This Element uses data from the Springville Project to explore how the functions of the inherited forms invariant be (from English sources) and zero (from creolization) have transformed during the twentieth century. Originally just alternative present tense copula/auxiliary forms, both features developed into aspectual markers – invariant be to mark durativity/habituality and zero to mark nonstativity. The motivation for these innovations were both socio-cultural and linguistic. The Great Migration and its consequences provided a demographic and socio-cultural context within which linguistic innovations could develop and spread. The mismatch between form and function within the present tense copula/auxiliary system and the grammatical ambiguities that affected both invariant be and zero provided linguistic triggers for this reanalysis. When taken together, the evolution of these forms illustrates how restructured linguistic subsystems (and eventually new varieties) emerge out of the interplay between inheritance and innovation.

This monograph examines the ways in which Caribbean content creators use elements of Caribbean Englishes and Creoles in their performances of identity in image macro memes and TikTok videos. It also examines the ideologies that underlie these performances. The data comprises memes from Trinidadian Facebook pages, as well as videos by Guyanese, Barbadian, and Trinidadian TikTokers, and was analysed using the multimodal method designed by Kress. For meme makers, identity is understood as a system of distinction between ingroups and outgroups, and language and other semiotic features, notably emojis, are used to distinguish Trinidadians from other nationalities, and groups of Trinidadians from one another. TikTokers establish their Caribbean identity primarily through knowledge of lexis, but this works in concert with other linguistic features to create authentic identities. Social media content is underpinned by the tension between the acceptance and rejection of standard language ideologies.

English fulfils important intra- and international functions in 21st century India. However, the country's size in terms of area, population, and linguistic diversity means that completely uniform developments in Indian English (IndE) are unlikely. Using sophisticated corpus-linguistic and statistical methods, this Element explores the unity and diversity of IndE by providing studies of selected lexical and morphosyntactic features that characterise Indian English(es) in the 21st century. The findings indicate a degree of incipient 'supralocalisation', i.e. a spread of features beyond their place of origin, cutting through the typological Indo-Aryan vs. Dravidian divide.

During the first half of the twentieth century, degradation, poverty, and hopelessness were commonplace for African Americans who lived in the South's countryside, either on farms or in rural communities. Many southern blacks sought relief from these conditions by migrating to urban centers. Many others, however, continued to live in rural areas. Scholars of African American rural history in the South have been concerned primarily with the experience of blacks as sharecroppers, tenant farmers, textile workers, and miners. Less attention has been given to other aspects of the rural African American experience during the early twentieth century. African American Life in the Rural South, 1900-1950 provides important new information about African American culture, social life, and religion, as well as economics, federal policy, migration, and civil rights. The essays particularly emphasize the efforts of African Americans to negotiate the white world in the southern countryside. Filling a void in southern studies, this outstanding collection provides a substantive overview of the subject. Scholars, students, and teachers of African American, southern, agricultural, and rural history will find this work invaluable.

"This ground-breaking collection proves that there is still a great deal to learn about the lives of black southerners. The essays offer a counterpoint to the standard story that all African Americans in the rural South found themselves mired in poverty and dependency."--Melissa Walker, author of Southern Farmers and Their Stories "A remarkable achievement. The authors in this collection have retrieved African American farm owners from the margins of history, making clear that life on the land for African Americans not only transcended sharecropping but also shaped the contours of the struggle for freedom and justice."--Hasan Kwame Jeffries, author of Bloody Lowndes This collection chronicles the tumultuous history of landowning African American farmers from the end of the Civil War to today. Each essay provides a case study of people in one place at a particular time and the factors that affected their ability to acquire, secure, and protect their land. The contributors walk readers through a century and a half of African American agricultural history, from the strivings of black farm owners in the immediate post-emancipation period to the efforts of contemporary black farm owners to receive justice through the courts for decades of discrimination by the U.S Department of Agriculture. They reveal that despite enormous obstacles, by 1920 a quarter of African American farm families owned their land, and demonstrate that farm ownership was not simply a departure point for black migrants seeking a better life but a core component of the African American experience. Debra A. Reid, professor of history at Eastern Illinois University, is author of Reaping a Greater Harvest: African Americans, the Extension Service and Rural Reform in Jim Crow Texas. Evan P. Bennett is assistant professor of history at Florida Atlantic University.

Debate over the evolution of Black English Vernacular (BEV) has permeated Afro-American studies, creole linguistics, dialectology, and sociolinguistics for a quarter of a century with little sign of a satisfactory resolution, primarily because evidence that bears directly on the earlier stages of BEV is sparse. This book brings together 11 transcripts of mechanical recordings of interviews with former slaves born well over a century ago. It attempts to make this crucial source of data as widely known as possible and to explore its importance for the study of Black English Vernacular in view of various problems of textual composition and interpretation. It does so by providing a complete description of the contents of the recordings, by providing transcripts of most of the contents, and by publishing a group of interpretive essays which examine the data in the light of other relevant historical, cultural, social, and linguistic evidence and which provide contexts for interpretation and analysis. In these essays a group of diverse scholars on BEV analyze the same texts for the first time; the lack of consensus that emerges may seem surprising, but in fact highlights some of the basic problems of textual composition and interpretation and of scholarly dispositions that underlie the study of BEV. The papers raise crucial questions about the evolution of BEV, about its relationship to other varieties, and, most important, about the construction and interpretation of linguistic texts.

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