Language in a Black Community

This book is the first of two reports on a research project on British Black language, based on fieldwork undertaken in Dudley, West Midlands in the summer of 1982. It is essentially a sociolinguistic study which aims to identify the range of language which we found in this community and its social and situational determinants. There are many questions which relate to research design, methodology and analysis which are of primary interest to linguists. However, the fact that the study is based on a British Black community means that its findings are of interest to a much broader audience which includes teachers, sociologists, speech therapists, youth and community workers and, of course, black people themselves.