More than 50 years of scholarly attention to the intersection of language and education have resulted in a rich body of literature on the role of vernacular language varieties in the classroom. This field of work can be bewildering in its size and variety, drawing as it does on the diverse methods, theories, and research paradigms of fields such as sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, psychology, and education. Compiling most of the publications from the past half century that deal with this critical topic, this volume includes more than 1600 references (books, articles in journals or books, and web-accessible dissertations and other works) on education in relation to African American Vernacular English [AAVE], English-based pidgins and creoles, Latina/o English, Native American English, and other English vernaculars such as Appalachian English in the United States and Aboriginal English in Australia), with accompanying abstracts for approximately a third of them. This comprehensive bibliography provides a tool useful for those interested in the complex issue of how knowledge about language variation can be used to more effectively teach students who speak a nonstandard or stigmatized language variety.

Introduction, John R. Rickford and Julie Sweetland