Jennifer Renn|J. Michael Terry
Operationalizing Style: Quantifying the Use of Style Shift in the Speech of African American Adolescents
vast majority research date african american vernacular english style shift taken form qualitative analyses individual case studies however despite great success focusing individual rather group style style shifting work unable answer key questions style style shift level social groups communities practice broader based communities recent quantitative analyses craig washingtons 2006 dialect density measure ddm sought capture stylistic variation group level analyzing dozens linguistic features meant represent dialect use large numbers features severely restricts types statistical analyses applied given data set therefore limits utility technique test whether smaller subset features used quantify stylistic variation analyzed sample 108 sixthgrade students observed two conditions differed formality three measures used track changes style two largescale ddms constructed set 40 variables subset measure used 6 variables analyses indicate larger ddms highly correlated subset measure thus indicating small number features used reliably reflect shifting styles