al., 2012).
Based on our concerns about gaps in theknowledge base regarding the pragmatic lan-guage of African American children and ado-lescents, we decided to conduct a systematicand synthesized review of the literature sothat clinicians, educators, and others will
Pragmatic Language of African American Children 11
be better equipped to distinguish languagedifferences and language disorders in class-rooms and other settings. We are aware ofno previous systematic and synthesized re-views of the literature on this topic. A searchof the Cochrane Collaboration systematic re-view database in August 2014 did not revealany published systematic reviews or meta-analyses on the pragmatic language of AfricanAmerican children and adolescents. Baker andMcLeod (2011) discussed the importance ofincorporating the methodological rigor andtransparency of systematic reviews with thecomprehensive coverage offered by narrativereviews or syntheses. That was our goal.
Accordingly, the purpose of this articlewas to review and synthesize peer-reviewedarticles and dissertations produced between1970 and 2013 regarding the pragmatic lan-guage of African American children and ado-lescents. The two-part goal was (1) to identifyliterature that has contributed to the knowl-edge base regarding pragmatic language ofAfrican American children and adolescentsand (2) to describe information that emergedfrom this literature that might inform practiceand future research in this area.
METHODS
A modified systematic review method wasused for including and excluding articles anddissertations and for extracting and codingdata from each of the included documents sothat they could be synthesized. Although typi-cal systematic reviews of the literature includeonly peer-reviewed articles published in jour-nals, we decided to include dissertations asviable data because we wanted to include anyempirical studies that could illuminate this un-derresearched topic.
Selecting primary research
Defining the time period
Although the concept of pragmatics datesback to the 1930s (Archer et al., 2012; Huang,2007; Morris, 1938), much of the seminalwork in the area of pragmatic language in
speech–language pathology emerged duringthe late 1960s, throughout the 1970s, and intothe 1980s (e.g., Austin, 1962; Bates, 1976a,1976b; Prutting & Kirchner, 1983, 1987;Searle, 1969; Wetherby & Prutting, 1984).In the 1970s, the field of speech–languagepathology was in the midst of a paradigmshift from a focus on language structure andmeaning to an increasing focus on languagefunctions. Consequently, the timeframe forthe literature search for this study was set tostart at 1970, because much of the 43-year pe-riod between 1970 and 2013 (i.e., from 1975to 2000) is what Duchan (2011) referred toas the “pragmatic revolution” in the field ofspeech–language pathology. This is the pe-riod when the cultural and situational con-texts of communication and language devel-opment began to be explored more regularlyin research investigations and discussions.
The literature search
An extensive search of the extant litera-ture produced between 1970 and 2013 wasconducted using five electronic databases andeight journals. The databases were SCOPUS,EBSCOhost, ProQuest, Google Scholar, andDissertation Abstracts, each of which in-cluded multiple titles. In SCOPUS, wesearched the health sciences, social sciences,and humanities subject areas, which includedmore than 12,000 titles. In EBSCOhost, wesearched the education, health and medicine,literature and criticism, philosophy, psychol-ogy, and social sciences categories. In Pro-Quest, we searched the general database,which includes 53 ProQuest databases, alongwith the literature collections, political sci-ences, which included more than 150 titlesfrom scholarly journals, and social sciences,which had more than 1,600 scholarly jour-nals. These databases were selected becauseof their expansive reach across scholarly dis-ciplines and their likelihood of containingstudies on the pragmatic language abilities ofAfrican American children and adolescents.
Beyond these databases, journals exam-ined were the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology; Language, Speech, and
12 TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY–MARCH 2015
Hearing Services in Schools; Journal ofSpeech, Language, and Hearing Research;Journal of Black Studies; Topics in Lan-guage Disorders; Communication DisordersQuarterly; ECHO (the publication of the Na-tional Black Association of Speech-Languageand Hearing); and the Journal of Pragmatics.It should be noted that although the exten-sive search was conducted through 2013, noadditional studies have appeared in the extantliterature for 2014, as the authors conducted a“good faith measure” search of the literature,dissertation abstracts, and Cochran Collabora-tion database in August 2014.
Selected key words used to guide theliterature search were based on the waywe conceptualized pragmatics. These words,employed individually and in combination,were “African American,” “Black,” “dialectshifting,” “discourse,” “discourse regulation,”“intention reading,” “intentions,” “narrative,”“conversation,” “turn taking,” “repair,” “ex-pository,” “communication functions,” “com-munication intentions,” “persons of color,”“perspective taking,” “pragmatics,” “presup-position,” “theory of mind,” “social cogni-tion,” “social communication,” and “speechacts.” In addition to our search of the elec-tronic databases, a hand search of the refer-ences in the obtained articles was also con-ducted. Also, during five presentations aboutthis content area (at national conferences ofthe American Speech-Language-Hearing Asso-ciation (Hyter, Rivers, & DeJarnette, 2010b,2012b) and the National Black Association forSpeech-Language-Hearing [NBASLH] (Hyter,Rivers, & DeJarnette, 2010a, 2012a, 2013), theauthors polled audience members who iden-tified additional published literature that wasconsidered for this review.
Inclusion and exclusion criteria
Inclusion criteria for this study were peer-reviewed, data-based articles and dissertationsthat (1) were published or conducted, respec-tively, during or after 1970 and (2) whose par-ticipant pool included at least 30% AfricanAmerican children or adolescents. We se-lected 30% as the cutoff number for African
American participants, because we wantedto make sure we did not exclude studiesthat identified relevant outcomes for AfricanAmerican children and adolescents althoughthey may have included other ethnic andracial groups in the participant pool. Confer-ence presentations, book chapters, and mas-ter’s theses were excluded from these data aswere articles that were published in languagesother than English and that included popula-tions located outside of the United States.
Data coding and analysis
The authors developed a tool, the PrimaryResearch Appraisal Tool (PRAT; DeJarnette,Hyter, & Rivers, 2012; see SupplementalDigital Content, available at: http://links.lww.com/TLD/A40), which served as a frame-work for organizing our observations of thedata. Each article and dissertation examinedin this study was coded using the PRAT.Coding consisted of reviewing each articleand dissertation and then marking “yes” or“no” to indicate the presence or absence ofa particular component. We wrote in eacharticle and dissertation’s research question(s)and/or purpose, method of data collection,findings, and implications of those findingsin the appropriate sections at the end of thePRAT.
Coding reliability was established in fourphases. First, each of the authors coded twoarticles in the data set. This was followed bya discussion about our coding decisions, sowe could calibrate our coding responses. Sec-ond, each author coded one-third (i.e., 30–31 of 92) of the articles and dissertations inthe data set. This second round of coding wasused to determine which articles matched theinclusion criteria and which ones did not.Third, after eliminating articles that did notmatch the inclusion criteria, the first authorrecoded 100% of the remaining articles us-ing calibration standards set in the first phase.Fourth, a random sampling of 10% of the arti-cles in the data set was reviewed and indepen-dently coded by each of the coauthors usingthe PRAT. The total number of agreements ofeach item on the PRAT was divided by the
Pragmatic Language of African American Children 13
total number of agreement opportunities1 toacquire an interrater agreement of 84%.
To achieve the second, more qualitativegoal of this systematic synthesis, we used aninductive thematic analysis approach to de-termine themes that emerged from purposestatements, major findings, and implicationsof research findings presented in the cor-pus (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Elo & Kyngas,2008; Harwood & Garry, 2003; Neuman,2006; Punch, 2014). First, research purposestatements were extracted from each arti-cle and dissertation and listed in a worddocument. Next, the “manifest” (i.e., overtlystated) content of each statement was identi-fied (Elo & Kyngas, 2008, p. 109). In otherwords, in the process of coding the state-ments, the coder is asking, “What is thispurpose statement about?” (Braun & Clarke,2006; Dey, 1993). Third, the manifest contentextracted from each purpose statement wasassigned a code. Codes described the basicunit of meaning inherent in the manifest con-tent of the research question (Braun & Clark,2006). Finally, themes were constructed fromthe codes. Themes comprise collections ofcodes, and they represent the core meaninginherent within the codes (Braun & Clarke,2006; Clarke & Braun, 2013; Neuman, 2006;Punch, 2014).
RESULTS
Search of the literature
The initial literature search yielded 92articles and dissertations published between1970 and 2013 that focused on some aspectof pragmatic language and reported at least30% of the participant pool as being childrenand/or adolescents who are African Ameri-can. Of these 92 articles and dissertations, 37were eliminated because they did not meet all
1Opportunities for agreement included written com-ments as well as checked boxes; thus, for each rater, atotal of 294 responses were examined for level of agree-ment with all other raters.
of the inclusion criteria. Specifically, 16 of thearticles were theoretical or a review of theliterature rather than a designed study (Ball,2002; Barnitz, 1994; Battle, 1996; Bliss &McCabe, 2006, 2008; Collins, 1985; deVilliars,2004; Gee, 1989a; Gutierrez-Clellen & Quinn,1993; Hyter, 2007; Johnson, 1995; McCabe,1997; Nichols, 1989; Stadler & Ward, 2005;Washington, 2001; Wyatt, 1995). One doc-ument (Hester & Langdon, 2008) was a pre-sentation rather than an article; two (Finger,2007; Renn, 2007) were a master’s thesisrather than a dissertation, and four (Craig &Washington, 1994, 1995, 2002; Robinson,1992) focused on language structure ratherthan language use, although discoursewas used to collect the samples for thesestudies.
Ten documents either did not meet the 30%criteria of African American participants ordid not provide sufficient information to de-termine whether 30% of the subjects wereAfrican American (Fuste-Hermann, Silliman,Bahr, Fasnacht, & Federico, 2006; Heath,1982; Heilmann, Miller, & Nockerts, 2010;Hill & Coufal, 2005; Howes, Sanders, & Lee,2008; Hyter, 2003; Hyter, Rogers-Adkinson,Self, Friederich-Simmons, & Jantz, 2001; Lee,2006; McCabe & Rosenthal Rollins, 1994;Michaels, 1981); one (Myers, Rana, & Harris,1979) was an annotated bibliography ratherthan a peer-reviewed article or dissertation;one (Labov & Waletzky, 1967) was publishedbefore 1970; and two focused on a collegelevel or adult population (Norment, 1995; Sz-para & Wylie, 2007). The final corpus of 55documents comprised 39 (71%) articles and16 (29%) dissertations. Table 1 summarizesthe key findings for these 55 investigations.
Research purposes
Of the 55 articles and dissertations re-viewed, 36 (65%) included key research ques-tions, but 100% of the documents included apurpose statement. The reasons scholars pro-vided for investigating the pragmatic languageof African American children, and adolescentscan be divided both thematically and tempo-rally into four groups.
Pragmatic Language of African American Children 33
The first purpose group was identified pri-marily among studies conducted in the 1980s.That was an era in which researchers focusedon examining and legitimizing African Amer-ican pragmatic language by examining com-municative functions and describing speechevents that were unique to African Americancommunities (e.g., Blake, 1984; Bridgeforth,1988; Goodwin, 1980).
The second purpose group was identifiedin research that spanned the 1980s and the1990s. At that point, the focus was on iden-tifying whether differences in language use,such as code switching or turn taking, existedfor African American children on the basis oftheir socioeconomic status (SES) and dialectdensity (e.g., Craig & Washington, 1986; Etter-Lewis, 1985; Peters, 1983).
The third purpose group is the largest one.It consists of research that was primarily con-ducted in the 1990s and the 2000s. It is akinto what one might call a narrative explo-sion, a time period when researchers werefocusing on various aspects of narrative de-velopment including production, style, con-tent, macro-organizational structures, and co-hesion (e.g., Bloome et al., 2003; Champion,1995; Champion et al., 1995; Curenton et al.,2008; Curenton & Justice, 2004; Garrett,1996; Hyon & Sulzby, 1994; Hyter, 1994).
The fourth purpose group is the smallest.It overlaps temporally with the third. Thisgroup consists of research that can be char-acterized as being focused on linking diverseforms of discourse with literacy and socialcompetence by examining discourse and AAEuse in relation to cognition, literacy, writ-ing, and assessment with typically developingand language- and/or reading-impaired popu-lations (e.g., Ball, 1996; Craig, Zhang, Hensel,& Quinn, 2009; Curenton, 2004; Nelson,2010; Pena et al., 2006).
Major constructs of pragmaticsinvestigated and overlooked
Of the 55 articles and dissertations thatwere examined, the majority focused onnarrative discourse. Specifically, 40 (73%)of the 55 articles and dissertations fo-cused on some form of discourse, six (11%)
focused on speech acts, and nine (16%) fo-cused on presupposition. Of the 40 articlesand dissertations that focused on discourse,five (12.5%) were about conversational dis-course, 31 (74%) about narrative discourse,and two (5%) were about expository dis-course. Two (5%) other articles were aboutother forms of discourse—disputes and playinteractions. Of the nine documents that fo-cused on presupposition, the majority (seven[78%]) addressed dialect shifting or codeswitching, and the other two (22%) focusedon Theory of Mind or emotional inferencingin relationship to narratives.
These data show that a disproportionatenumber of articles and dissertations werefocused on narrative discourse. This canmost likely be explained by a correspondingfocus on the relationship of narrative dis-course to the development of emergent andlater literacy skills (Connor & Craig, 2006; Paul& Smith, 1993; Peterson & McCabe, 1992;Zevenbergen, 1996). Research has shown thatrecalling, retelling, and generating narrativesserve as a link between oral and literate lan-guage use (Botting, 2002; Curenton & Jus-tice, 2004; Heath, 1982), support the devel-opment of word meanings and relationships(Biemiller, 2006; Nagy, Herman, & Anderson,1985), and are associated with increasinglycomplex syntax (Hoffman, Norris, & Monjure,1996; Justice et al., 2006; Reilly, Losh, Bellugi,& Wulfeck, 2004). Narratives also engage so-cial cognitive skills, such as theory of mind(Guajardo & Watson, 2002).
Narratives are important, but they are notthe only form of discourse that is critical tosuccess in school. Beginning in Grades 3 andhigher, expository texts become a part of achild’s everyday life through the language de-mands of the school curriculum (Westby, Cu-latta, Lawrence, & Hall-Kenyon, 2010). Expos-itory text is the currency used in most mid-dle school and high school courses outside ofthe language arts courses (Westby & Culatta,2010). An increased focus on typical and im-paired expository text skills in African Amer-ican children and ways to support success inthe academic arena are an area sorely lackingin literature regarding the pragmatic language
34 TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY–MARCH 2015
of African American children and adolescents,which was highlighted in this systematicreview.
Another area where there is limited re-search is in the cognitive supports for prag-matic language, such as theory of mind andperspective taking. Only two articles (i.e.,Curenton, 2004; Ford & Milosky, 2008) wereidentified through our systematic review pro-cess that examined theory of mind and emo-tional inferencing abilities in African Ameri-can children. Theory of mind is an importantsocial cognitive skill that supports a child’sability to take the perspectives of others, in-fer mental and emotional states of others,understand why people may do what theydo, and to understand how their own be-havior may affect others (Timler, Olswang, &Coggins, 2005; Westby & Robinson, 2014).
Sampling size and study participants
Studies that comprised the final corpus in-cluded a range of numbers of participants,from 2 (Gee, 1989b) to 617 (Terry et al.,2010). Study participants were varied and in-cluded male and female participants of differ-ent age ranges (infants and toddlers [7% of thestudies], preschoolers [36%] and/or schoolage [62%]); and ability levels (typical [87%]and impaired [16%] in language or reading de-velopment). In addition, the studies examinedpragmatic language of children and adoles-cents from low (44%), middle (27%), and/orhigh (3.6%) SES, with the majority being lowincome.
Research design
Eight of the 55 studies that comprised thecorpus for this article incorporated more thanone type of research design. The majority(N = 34 [62%]) used nonexperimental de-scriptive designs. Others used preexperimen-tal designs2 (N = 9 [16%]) to test hypothe-ses regarding the effect of independent vari-
2Sources for the types and definitions of research designsused in this study are from Leedy and Ormrod, 2013, andMaxwell and Satake, 2006.
ables on dependent variables but without ran-domization and control. A small group em-ployed ex post facto designs (N = 6 [11%]; “af-ter the fact” or retrospective examination ofcausal relationships where independent vari-ables are observed rather than manipulated).Two researchers used quasi-experimental de-signs (N = 2 [3.6%]; nonrandomized designswith controls but where not all confoundingvariables are controlled). A few used true ex-perimental designs (N = 6 [11%]; i.e., random-ized designs where a hypothesis is tested bycontrolled experimentation to show relation-ships between independent and dependentvariables), factorial designs (N = 2 [3.6%]; i.e.,randomized designs that allow examination ofthe effects of multiple independent variableson the dependent variable), and ethnographicdesigns (N = 2 [3.6%]; i.e., systematic quali-tative studies involving rigorous observationand description of phenomena).
An examination of the types of research de-signs produced per decade covered in thisstudy shows that nonexperimental designshave been used throughout the 43-year pe-riod. In the 1990s, ethnographic, preexper-imental, ex post facto and factorial designsbegan to be used. Quasi-experimental studiesoccurred beginning in the 2000s, and true ex-perimental studies emerged in the years 2000through 2013. It appears that research de-signs associated with higher levels of evidence(quasi-experimental, true experimental, facto-rial) are beginning to be used more recentlyin studies examining pragmatic language ofAfrican American children.
Data-gathering procedures
Thirty-one different data-gathering methodswere used within the articles and disserta-tions reviewed for this study (see Table 1for data-gathering procedures implemented ineach of the documents in the corpus). Consis-tent with the topical focus of the articles anddissertations, the majority of methods usedwere elicited oral or written narratives us-ing a variety of approaches including Con-versational Mapping, story generation withwordless picture books such as Frog WhereAre You (Mayer, 1969), story prompts, story
Pragmatic Language of African American Children 35
retells with wordless books or movies, andpicture-elicited narratives.
Major research findings andimplications
We identified five common themes in thefindings of the reviewed studies. These aresummarized in Table 1 and discussed below.Many of the 55 articles that comprised the cor-pus for this study addressed several themes.
Methodological considerations
The findings of 11 studies incorporatedmethodological issues that should be consid-ered when collecting data, assessing, and/orproviding intervention to African Americanchildren and adolescents. The methodolog-ical considerations raised include the fol-lowing: (a) data collection and transcriptionmust include the context (Bridgeforth, 1988;Middleton, 1992) to capture and understandthe full range of pragmatic skills being ex-hibited; (b) more culturally fair practicesneed to be employed in research method-ology, such as expressive elaboration anal-ysis (Milles, Watkins, & Washington, 2013),dependency analysis (Mainess et al., 2002),dynamic assessment (Pena et al., 2006), andRenfrew’s (1992) The Bus Story Language Test(Price et al., 2006); (c) explicit writing instruc-tion tasks need to be considered as an inde-pendent variable in written narrative tasks;and (d) a comprehensive coding system that isappropriate for identifying and describing thecommunicative functions of African Americanchildren and adolescents, and that emergesfrom the data, is needed (Bridgeforth, 1988;Middleton, 1992). Of the four concerns forbetter research methodology in the study ofpragmatic behavior of African American chil-dren and adolescents, the need to include con-text in data collection is the only one that hasalready been addressed in the 43-year spanof research covered by this systematic syn-thesis of the literature. Culturally fair and ex-plicit writing tasks as part of the researchmethodology still need greater considerationin research efforts. In addition, the call fora more fitting communication function cod-ing system for African American children and
adolescents continues to be a need that wasvoiced for more than 22 years ago, and morerecently by DeJarnette et al. (2015).
Developmental trends
Six of the reviewed studies discussed de-velopmental trends regarding the pragmaticlanguage of African American children. Specif-ically, speakers of AAE and general AmericanEnglish (GAE) show similar development ofnarrative skills (Burns, 2004). Children from3 to 5 years of age begin to use narrativemacrostructures (e.g., setting, complicatingaction) and literate language features (Curen-ton & Justice, 2004; McGregor, 2000); how-ever, children who are 4 and 5 years of agehave not mastered as many of the “criticalnarrative features” (e.g., reference, tempo-ral links, and mental state expressions) as6-year-olds (Burns, 2004, p. 78). These andother narrative structures increase with age(McGregor, 2000) and are not affected by di-alect density (Burns, 2004). Two developmen-tal periods in which dialect shifting (reductionin the use of noncontrastive features) is signif-icant occur at first grade for spoken discourseand at third grade for reading (Craig & Wash-ington, 2004).
From the findings of research includedin the corpus of this systematic syn-thesis, we know that narratives can beexamined reliably beginning at 3 years of age.However, in order to tap the range of narra-tive abilities present in children and adoles-cents, researchers and clinicians are urged touse a number of different analysis tools, suchas, High Point Analysis and Story GrammarAnalysis (Champion et al., 1995). Overall, thefindings of these studies indicate that more re-search of AAE child and adolescent speakersneeds to examine the relationship between di-alect shifting and expression of mental states,completion of theory of mind tasks, and thecapacity to take other’s perspectives.
Differentiating typical from impairedfunctioning
Five studies highlighted differences be-tween typical pragmatic functioning andimpaired functioning. What is known from
36 TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY–MARCH 2015
these studies can be summarized in fivepoints. First, language processing problems,such as word retrieval deficits or persever-ation, will be revealed, whether a child isproducing narratives in the topic centered ortopic associative style (Bliss et al., 1999). Sec-ond, African American and EA students, withand without learning disabilities, produce nar-ratives that are comparable in terms of overallstructure, length, and cohesion. They differwith regard to goal-directed episodes, de-pending on the narrative genre, such as per-sonal or fictional stories, suggesting the im-portance of using more than one approach tonarrative analysis (Celinska, 2009; Championet al., 1995). Third, AAE speakers who learnto dialect shift in literacy activities will do bet-ter than their peers who do not dialect shift(Craig et al., 2009). Fourth, children with typ-ical language skills often make emotional in-ferences in narratives, but their counterpartswith language impairments may not, support-ing the importance of habitual assessment(and intervention if appropriate) of children’semotional inferencing skills (Ford & Milosky,2008). Fifth, children with reading disorders,regardless of language variation, will producefewer codas in their stories than those withtypical reading abilities (Hester, 1997). Corre-sponding with the implications noted previ-ously regarding developmental trends, moreresearch is required on emotional inferenc-ing, theory of mind, and perspective takingin African American children and adolescentswith and without language impairments.
Importance and effects of familysocialization
Three of the reviewed articles discussedfindings that addressed the effects of socializa-tion on child outcomes. What we know fromthese studies can be synthesized as four mainpoints. First, caregivers’ emotional interactivebehaviors are linked to their children’s cog-nitive and communication abilities (Wallaceet al., 1998). Second, mother–child dyadsfrom low SES and middle SES backgrounds en-gage in play in similar ways (Hammer & Weiss,1999). Third, male and female children may besocialized to organize narratives in particular
ways. For example, Sperry (1991) found thatfemale children constructed narratives morecollaboratively, whereas male children con-structed them more individually. Fourth, so-cialization has an impact on child communica-tive functions, and the “purposeful encour-agement” of particular communicative func-tions may be useful in a preschool classroom(Kasambira, 2008).
Characteristics of AAE pragmaticlanguage behavior
The characteristics of AAE pragmatic lan-guage behavior were described in 33 articlesand/or dissertations. We have learned fromthese articles that African American childrenuse a range of speech acts. Bridgeforth (1988)and Hwa-Froelich et al. (2007) used similartaxonomies to examine the speech acts pro-duced by young African American children;yet, some of the results differ between thesetwo studies, which may be a function of thedifferent data-gathering methods. There aregender differences in types of functions em-ployed by African American children (Hwa-Froelich et al., 2007; Leaper et al., 1999). Anexample is that girls are more likely to directactions of others or request objects and ac-tions, whereas boys are more likely to directtheir own actions, collaborate with others todirect play, and call others’ attention to ob-jects or events (Hwa-Froelich et al., 2007).
African American children who are speak-ers of AAE have been found to demonstratestrong emergent literacy skills (Connor &Craig, 2006) as well as the same types of con-versational repair strategies that GAE-speakingpeers use (Stockman et al., 2008). Other find-ings identified through this systematic synthe-sis of the literature focus primarily on twoareas, cognition and narration. With regardto cognition, African American children usecognitive skills to guide communicative inter-actions and demonstrate dialect-shifting skills(Renn, 2010; Thompson et al., 2004). In ad-dition, African American children are morelikely to demonstrate the cognitive skills offalse belief and emotional inferencing throughnarratives rather than provide the expected
Pragmatic Language of African American Children 37
response to false belief tasks (Curenton, 2004;Ford & Milosky, 2008).
African American children produce an ar-ray of narrative genres (e.g., dispute, fictional,fantasy, personal), and their personal narra-tives have been found to include fewer wordsand T-units than their fictional/fantasy narra-tives (Champion, 1998; Rivers, 2001). AfricanAmerican children produce more fantasy orfictional episodes in their stories, which havebeen found to have a complex episodic struc-ture (Gorman et al., 2011; Rivers, 2001;Sperry & Sperry, 1996). In addition, theymost often produce topic-centered narra-tives (Champion, 1995; Gee, 1989b; Hyon& Sulzby, 1994; Mainess et al., 2002), al-though African American children have beenshown to produce topic associative and othernarrative styles. Finally, nonverbal (kinesic)and paralinguistic (prosodic) cues should beclosely observed for the insights they may pro-vide about narrative cohesion skills (Garrett,1996; Hyter, 1994) and turn-taking behaviors(Craig & Washington, 1986). The implicationsof these findings are that AAE children andadolescents possess the cognitive skills to usepragmatic language to convey communicativefunctions and to engage in oral and writtendiscourse.
DISCUSSION
This systematic review and synthesis of theextant literature concerning pragmatic lan-guage usage among African American chil-dren and adolescents covered a total of 55manuscripts, all of which reported at least30% of the participants as being AfricanAmerican. Ninety-two articles and disserta-tions were identified to focus on pragmaticlanguage, but only 55 (60%) of these metour inclusion criteria. We recognize that thisresulted in some relevant articles being ex-cluded because the authors did not providedata about the proportion of children whowere African American (e.g., Hyter, 2003;Hyter et al., 2001) or because the study partic-ipants did not meet the inclusion criteria forthis study (e.g., Fuste-Hermann et al., 2006;McCabe & Rosenthal Rollins, 1994). We note
that there are other articles in the extant lit-erature, including doctoral dissertations, thatwere not included in this synthesis, but thatmay reveal additional behaviors and patternsabout African American children’s and adoles-cents’ pragmatic language that could be usefulto speech–language pathologists, educators,and others who work with this population inschool settings and elsewhere.
The majority of studies that met inclusioncriteria for this study focused on narrativemacrostructure and microstructure, whichare important skills for developing literacyand for supporting a more natural contextfor assessing a child’s language. It is clearfrom the literature that narrative productionis a useful context for assessing and sup-porting language skills that are necessary forliteracy development in children and ado-lescents (Hester, 19973; Schachter & Craig,2013; Tabors, Snow, & Dickinson, 2001; vanKleeck, 2008). Narrative structure, however,is only one discourse type, and the gap inthe literature regarding African American chil-dren’s and adolescents’ pragmatics languageis notable with regard to the other equally im-portant components of pragmatics that canaffect social interactions with others, as wellas successful engagement within a classroom.Those other aspects of pragmatics includespeech acts (DeJarnette et al., 2015; Riverset al., 2012) that are unique expressions ofthe African American child and adolescent’ssocialization, as well as presupposition skills(Atlas, 2004; Bates, 1976a, 1976b; Roth &Spekman, 1984a, 1984b) and related cogni-tive skills, such as theory of mind, intentionreading, and perspective taking.
Three broad areas need to be investi-gated further with regard to pragmatic lan-guage skills in African American childrenand adolescents. The first area focuses on
3The authors want to acknowledge Dr. Eva Hester whohas made important contributions over the years to theliterature on the pragmatic language of African Americanchildren and adolescents. Dr. Hester passed away on July29, 2014, after years of struggle with heart disease.
38 TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY–MARCH 2015
components of pragmatic language and re-lated skills that influence pragmatic language.This area includes narratives, speech acts, pre-suppositions, and theory of mind. Specific re-search questions to address within this areainclude the following:
� What are evidence-based procedures andstrategies for effectively evaluating thenarrative processing and production skillsof African American children and adoles-cents with and without language/literacydisorders?
� What are the effects of contextual factors,such as tasks, contexts, and demands, onthe spoken and written expository andnarrative productions of African Ameri-can children and adolescents?
� What are comprehensive frameworks forexplaining and evaluating the speech actsand presupposition skills of African Amer-ican children and adolescents with andwithout language disorders?
A second area of recommended focus is theidentification of culture sensitive (contrastive)and noncontrastive features of the full rangeof pragmatic language skills. Specific researchquestions that need to be addressed includethe following:
� What are the contrastive and noncon-trastive pragmatic behaviors for AAE-speaking children and adolescents rela-tive to GAE pragmatics?
� What are the cultural markers of socialskills development in AAE-speaking chil-dren and adolescents?
A third area of focus for further investiga-tion relates to the variation, trends, and tra-jectories in the development of pragmaticskills to guide assessment (e.g., determiningdifference versus disorder) and intervention.Research questions in this area include thefollowing:
� What are the trends and trajectories in thedevelopment of pragmatic skills for AAEchild and adolescent speakers that can in-form the development of assessment mea-sures and intervention strategies that cap-ture language use in situ?
� Are there individual variations such asage and/or gender effects in pragmaticbehavior performance for AAE-speakingchildren and adolescents and if so, howmight they be accounted for in the devel-opment of ecologically sound assessmentmeasures and intervention practice?
� What are the pragmatic skill differencesdisplayed by AAE-speaking children andadolescents with and without communi-cation impairment?
In conclusion, the results of this system-atic synthesis support the recommendationthat the full range of pragmatic language skillsof typically developing African American chil-dren and adolescents in varied social contextsand with different conversational partnersneeds to be further explored. For many years,studies with regard to pragmatic language inthis population have focused primarily on thestructural and content components of narra-tives. It is clear from the results of this study,however, that African American children’ andadolescents’ pragmatic language skills fall ona continuum. The continuum reflects thatpragmatic language skills of this populationare manifested in different ways and occurwith a range of conversational speakers indiverse settings and under different condi-tions. With more knowledge and a greaterunderstanding of these linguistic and nonlin-guistic skills, speech–language pathologists,educators, and others should be better able todistinguish language/literacy differences fromlanguage/literacy disorders in African Ameri-can children and adolescents.
REFERENCES
Adams, C., Baxendale, J., Lloyd, J., & Aldred, C. (2005).Pragmatic language impairment: Case studies of so-
cial and pragmatic language therapy. Child LanguageTeaching and Therapy, 21, 227–250.
Pragmatic Language of African American Children 39
Archer, D., Aijmer, K., & Wichmann, A. (2012). Pragmat-ics: An advanced resource book for students. Oxon,United Kingdom: Routledge.
Atlas, J. D. (2004). Presupposition. In L. R. Horn, & G. L.Ward (Eds.), The handbook of pragmatics (pp. 29–52). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words.Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Baker, E., & McLeod, S. (2011). Evidence-based practicefor children with speech sound disorders: Part 1 narra-tive review. Language, Speech, and Hearing Servicesin Schools, 42, 102–139.
Ball, A. F. (1992). Cultural preference and the exposi-tory writing of African American adolescents. WrittenCommunication, 9, 501–532.
Ball, A. F. (1996). Expository writing patterns of AfricanAmerican students. The English Journal, 85(1), 27–36.
Ball, A. F. (2002). Three decades of research on classroomlife: Illuminating the classroom communicative livesof America’s at risk students. Review of Research inEducation, 26, 71–110.
Bara, B. G. (2010). Cognitive pragmatics: The mentalprocesses of communication. (J. Douthwaite, Trans.).Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Original work published1999).
Barnitz, J. G. (1994). Discourse diversity: Principles for au-thentic talk and literacy instruction. Journal of Read-ing, 37(7), 586–591.
Bates, E. (1976a). Pragmatics and sociolinguistics in childlanguage. In D. Morehead, & A. E. Morehead (Eds.),Language deficiency in children: Selected readings(pp. 411–463). Baltimore, MD: University Park Press.
Bates, E. (1976b). Language and context: The acquisi-tion of pragmatics. New York, NY: Academic Press.
Battle, D. E. (1996). Language learning and use by AfricanAmerican children. Topics in Language Disorders,16(4), 22–37.
Biemiller, A. (2006). Vocabulary development and in-struction: A prerequisite for school learning. In D.K. Dickinson, & Susan B. Newman (Eds.), Handbookof Early Literacy (Vol. 2, pp. 41–51). New York, NY:The Guilford Press.
Blake, I. J. K. (1984). Language development in working-class black children: An examination of form, con-tent, and use. Unpublished doctoral dissertations,Columbia University, New York.
Bliss, L. S., Covington, Z., & McCabe, A. (1999). Assess-ing the narratives of African American children. Con-temporary Issues in Communication Sciences andDisorders, 26, 160–167.
Bliss, L. S., & McCabe, A. (2006). Comparison of dis-course genres: Clinical implications. ContemporaryIssues in Communication Science and Disorders, 33,126–137.
Bliss, L. S., & McCabe, A. (2008). Personal narratives:Cultural differences and clinical implications. Topicsin Language Disorders, 28(2), 162–177.
Bloome, D., Katz, L., & Champion, T. (2003). Youngchildren’s narratives and ideologies of language inclassrooms. Reading and Writing Quarterly, 19,205–223.
Botting, N. (2002). Narrative as a tool for the assessmentof linguistic and pragmatic impairments. Child Lan-guage Teaching & Therapy, 18(1), 1–21.
Boudreau, D. (2008). Narrative abilities: Advances in re-search and implications for clinical practice. Topics inLanguage Disorders, 28, 99–114.
Braun, V., & Clark, V. (2006). Using thematic analysisin psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology,3(3), 77–101.
Bridgeforth, C. D. (1988). The identification and useof language functions in the speech of 3 and 41/2year old black children from working class fami-lies. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, GeorgetownUniversity, Washington, DC.
Brinton, B., Robinson, L. A., & Fujiki, M. (2004). Descrip-tion of a program for social language intervention:“If you can have a conversation, you can have a rela-tionship” Language, Speech and Hearing Services inSchools, 25, 283–290.
Burns, F. A. (2004). Elicited and open-ended narrativesin African American children. Unpublished doctoraldissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst,MA.
Celinska, D. K. (2009). Narrative voices of early adoles-cents: Influences of learning disability and culturalbackground. International Journal of Special Edu-cation, 24(3), 150–172.
Champion, T. (1995). A description of narrative pro-duction and development in children speakers ofAfrican American English. Unpublished doctoral dis-sertation, University of Massachusetts at Amherst,Amherst, MA.
Champion, T. B. (1998). "Tell me somethin’ good": A de-scription of narrative structures among African Amer-ican children. Linguistics and Education, 9(3), 251–286.
Champion, T., Seymour, H., & Camarata, S. (1995). Narra-tive discourse of African American children. Journalof Narrative and Life History, 5(4), 333–352.
Clarke, V., & Braun, V. (2013). Teaching thematic analy-sis: Overcoming challenges and developing strategiesfor effective learning. The Psychologist, 26(2), 120–123.
Coggins, T. E., Timler, G. R., & Olswang, L. B. (2007).A state of double jeopardy: Impact of prenatal alco-hol exposure and adverse environments on the socialcommunicative abilities of school age children withfetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Language, Speech,and Hearing Services in Schools, 38, 117–127.
Collins, J. (1985). Some problems and purpose of narra-tive analysis in educational research. Journal of Edu-cation, 167(1), 57–70.
Connor, C. M., & Craig, H. K. (2006). African Americanpreschoolers’ language, emergent literacy skills, and
40 TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY–MARCH 2015
use of African American English: A complex relation.Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research,49(4), 771–792.
Craig, H. K., & Washington, J. A. (1986). Children’s turn-taking behaviors social linguistic interactions. Journalof Pragmatics, 10(2), 173–197.
Craig, H., & Washington, J. (1994). The complex syntaxskills of African American preschoolers. Language,Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 25, 181–190.
Craig, H., & Washington, J. (1995). African American En-glish and linguistic complexity in preschool discourse:A second look. Language, Speech, and Hearing Ser-vices in Schools, 26, 87–93.
Craig, H., & Washington, J. (2002). Oral language expec-tations for African American preschoolers and kinder-garteners. American Journal of Speech-LanguagePathology, 11, 59–70.
Craig, H., & Washington, J. (2004). Grade related changesin the production of African American English. Jour-nal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47,450–463.
Craig, H. K., Zhang, L., Hensel, S. L., & Quinn, E. J. (2009).African American English speaking students: An ex-amination of the relationship between dialect shiftingand reading outcomes. Journal of Speech, Language,and Hearing Research, 52, 839–855.
Curenton, S. M. (2004). The association between narra-tives and theory of mind for low-income preschool-ers. Early Education and Development, 15(2),121–146.
Curenton, S. M., Jones, M. J., Craig, H. K., & Flanigan,N. (2008). Use of contextualized talk across storycontexts: How oral storytelling and emergent readingcan scaffold children’s development. Early Educationand Development, 19(1), 161–187.
Curenton, S. M., & Justice, L. M. (2004). African Americanand Caucasian preschoolers’ use of decontextualizedlanguage: Literate language features in oral narratives.Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools,35, 240–253.
Dandy, E. B. (1991). Black communications: Breakingdown the barriers. Chicago, IL: African AmericanImages.
DeJarnette, G., Hyter, Y. D., & Rivers, K. O. (2012). Pri-mary Research Appraisal Tool [PRAT]. Unpublisheddocument, Department of Communication Disorders,Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven,CT.
DeJarnette, G., Rivers, K. O., & Hyter, Y. D. (2015). Waysof examining speech acts in young African Americanchildren: Outside-in versus inside-out. Topics in Lan-guage Disorders, 35, 59–73.
de Villiers, P. (2004). Assessing pragmatic skills in elicitedproduction. Seminars in Speech and Language,25(1), 57–71.
Dey, I. (1993). Qualitative data analysis: A user-friendlyguide for social scientists. London: Routledge.
Donahue, M. (1985). Communicative style in learningdisabled children: Some implications for classroomdiscourse. In D. N. Ripich, & F. M. Spinelli (Eds.),School discourse problems (pp. 97–124). San Diego,CA: College-Hill Press.
Duchan, J. (2011, May 15). The pragmatics revolution.Retrieved July 4, 2014, from http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/∼duchan/1975-2000.html
Eder, D. (1982). Differences in communicative stylesacross ability groups. In L. C. Wilkinson (Ed.), Com-municating in the classroom (pp. 164–182). NewYork, NY: Academic Press.
Elo, S., & Kyngas, H. (2008). The qualitative content anal-ysis process. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 62(1),107–115.
Epley, N., & Caruso, E. M. (2009). Perspective taking:Misstepping into others’ shoes. In K. D. Markman,W. M. P. Klein, & J. A. Suhr (Eds.), Handbook ofimagination and mental simulation (pp. 295–312).New York, NY: Psychological Press, Taylor and Fran-cis Group.
Etter-Lewis, G. (1985). Sociolinguistic patterns of code-switching in the language of preschool black chil-dren. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University ofMichigan, Ann Arbor.
Finger, M. Y. (2007). Kindergarten children’s oral nar-rative production: Relations with ethnicity and so-cioeconomic status. Unpublished thesis, University ofMaryland, Baltimore.
Ford, J. A., & Milosky, L. M. (2008). Inference genera-tion during discourse and its relation to social compe-tence: An online investigation of abilities of childrenwith and without language impairment. Journal ofSpeech, Language, and Hearing Research, 51, 367–380.
Fuste-Hermann, B., Silliman, E. R., Bahr, R. H., Fasnacht,K. S., & Federico, J. E. (2006). Mental state verb pro-duction in the oral narratives of English and Span-ish speaker preadolescents: An exploratory study oflexical diversity and depth. Learning Disabilities Re-search & Practice, 21(1), 44–60.
Garrett, D. M. (1996). Discourse cohesion and lit-eracy development in suburban male and fe-male African American children. Unpublished doc-toral dissertation, Howard University, Washington,DC.
Gee, J. (1989a). The narrativization of experience in theoral style. Journal of Education, 171(1), 75–96.
Gee, J. (1989b). Two styles of narrative construction andtheir linguistic and educational implications. Journalof Education, 171(1), 97–113.
Gidney, C. L. (1995). Connective in the narrative dis-course of African American children. Unpublisheddoctoral dissertation, Georgetown University, Wash-ington, DC.
Goldin-Meadow, S. (1999). The role of gesture in commu-nication and thinking. Trends in Cognitive Sciences,3(11), 419–429.
Pragmatic Language of African American Children 41
Goodwin, M. H. (1980). He-said-she-said: Formal cul-tural procedures for the construction of gossipdispute activity. American Ethnologist, 7(4), 674–695.
Gorman, B. K., Fiestas, C. E., Pena, E. D., & Clark,M. R. (2011). Creative and stylistic devices employedby children during a storybook narrative task: A cross-cultural study. Language, Speech and Hearing Ser-vices in Schools, 42, 167–181.
Green, L. (2002). African American English. Cambridge,England: Cambridge University Press.
Green, L. (2003 April). Syntactic and semantic patternsin child African American English. Texas LinguisticForum, 47, 55–69.
Guajardo, N. R., & Watson, A. C. (2002). Narrative dis-course and theory of mind development. The Journalof Genetic Psychology: Research and Theory on Hu-man Development, 163(3), 305–325.
Gutierrez-Clellen, V. F., & Quinn, R. (1993). Assessingnarratives of children from diverse cultural/linguisticgroups. Language, Speech and Hearing Services inSchools, 24, 2–9.
Hammer, C. S., & Weiss, A. L. (1999). Guiding languagedevelopment: How African American mothers andtheir infants structure play interactions. Journal ofSpeech, Language, and Hearing Research, 42(5),1219–1233.
Harwood, T. G., & Garry, T. (2003). An overview of con-tent analysis. The Marketing Review, 3, 479–498.
Heath, S. B. (1982). What no bedtime story means: Narra-tive skills at home and school. Language in Society,11(1), 49–76.
Heilmann, J., Miller, J. F., & Nockerts, A. (2010). Sensitiv-ity of narrative organization measures using narrativeretells produced by young school-age children. Lan-guage Testing, 27(4), 603–626.
Hester, E. J. (1997). An investigation of the relation-ship between narrative style, dialect, and readingachievement in African American children. Disser-tations, University of Maryland, Baltimore.
Hester, E. J., & Langdon, N. (2008). Expressive elabora-tion of African American children: Script vs. fantasystories. Poster presentation at the annual conventionof the American Speech-Language Hearing Associa-tion, Chicago, IL.
Hill, J. W., & Coufal, K. L. (2005). Emotional/behavioraldisorders: A retrospective examination of social skills,linguistics, and student outcomes. CommunicationDisorders Quarterly, 27(1), 33–46.
Hoffman, P. R., Norris, J. A., & Monjure, J. (1996). Effectsof narrative intervention on a preschooler’s syntac-tic and phonological development. National StudentSpeech, Language, and Hearing Association Journal,23, 5–13.
Horton-Ikard, R. (2009). Cohesive adequacy in the narra-tive samples of school-age children who use AfricanAmerican English. Language, Speech, and HearingServices in Schools, 40, 393–402.
Howes, C., Sanders, K., & Lee, L. (2008). Entering anew peer group in ethnically and linguistically diversechildcare classrooms. Social Development, 17(4),922–940.
Huang, Y. (2007). Pragmatics. Oxford, England: OxfordUniversity Press.
Huang, Y. (2012). Oxford dictionary of pragmatics. Ox-ford, England: Oxford University Press.
Hwa-Froelich, D., Kasambira, D. C., & Moleski, A. M.(2007). Communicative functions of African Ameri-can Head Start children. Communication DisordersQuarterly, 28(2), 77–91.
Hyon, S., & Sulzby, E. (1994). African American kinder-gartners’ spoken narratives: Topic associating andtopic centered styles. Linguistics and Education, 6,121–152.
Hyter, Y. D. (1994). A cross-channel description of refer-ence in the narratives of African American vernac-ular English speakers. Unpublished doctoral disserta-tion, Temple University, Philadelphia.
Hyter, Y. D. (2003). Language intervention for childrenwith emotional or behavioral disorders. BehavioralDisorders, 29(1), 65–76.
Hyter, Y. D. (2007). Pragmatic language assessment: Apragmatics-as-social practice model. Topics in Lan-guage Disorders, 27(2), 128–145.
Hyter, Y. D. (August 2012). Complex trauma and pre-natal alcohol exposure: Clinical implications. Amer-ican Speech, Language, Hearing Association SIG-16: Perspectives in School Based Issues, 13(2),32–42.
Hyter, Y. D. (2014). A conceptual framework for respon-sive global engagement in Communication Sciencesand Disorders. Topics in Language Disorders, 34(2),103–120.
Hyter, Y. D., DeJarnette, G., & Rivers, K. O. (2013, April).Summarizing meta analysis: Pragmatic language ofAfrican American children. Seminar presented at theannual convention of the National Black Associationof Speech-Language-Hearing, Washington, DC.
Hyter, Y. D., Rivers, K. O., & DeJarnette, G. (2010,April). The state of pragmatic language research forchildren of color. Short Course presented at the an-nual convention of the National Black Association ofSpeech-Language-Hearing, Tampa, FL.
Hyter, Y. D., Rivers, K. O., & DeJarnette, G. (2012, April).Mining research of pragmatic language behavior inAfrican American children: A systematic literaturereview. Seminar presented at the annual conferenceof the National Black Association of Speech-Language-Hearing, Raleigh, NC.
Hyter, Y.D., Rogers-Atkinson, D. L., Self, T. L., Friedrich-Simmons, B., & Jantz, J. (2001). Pragmatic lan-guage intervention for children with language andemotional/behavioral disorders. CommunicationDisorders Quarterly, 23(1), 4–16.
Hyter, Y. D., & Sloane, M. (2013). Conceptual modelof social communication. Unpublished document,
42 TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY–MARCH 2015
Department of Speech Pathology & Audiology, West-ern Michigan University, Kalamazoo.
Johnson, C. J. (1995). Expanding norms for narration.Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools,26, 326–341.
Justice, L. M., Bowles, R. P., Kaderavek, J. N., Ukrainetz,T. A., Eisenberg, S. L., & Gillam, R. B. (2006). The in-dex of narrative microstructure: A clinical tool for ana-lyzing school-aged children’s narrative performances.American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology,15, 177–191.
Justice, L. M., & Ezell, H. K. (2001). Written languageawareness in preschool children from low-incomehouseholds: A descriptive analysis. CommunicationDisorders Quarterly, 22, 123–134.
Kasambira, D. C. F. (2008). Communicative functions ofpreschoolers and their mothers across cultures andsocioeconomic status. Unpublished doctoral disserta-tion, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.
Kelly, S. D. (2001). Broadening the units of analysisin communication: Speech and nonverbal behaviorsin pragmatic comprehension. Journal of Child Lan-guage, 29, 325–349.
Kraemer, R. J., Rivers, K. O., & Ratusnik, D. L. (2000).Sociolinguistic perceptions of African-American En-glish. The Negro Educational Review, 51(3–4),139–148.
Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis: Oralversions of personal narratives. In J. Helm (Ed.), Pro-ceedings of the American ethnological society: Es-says on the verbal and visual arts (pp. 12–44). Seat-tle, WA: University of Washington Press.
Leaper, D., Tenenbaum, H. R., & Shaffer, T. G. (1999).Communication patterns of African American girls andboys from low-income urban backgrounds. Child De-velopment, 70(6), 1489–1503.
Lee, C. D. (2006). Every good bye ain’t gone: Analyzingthe cultural underpinnings of classroom talk. Interna-tional Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education,19(3), 305–327.
Leedy, P. D., & Ormrod, J. E. (2013). Practical research:Planning and design (10th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
Levinson, S. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge, England:Cambridge University Press.
Lustig, M. W., & Koester, J. (2012). Intercultural compe-tence (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
Mainess, K. J., Champion, T. B., & McCabe, A. (2002).Telling the unknown story complex and explicit narra-tion by African American preadolescents - Preliminaryexamination of gender and socioeconomic issues. Lin-guistics and Education, 13(2), 151–173.
Malinowski, B. (1959). The Problem of Meaning in Primi-tive Languages. In C. K. Ogden & I. A. Richards (Eds.),The meaning of meaning (pp. 296–336). New York,NY: Harcourt, Brace and World.
Maxwell, D. L., & Satake, E. (2006). Research and statis-tical methods in communication sciences and disor-ders. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Mayer, M. (1969). Frog, where are you? (A boy, a dogand a frog). New York, NY: Dial Book for YoungReaders.
Mayer, M., Osborn, S., Stumer, J., & Templeton, G. (1985).Frogs goes to dinner [VHS]. New York, NY: PhoenixFilms.
McCabe, A. (1997). Cultural background and storytelling:A review and implications for schooling. The Elemen-tary School Journal, 97(5), 453–473.
McCabe, A., & Rosenthal Rollins P. (1994). Assessmentof preschool narrative skills. American Journal ofSpeech-Language Pathology, 3, 45–56.
McGregor, K. K. (2000). The development and enhance-ment of narrative skills in a preschool classroom: To-wards a solution to clinician-client mismatch. Amer-ican Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 9, 55–71.
McNeill, D. (1996). Hand and mind: What gesturesreveal about thought. Chicago, IL: University ofChicago Press.
McNeill, D. (2005). Gesture and thought. Chicago, IL:University of Chicago Press.
Michaels, S. (1981). Children’s narrative styles and differ-ential access to literacy. Language in Society, 10(3),423–442.
Middleton, L. D. (1992). An examination of languagefunctions among selected African American Englishspeakers in the home setting: An ethnographic ap-proach. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, HowardUniversity, Washington, DC.
Mills, M. T., Watkins, R. V., & Washington, J. A. (2013).Structural and dialectal characteristics of the fictionaland personal narratives of school-age African Ameri-can children. Language, Speech and Hearing Servicesin Schools, 44, 211–223.
Morris, C. (1938). Foundations of the theory of signs.Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Myers, H., Rana, P., & Harris, M. (1979). Black child de-velopment in American 1927–2977. Westport, CT:Greenwood Press.
Nagy, W. E., Herman, P. A., & Anderson, R. C. (1985).Learning words from context. Reading ResearchQuarterly, 20(2), 233–253.
Nelson, N. W. (2010). Changes in story probes writtenacross third grade by African American students in awriting lab approach. Topics in Language Disorders,30(3), 223–252.
Neuman, W. L. (2006). Social research methods: Qualita-tive and quantitative approaches. Boston, MA: Pear-son/Allyn & Bacon.
Newkirk-Turner, B., Oetting, J., & Stockman, I (2014).BE, DO, and modal auxiliaries of three-year-oldAfrican American English speakers. Journal ofSpeech, Language, and Hearing Research, 57, 1383–1393.
Nichols, P. C. (1989). Storytelling in Carolina: Conti-nuities and contrasts. Anthropology and EducationQuarterly, 20(3), 232–245.
Pragmatic Language of African American Children 43
Norment, N. (1995). Discourse features of African Amer-ican students’ writings. Journal of Black Studies,25(5), 558–576.
Oetting, J. B., Newkirk, B. L., Hartfield, L. R., Wynn, C. G.,Pruitt, S. L., & Garrity, A. W. (2010). Index of produc-tive syntax for children who speak African AmericanEnglish. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services inSchools, 41, 328–339.
Olswang, L., Coggins, T., & Timler, G. (2001). Outcomemeasures for school-age children with social commu-nication problems. Topics in Language Disorders,22(1), 50–73.
O’Neill, D. K. (2014). Assessing pragmatic language func-tioning in young children: It’s importance and chal-lenges. In D. Matthews (Ed.), Pragmatic developingin first language acquisition (pp. 363–387). Philadel-phia, PA: John Benjamins B. V.
Paul, R., & Smith, R. (1993). Narrative skills in 4-year-oldswith normal, impaired, and late-developing language.Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 36, 592–598.
Pena, E. D., Gillam, R. B., Malek, M., Ruiz-Felter, R., Re-sendiz, M., Fiestas, C., & Sabel, T. (2006). Dynamicassessment of school-age children’s narrative ability:An experimental investigation of classification accu-racy. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 49,1037–1057.
Perkins, M. (2007). Pragmatic impairment. Cambridge,England: Cambridge University Press.
Peters, C. (1983). A pragmatic investigation of thespeech of selected black children. Unpublished doc-toral dissertation, Howard University, Washington,DC.
Peterson, C., & McCabe, A. (1992). Parental styles ofnarrative elicitation: Effect on children’s narrativestructure and content. First Language, 12, 299–321.
Price, J. R., Roberts, J. E., & Jackson, S. C. (2006). Struc-tural development of the fictional narratives of AfricanAmerican preschoolers. Language, Speech and Hear-ing Services in Schools, 37, 178–190.
Prutting, C., & Kirchner, D. (1983). Applied pragmatics.In T. Gallagher, & C. Prutting (Eds.), Pragmatic as-sessment and intervention issues in language (pp.29–64). San Diego, CA: College-Hill Press.
Prutting, C., & Kirchner, D. (1987). A clinical appraisalof the pragmatic aspects of language. The Journal ofSpeech and Hearing Disorders, 52, 105–119.
Punch, K. F. (2014). Introduction to social research:Quantitative and qualitative approaches. ThousandOaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Reilly, J., Losh, M., Bellugi, U., & Wulfeck, B. (2004).‘Frog, where are you?’ Narratives in children with spe-cific language impairment, early focal brain injury, andWilliams syndrome. Brain and Language, 88, 229–247.
Renfrew, C. (1992). The Bus Story Language Test: A testof continuous speech. Oxford, England: Author.
Renn, J. (2007). Measuring style shift: A quantitativeanalysis of African American English. Unpublishedthesis, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Renn, J. (2010). Acquiring style: The development of di-alect shifting among American American children.Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of NorthCarolina, Chapel Hill, NC.
Renn, J., & Terry, J. M. (2009). Operationalizing style:Quantifying the use of style shift in the speechof African American adolescents. American Speech,84(4), 367–390.
Rivers, A. N. (2001). The influence of elicitation proce-dures on the structure and content of African Ameri-can English speaking children’s personal narrativesand fictional stories and relationships between nar-ratives and reading comprehension and expressivelanguage. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, North-western University, Evanston, IL.
Rivers, K. O., Rosa-Lugo, L. I., & Hedrick, D. L. (2004). Per-formance of African-American adolescents on a mea-sure of language proficiency. The Negro EducationalReview, 55(2), 117–127.
Robinson, T. L. (1992). An investigation of speech flu-ency skills in African American preschool childrenduring narrative discourse. Unpublished doctoraldissertation, Howard University, Washington, DC.
Ross, S. H., Oetting, J. B., & Stapleton, B. (2004). Preteritehad +v-ed: A developmental narrative structure ofAfrican American English. American Speech, 79(2),167–193.
Roth, F., & Spekman, N. (1984a). Assessing the pragmaticabilities of children: Part 1. Organizational frameworkand assessment parameters. The Journal of Speechand Hearing Disorders, 49, 2–11.
Roth, F., & Spekman, N. (1984b). Assessing the pragmaticabilities of children: Part 2. Guidelines, considerations,and specific evaluation procedures. The Journal ofSpeech and Hearing Disorders, 49, 12–17.
Roy, J., Oetting, J. B., & Moland, C. W. (2013). Linguis-tic constraints on children’s overt marking of BE bydialect and age. Journal of Speech, Language, andHearing Research, 56, 933–944.
Schachter, R. E., & Craig, H. K. (2013). Students’ pro-duction of narrative and features during an emergentliteracy task. Language, Speech, and Hearing Servicesin Schools, 44, 227–238.
Schiffman, H. F. (1996). Linguistic culture and languagepolicy: The power of language. London: Routledge.
Schmid, H-J. (2012). Generalizing the apparently ungener-alizable: Basic ingredients of a cognitive-pragmaticapproach to the construal of meaning-in-context. InH-J. Schmid (Ed.), Cognitive pragmatics (pp. 3–24).Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG.
Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech acts: An essay in the philos-ophy of language. Cambridge, England: CambridgeUniversity Press.
44 TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY–MARCH 2015
Seymour, H. N., & Roeper, T. (1999). Grammatical acqui-sition of African American English. In O. L. Taylor, &L. Leonard (Eds.), Language acquisition across NorthAmerica: Cross-cultural and cross-linguistic perspec-tives (pp. 109–153). San Diego, CA: Singular Publish-ing Co.
Smitherman, G. (1994). Black talk: Words and phrasesfrom the hood to the amen corner. Boston, MA:Houghton Mifflin Company.
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (2002). Pragmatics, modularityand mind reading. Mind and Language, 17, 3–23.
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (2005). Pragmatics. In F. Jack-son, & M. Smith (Eds.), Oxford handbook of contem-porary philosophy (pp. 468–501). Oxford, England:Oxford University Press.
Sperry, L. L. (1991). The emergence and developmentof narrative competence in African American tod-dlers from a rural Alabama community. Unpub-lished doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago,Chicago, IL.
Sperry, L. L., & Sperry, D. E. (1996). Early development ofnarrative skills. Cognitive Development, 11, 443–465.
Spinelli, F. M., & Ripich, D. N. (1985). Discourse andeducation. In D. N. Ripich, & F. M. Spinelli (Eds.),School discourse problems (pp. 3–10). San Diego, CA:College-Hill Press.
Stadler, M. A., & Ward, G. C. (2005). Supporting the narra-tive development of young children. Early ChildhoodEducation Journal, 33(2), 73–80.
Stockman, I. J. (1996). The promises and pitfalls of lan-guage sample analysis as an assessment tool for linguis-tic minority children. Language, Speech and HearingServices in Schools, 27, 355–366.
Stockman, I. J. (2010). A review of developmental and ap-plied language research on African American children:From a deficit to difference perspective on dialect dif-ferences. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services inSchools, 41, 23–38.
Stockman, I. J., Guillory, B., Seibert, M., & Boult, J. (2013).Toward validation of a minimal competence core ofmorphosyntax for African American children. Ameri-can Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 22, 40–56.
Stockman, I. J., Karasinski, L., & Guillory, B. (2008).The use of conversational repairs by African Amer-ican preschoolers. Language, Speech, and HearingServices in Schools, 39, 461–474.
Stockman, I. J., & Vaughn-Cook, F. B. (1992). Lexical elab-oration in children’s locative action expressions. ChildDevelopment, 63(5), 1104–1125.
Szpara, M. Y., & Wylie, C. E. (2007). Writing dif-ferences in teacher performance assessments: Aninvestigation of African American language andedited American English. Applied Linguistics, 29(2),244–266.
Tabors, P. O., Snow, C E., & Dickinson, D. K. (2001).Home and schools together: Supporting language andliteracy development. In D. K. Dickinson, & P. O.
Tabors (Eds.), Beginning literacy with language:Young children learning at home and school (pp.313–334). Baltimore, MD: Brookes.
Terry, N. P., Connor, C. M., Tate, S. T., & Love, M. (2010).Examining relationships among dialect variation, liter-acy skills, and school context in first grade. Journal ofSpeech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53, 126–145.
Terry, N. P., Mills, M. T., Bingham, G. E., Mansour,S., & Marencin, N. (2013). Oral narrative perfor-mance of African American prekindergartners whospeak nonmainstream American English. Language,Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 44, 291–305.
Thompson, C. A., Craig, H. K., & Washington, J. A.(2004). Variable production of African American En-glish across oracy and literacy contexts. LanguageSpeech and Hearing Services in Schools, 35, 269–282.
Timler, G. R. (2008). Social communication: A frame-work for assessment and intervention. ASHA Leader,13(15), 10–13.
Timler, G. R., Olswang, L. B., & Coggins, T. E. (2005).“Do I know what I need to do?” A social communica-tion intervention for children with complex clinicalprofiles. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services inSchools, 36, 73–85.
Ting-Toomey, S. (1999). Communicating across cul-tures. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Tough, J. (1982). Talk for teaching and learning.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Troia, G. A. (2011). How might pragmatic language skillsaffect the written expression of students with lan-guage learning disabilities? Topics in language Dis-orders, 31(1), 40–53.
Van Hofwegen, J., & Wolfram, W. (2010). Coming ofage in African American English: A longitudinal study.Journal of Sociolinguistics, 14(4), 427–455.
van Kleeck, A. (2008). Providing preschool foundationsfor later reading comprehension: The importanceof and ideas for targeting inferencing in storybook-sharing interventions. Psychology in the Schools, 45,627–643.
van Wormer, K., & Besthorn, F. H. (2010). Human behav-ior and the social environment, macro level: Groups,communities, and organizations. Oxford, England:Oxford University Press.
Wallace, I. F., Roberts, J. E., & Lodder, D. E. (1998). Inter-actions of African American infants and their mothers:Relations with development at 1 year of age. Journalof Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 41(4),900–912.
Washington, J. A. (2001). Early literacy skills in AfricanAmerican children: Research considerations. Learn-ing Disabilities Research and Practice, 16(4), 213–221.
Weiner, J. (2004). Do peer relationships foster be-havioral adjustment in children with learning
Weiner, J., & Schneider, B. (2002). A multisource ex-ploration of friendship patterns of children with andwithout LD. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology,30, 127–141.
Westby, C. E., & Culatta, B. (2010). Forward. Topics inlanguage Disorders, 30(4), 272–214.
Westby, C. E., Culatta, B., Lawrence, B., & Hall-Kenyon, K.(2010). Summarizing expository text. Topics in Lan-guage Disorders, 30(4), 275–287.
Westby, C., & Robinson, L. (2014). Developmental per-spective for promoting theory of mind. Topics in Lan-guage Disorders, 34(4), 362–382.
Wetherby, A. M., & Prutting, C. (1984). Profiles of com-municative and cognitive-social abilities in Autisticchildren. Journal of Speech, Language, and HearingResearch, 27, 364–377.
Wyatt, T. A. (1995). Language development in AfricanAmerican English child speech. Linguistics and Edu-cation, 7, 7–22.
Xie, C., & House, J. (2009). Some aspects of pragmat-ics: Linguistic, cognitive, and intercultural. Pragmat-ics and Cognition, 17(2), 421–439.
Zevenbergen, A. A. (1996). Narrative development insocioeconomically disadvantaged preschoolers. Un-published doctoral dissertation, State University ofNew York, Stony Brook.