Brown Bag Seminar: Race, Dialect Prejudice, and Literacy in the Zimmerman Trial and Beyond

The testimony of Rachel Jeantel, close friend of Trayvon Martin and the prosecution’s star witness in the trial of George Zimmerman, was the subject of considerable public commentary in the summer of 2013. Social media pilloried her for her “slurred” or “ungrammatical” speech and described her as stupid and ignorant. But as Rickford and King show from analyses of her use of zero copula, absence of third singular present, possessive, and plural –s, and other features, she follows the systematic grammar of African American Vernacular English quite faithfully.

Rickford and King discuss the evidence of Jeantel’s limited literacy that emerged during the trial, and the poor reading performance of African American students at her school, Miami Norland, and in the Miami-Dade public school district, neither of which came to public attention. They ask about the extent to which speakers of African American Vernacular English and other dialects are misunderstood, disbelieved, or otherwise unfairly evaluated in courts, schools, and other settings. Those who clamored for “Justice for Trayvon” after the trial should work assiduously to reduce or remove the inequities African Americans face in our courts and schools. And there are at least some strategies for doing this.

Professor John Rickford is a leading expert on linguistics, with a focus on Ebonics, Creole, and Guyanese language studies. His studies often focus on linguistics as the field applies to urban education, social class, and ethnic identity. Well-known in his field, Rickford is the J.E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Humanities and Professor of Linguistics, as well as the President of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics.

Rickford has published numerous books, including "Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English," the winner of an American Book Award in 2000. He has published articles widely within his field, and has been interviewed by media sources including ABC, CBS, News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and US News and World Report. His scholarly opinions and research in the areas of Ebonics and education can be found in publications across the globe over the last 25 years. See full bio>>

Sharese King is a second-year graduate student in the Department of Linguistics at Stanford.