At UMass lecture, Stanford professor tackles prejudice against African-American English in courtrooms
A woman’s testimony in court is accused of being “unintelligible” because she speaks a different dialect of English, specifically African American English. The slang terms or speech patterns that she uses do not sound grammatically correct to the courtroom, but back home, it is normal speech. Rickford interestingly notes in the article that since interpreters for foreign languages are used in the courtroom, we should also use those resources of dialects of English that are not as easily interpreted by conventional speakers of the language.