This current time of pandemics and protests is a visceral and constant reminder that the racial and economic legacies of slavery were not only unresolved but continue to determine the courses of our daily lives. Few universities have attempted to address these past and present injustices through direct and explicit reparations. Charity Hudley expands on Labov (1972) and Rickford (1987). She reformulates the principle of debt incurred and the unequal partnership between linguistics and the African American speech community into a model for linguistic reparations.

As part of the model for linguistic reparations, Charity Hudley presents work from the Talking College Project, a Black student and Black studies centered way to learn more about the particular linguistic choices of Black students while empowering them to be proud of their cultural and linguistic heritage. Students took introductory educational linguistics courses that examined the role of language in the Black college experience and collected information from college students through both interviews and ethnography. The Talking College project has supported faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Students have conducted over 100 interviews with Black students at several Minority-Serving Institutions, Historically Black College, and Predominantly White Universities. Talking College participants also conducted multi-student ethnographies on over ten college campuses, and Charity Hudley herself lived as a faculty in residence at the University of California Santa Barbara for two years of the project began.

One key question of The Talking College Project is: how does the acquisition of different varieties of Black language and culture overlap with identity development, particularly intersectional racial identity development? These findings are helping us create an equity-based model for what linguistic information Black students need to be successful in higher education as it is now and gives us information so that we can work in pursuit of a future version of higher education that is more inclusive of the Black experience. As such, Talking College collects explicit feedback on how faculty can help establish opportunities for students to access content about language, culture, and education within the undergraduate and graduate curriculum. Charity Hudley addresses the work we need to do as educators and linguists to provide more Black college students with information that empowers them and respects their developing identity choices.

Labov, William. (1982). Objectivity and Commitment in Linguistic Science: The Case of the Black English Trial in Ann Arbor. Language in Society, 11(2), 165-201. Retrieved September 24, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4167310

Rickford, John. (1997). Unequal Partnership: Sociolinguistics and the African American Speech Community. Language in Society, 26(2), 161-197. Retrieved September 24, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4168760

Calhoun, Kendra, Anne H. Charity Hudley, Mary Bucholtz, Jazmine Exford, and Brittney Johnson. (2021) "Attracting Black students to linguistics through a Black-centered Introduction to Linguistics course." Language 97, no. 1. e12-e38. doi:10.1353/lan.2021.0007.

Bio:

Dr. Anne Harper Charity Hudley is professor of Education at Stanford University. She is a professor of African-American Studies and Linguistics, by courtesy. She is affiliated with the Center for Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) and the Program in Symbolic Systems. She is a fellow of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Her research and publications address the relationship between language variation and Pre-K-16 educational practices and policies and high-impact practices for underrepresented students in higher education.

She is the co-author of four books, The Indispensable Guide to Undergraduate Research, We Do Language: English Language Variation in the Secondary English Classroom, Understanding English Language Variation in U.S. Schools, and Talking College: Making Space for Black Language Practices in Higher Education.

Her other publications appear in journals including: Language, Child Development, Language Variation and Change, American Speech, Perspectives on Communication Disorders and Sciences in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Populations, Cultural Studies in Science Education, and many book collections, including the Handbook of African-American Psychology, Ethnolinguistic Diversity and Literacy Education, the Oxford Handbook of Sociolinguistics, and The Oxford Handbook of Language in Society.

She is a Co-PI on several current grants, including NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates and NSF Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate program grants designed to reimagine how we educate students from backgrounds that are underrepresented on college faculty, particularly in the social, behavioral, and STEM sciences.

Charity Hudley has served on the Executive Committee of the Linguistic Society of America, the Standing Committee on Research of the National Council of Teachers of English, and as a consultant to the National Research Council Committee on Language and Education.