Ebunoluwa Akadiri, COL ’25, Midlothian, VA
This summer, I received the wonderful opportunity to continue my independent research project started under the College House Fellowship Program (CHRF). My project, titled “Black Americans & Linguistic Discrimination in Health Care,” focuses on the primary usage of African American English (AAE) in healthcare settings and how it could be related to health care discrimination across the United States. This project is especially important because not only is there a limited amount of research available on this trend, but it also has the potential to improve the health conditions of African Americans across the country. Additionally, it could provide valuable insights into how many African American children communicate before learning to code-switch*.
After developing and identifying my study population, I have spent a majority of my time working on recruitment strategies, analyzing language and speech patterns, and developing my IRB protocol. This has been a difficult but gratifying process namely due to the fact that I am not a linguistics expert. limited. However, throughout the summer, I have been reading African American English: A Linguistic Introduction by Lisa Green. This book has helped me understand AAE more and familiarize myself with the grammatical rules of the dialect. It has been especially useful due to the fact that AAE is not recognized as a dialect of Standard American English (SAE). Additionally, due to the novel nature of my research, it was crucial to establish a protocol that allows for flexibility and growth. For example, I initially limited my interview sample to 10-12 participants, aiming to recognize consistent patterns of speech and behavior before considering an expansion of the sample size if necessary. The full protocol requires multiple levels of planning, including the creation of consent forms, interview guides, and confidential data agreements.
It has been a fascinating journey, and now that my protocol is in the process of approval/review, I am excited to continue my research. Once approved, I will draft a comprehensive literature review that will serve as a foundation for understanding the broader implications of my findings and their potential impact on reducing linguistic discrimination in healthcare settings. This review will also serve as the foundation for my independent research paper, which I hope to begin writing at the end of the Fall semester or the Spring semester.
I am extremely interested in pursuing this project to the extent of my ability and using it as a stepping stone for extending this research topic to other facets of life, such as education. I aim to investigate how children who speak AAE are treated in educational settings from childhood through higher education. I am grateful for this experience and look forward to conducting fieldwork soon, interviewing participants, and expanding my linguistic knowledge by learning more about speech patterns in AAE. As a Black woman who has been criticized for the way I speak for half my life, this project is not only fulfilling but also a way to highlight voices that may be suppressed.
*Code-switching refers to the practice of alternating between two or more languages or dialects in a conversation.
This is part of a series of posts by recipients of the 2024 Career Services Summer Funding Grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they spent their summer. You can read the entire series here
