When I first saw Cambridge University Press's announcement of Lisa Green's book, I was quite excited, because a systematic, comprehensive introductory book on African American English had been lacking in the field for quite a while. But now one is available and – to start with my overall impression – it is very good. In what follows I survey the book's contents as well as offer critical assessment of its goals and how they are achieved.

The Introduction (pp. 1–11) has three parts: the aims of the book, a very informative survey of the various labels for the speech of black Americans, and a brief discussion of the variety's historical origins, all written in a catchy style, cautiously getting newcomers into the matter.

In Chapter 1, “Lexicon and meaning” (12–33), Green attempts to show how lexical entries should be structured, provides some examples, and contrasts them with “General American usage.” She nicely shows how words can have different meanings in AAE in certain contexts (steady, come, stay, etc., feature as prominent examples here), and finally she opts for a treatment of verbal markers (be, BIN,

, be

, BIN

) in the lexicon, which are usually dealt with only in grammatical descriptions.

Chapter 2, “Syntax, part 1: Verbal markers in AAE” (34–75) gives detailed usage information about the three types of verbal markers: auxiliaries (have, do, copula be, will/would, shall/should, etc.), aspectual markers (be, BIN,

and their combinations), and preverbal markers (finna, steady, come). For the first two sections, Green provides extensive “verbal paradigms” with Standard English glosses to show how the respective forms are used in unmarked, emphatic, and negative contexts. Although this sometimes feels like being taught AAE the Latin way, Green obviously wishes to drive home the message that AAE is a variety that has a regular grammar system. In fact, these paradigms make it easy for the reader to get quick access to this central part of AAE grammar. I have never seen this presented more comprehensively. After the paradigms, Green elaborates on aspectual be, remote past BIN,

, and the combinations be

and BIN

. Here, a host of enlightening examples are used, each once again accompanied by a Standard English gloss and – somewhat surprisingly but very informatively – by frequent reference to wrong usage, which again underlines the fact that AAE has rules and one can make mistakes using it. A helpful feature is Green's Q-and-A style summaries at the end of the passages on aspectual be, remote past BIN, and

. The chapter closes with an equally comprehensive account of the preverbal markers finna, come, and steady.

In Chapter 3, “Syntax, part 2: Syntactic and morphosyntactic properties in AAE” (76–105) the reader is introduced to five syntactic peculiarities (negation, existential it/dey, questions, relative clauses, and preterite had) and three morphosyntactic ones (past morphology, verbal -s, and genitive marking) of AAE, once again all done nicely, with innumerable examples and detailed explanations. Nonetheless, I would like to mention two tiny shortcomings. First, in the comparison of indirect questions in AAE and other varieties of English (87–89), the examples for the latter are taken from introductory textbooks with no mention of the respective varieties (which the author herself admits to be too unspecific). Second, the section on relative markers fails to mention the very important function of the relative pronoun in the relative clause, which is crucial in showing differences between standard and nonstandard varieties of English.

Chapter 4, “Phonology of AAE” (106–133), deals with the four most salient segmental phonological properties of AAE (final consonant sounds, devoicing, sound patterns, and th, and r and l liquid vocalization) and adds a welcome section on prosodic features, in which Green gives a comprehensive survey of the neglected areas of AAE intonation and stress. Of course, an accompanying CD-ROM would have increased the price of the book considerably, but still, some audio samples (possibly on a website) would have increased the value of the book, at least for people who get access to varieties in general and to phonetic features in particular more easily through the ear than through the eye.

Chapter 5, “Speech events and rules of interaction in AAE” (134–163), is definitely a highlight in the book. Green delivers a great overview of all those notorious speech events of AAE (signifying, playing the dozens, rapping, marking, loud-talking, woofing, toasts) and also of expressions in nonverbal communication (eye movement and giving dap). The chapter culminates in a well-written account of “speech events and language use in AA church services.” Once again, on the basis of good examples, Green explains the well-known call-and-response strategy, and indeed manages to get the feeling across. She can hardly hide her excitement about these verbal strategies which – as she states several times – “are just as important as the syntactic, phonological and lexical properties of AAE” (160). The remainder of the chapter deals with backchanneling in informal conversation, and language use and rap. Two additional points might have made the chapter perfect: the inclusion of pictures illustrating nonverbal communication (for pictures showing cut-eye and suck teeth, cf. Rickford & Rickford 1976), and maybe a little more cultural background information to help non-Americans understand some allusions to TV series, brand names, and the like (e.g., “Metrecal,” 140).

The positioning of chapter 5 in the book could not have been better. It nicely foreshadows what Green tries to focus on in chapters 6, “AAE in literature” (164–199), and 7, “AAE in the media” (200–215): how linguistic blackness is represented in books, TV series, and films. Especially in the media chapter, it becomes apparent that in films (such as The Best Man or Fresh) and TV series (such as The Fresh Prince of Bel Air) “grammatical correctness” is not always necessary. It is rather the mere appearance of a “black feature” like aspectual be, besides the usage of certain speech events like signifying, that suffices to create “blackness.” The literature chapter is very extensive, dealing exemplarily with a variety of AA texts to show how AA speech is presented as different from white speech. Up to the early twentieth century, this was mostly achieved by means of eye-dialect; from the Harlem Renaissance on, a broader variety of structures and rhetorical strategies was represented. This chapter would make a good starting point for a class on the history of AAE and the problems of obtaining speech data before the advent of recording machines (cf. Kautzsch 2002, chap. 2).

The final chapter 8, “Approaches, attitudes and education” (216–242), surveys four issues: how researchers have seen AAE through time (as a dialect of English, or as a separate system); how laypersons see AAE, including discussion of the King case in Ann Arbor and the “Ebonics” issue; how it is important to be bidialectal as an African American in order to get a job (“attitudes towards AAE and employment”); and – in the longest section of this chapter – how AAE should be dealt with in education.

This whole chapter seems to be designed as the culmination of an argument running throughout this book: Green over and over again emphasizes that AAE is systematic and that speakers of AAE follow rules, be it in the choice of lexical items or in the usage of syntactic or phonological features. For linguists this seems a little overdone at times, but Green obviously wants to bring this message home to newcomers in the field and to laypersons, which appears to be more than necessary in a social climate that does not accept AAE as a “proper” variety, but rather sees it as slang, broken English, and the like. And it is exactly this chapter that helps to illustrate that these stances could be worked against in a more open-minded educational system and with the help of open-minded and well-informed teachers.

The volume is rounded off by the Endnotes (245–254) for the respective chapters (a practice I personally am not in favor of because I don't regard skipping back and forth as user-friendly, but in an introductory book footnotes may indeed confuse new readers more than is necessary), an extensive list of References (255–268), Acknowledgments (269–270), and a helpful Index (271–285).

All chapters are structured in somewhat parallel fashion; there is always a “focal point” at the beginning and a clear summary and well-chosen study questions at the end, all of which will help teachers and students to focus on the most prominent issues. Summing up, Lisa Green has written an excellent book which will definitely be a standard reference and introduction for present-day African American English for quite a while. Let's just hope her message will also spread beyond academia.