The sociolinguist William Labov, in his study of African American children in Harlem, found that the artificial (and strange) atmosphere of talking with white professionals, as well as the one-on-one nature of the testing, altered children’s speech significantly (1969, 1970). The children gave their interviewers one-syllable answers to questions and were judged slow-witted and verbally inept. When given a black, inner-city interviewer and allowed to have a friend present, the results were very different. In a more familiar cultural context, the children were highly verbal and utilized skills
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