Over the past 20 years we have collected extensive data on the longitudinal development of African American English (AAE) during early childhood and adolescence. These data revealed different trajectories of AAE development, including a pattern in which AAE use increases and decreases several times over the early lifespan and a curvilinear pattern in which AAE use decreases then increases again. The data suggest that changes in AAE use will continue well into adulthood, but questions about the use of AAE during this essential period cannot be answered without collecting language samples that extend beyond secondary education. Our study participants are now largely out of high school and are embarking on the tasks of young adulthood, a significant stage for examining the progressive use of AAE.

This project seeks to expand the original data collection on the sample of 68 participants who have been followed since infancy and are now in young adulthood by conducting sociolinguistic interviews and collecting background data on these subjects. Our goal is to collect data from more than 90 percent of the subjects who continued through secondary school, a reasonable objective given the extraordinary retention rate of subjects throughout the prior 20 years. During the summer of 2011 and extending through 2012, we will interview subjects and collect background data on their current social, educational, and work status. Given that the last language sample was collected in Grade 10 and the majority of subjects have been out of secondary school at least a year and transitioned into a post-secondary phase of life, there will be at least a two-year period since the last temporal data point. A two- to three-year increment between the language samples will align with the incremental data collection points that have characterized previous phases of the study. The incremental temporal data points from this early adulthood phase can readily be integrated into ongoing analyses to complement other incremental temporal data points already in the study.