Sonja L. Lanehart (; born November 4, 1966) is an American linguist and professor of linguistics in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona who has advanced the study of language use in the African American community. Her work as a researcher, author, and editor includes African American English, education, literacy, identity, language variation, women's languages, intersectionality, and inclusivity within the African American community. Lanehart's sociolinguistic orientation prioritizes language as a phenomenon influenced by sociocultural and historical factors. She also utilizes the perspectives of Critical Race Theory and Black feminism in her work. Lanehart was the Brackenridge Endowed Chair in Literature and Humanities at the University of Texas at San Antonio from 2006 to 2019, and was selected by the Linguistic Society of America as a 2021 Fellow.
Life and career
Early life and family Lanehart was born on November 4, 1966, in the town of Picard in the Southern United States, where she lived until leaving to attend graduate school in Michigan. Until sixth grade, she lived in a Black, working-class neighborhood and attended a magnet school; her family then moved, and Lanehart went to a more integrated middle and high school. She describes her family as "middle-class."
Lanehart cites her family as having a significant influence on her studies. Her book Sista, Speak! (2002) presents the narratives of five African American women all immediately related to Lanehart (including Lanehart, herself). Their struggles with literacy, due to a lack of education and opportunity, motivated her to create an outlet in which their stories could be told, and so she prioritizes supporting those closest to her through her work. Lanehart also acknowledges her husband, Paul, and her son, Isaac, as significant people in her life.
Higher education and career For her bachelor's degree, Lanehart attended the University of Texas at Austin and majored in English with a minor in Educational Psychology. After graduating in 1990, she continued on to receive her master's from the University of Michigan in 1991 with a degree in English Language Literature, specifically in Medieval Studies. Remaining at the University of Michigan, she obtained her Ph.D. in 1995 in English Language and Literature.Curriculum Vitae, Sonja L. Lanehart
While working towards her Ph.D., Lanehart was a graduate student teaching assistant from 1992 to 1993 at the University of Michigan. She then joined the faculty of the University of Georgia as an assistant professor of English Language Studies and Linguistics from 1995 to 2002, and was promoted to associate professor in 2002. In 2006, Lanehart moved to the University of Texas at San Antonio as the Brackenridge Endowed Chair in Literature and Humanities. She remained in that position until 2019 when she joined the faculty of the University of Arizona as a professor of Linguistics and Faculty Fellow in the Graduate College, with a concurrent position in the Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies program.
Major works
Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English (2001) On September 29–30, 1998, Lanehart facilitated a two-day conference called "AAEV State of the Art Conference" at the University of Georgia, where she was affiliated at the time as an assistant professor of English Language Studies and Linguistics. Various linguists, including William Labov and Geneva Smitherman, were invited to present their work. Lanehart then compiled and edited the presentations as Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English (2001). The book is divided into five parts with fourteen chapters total, each chapter being authored by a different scholar who participated in the panel.
Lanehart was responsible for writing the acknowledgements section and a chapter in the introduction titled "State of the art in African American English research: Multi-disciplinary perspectives and directions," in which she promotes the importance of the book as well as summarizes each chapter. In the introduction, Lanehart explains the central goals of the conference: to increase scholarly understanding on how African American English is used within a speech community; to place African American English in a global context to allow comparison among other languages; and to more broadly highlight the significance of language use in other linguistic groups. She also posed a set of questions to the panelists regarding the relationship of African American English to other languages and its role in education, family, and community. At the core of these ten points of inquiry was, "What is African American English?" The editor asked these not with the expectation that they be answered, but to lay a foundation for future conferences on African American English as a guide to measure progress in the field.
Lanehart's text prioritizes the language as a sociocultural and historical phenomenon, stating that the two "are fundamental aspects of the nature and continued existence of African American English as well as, for example, identity, self-efficacy, resilience, motivation, goals, and possible selves." She also stresses the need for increased research in the field of sociolinguistics, specifically, for studies that include multiple generations and ones that focus on identity. Further, Lanehart expresses her belief that research on African American English must be more accessible to the public so that those outside of the academic sphere can utilize it in responding to educational and social concerns. This could mean, for instance, tailoring second-dialect instruction in the classroom to speakers of different varieties of African American English.
Sista, Speak! Black Women Kinfolk Talk About Language and Literacy (2002) In her book Sista, Speak!, Lanehart tells the narratives of five African American women in her family across three generations: Maya, her grandmother; Grace, her mother; Reia, her aunt; Deidra, her sister; and Sonja, herself. Through her research, she aims to answer the question, "What are the language and literacy attitudes, practices, and ideologies of my participants?" Lanehart discusses the influence of race, education, community, and language prestige on these specific women's speech practices and on African American language overall. Lanehart argues that the notion of a "standard," and therefore "correct," English does not exist, so labeling African American English as inferior is baseless. For example, one of the syntactic features of African American English that Lanehart identifies in the narratives is negative concord, or double negative, exhibited in the sentence, "I don't want nobody doing that." Negative concord is a widely used and legitimate feature of African American English, while speakers of Standard English would consider the sentence to be incorrect. She states that African American English itself is not flawed, but that the culture that criticizes it is. One of Lanehart's goals for the book is to instigate self-reflection. She expresses that her incentive to write came from a desire to answer childhood questions about African American women, language, and literacy. Readers must "study" themselves and their contexts of interactions to understand the role of sociocultural and sociohistorical factors in building identity.
Sista, Speak! is divided into two parts, each containing six chapters. Part One begins with Lanehart describing her motivations for writing the book, and then presents all of the five narratives. To gather her data, she conducted individual oral interviews in which she asked each participant to respond to quotations about African American English versus "standard" English. She also compiled written data by collecting their essays, letters, and creative writing pieces. The narratives communicate the background, education, language, literacy, and individual goals of each woman. Part Two provides a scholarly analysis of each of these elements (background, education, language, literacy, and individual goals), updates the reader on the women's lives five years after the data was collected, and explains the consequences of the research. By using self-narratives as her form of data, Lanehart exemplifies the interconnectedness of language, identity, and culture, further solidifying the book's sociolinguistic orientation.
Lanehart concludes with a discussion on the status of non-standard, minority dialects, accents, and languages in the United States. She cites linguistic prejudice as an enduring issue that has contributed to social and educational discrepancies, specifically between Black and white Americans. In order to overcome these inequalities, Lanehart states that society must purge the idea of a "proper" language, and instead, recognize a non-hierarchical range of linguistic diversity.
In 2004, Debra Goodman, Professor of Specialized Programs in Education at Hofstra University, and Yetta M. Goodman, Regents Professor of Education at the University of Arizona, published a review of Sista, Speak! in Language in Society (33:3, 2004). Goodman and Goodman commend Lanehart for providing a platform on which African American women's voices and stories can be heard. They focus on her message that there is not one "correct" form of English, but rather, that language is bound to culture and so manifests in many varieties. They state that educators, therefore, must be cognizant of the linguistic biases that create a problematic academic environment for students who do not speak Standard English. According to the reviewers, "The beliefs and language policies of teachers, materials, programs, and schools cannot be separated from language learning," and these influences then extend into communities to have significant consequences. Goodman and Goodman endorse Lanehart's idea of the interconnectedness of language and identity while adding the perspective of its implications in education.
African American Women's Language: Discourse, Education, and Identity (2009) African American Women's Language: Discourse, Education, and Identity (2009), or AAWL, was published after the 2008 conference "African American Women's Language" hosted by Lanehart in San Antonio, Texas. The presentations by various scholars, including Lisa Green and Arthur K. Spears, were compiled and edited by Lanehart. She also wrote the introduction. AAWL is made up of four parts with 17 chapters total, each chapter being authored or co-authored by the presenters.
Part 1 ("Language and Identity") concentrates on the relationship between language and identity, as well as on the societal, cultural, and historical background of African American women's language; Part 2 ("Discourse, Grammar, and Variation") offers a more specific analysis of the structure, discourse, grammar, variation, and use of African American women's language in different contexts; Part 3 ("Film and Literature") discusses how African American women's language—and, consequently, the women themselves—is portrayed in both contemporary and historical literature and film; and Part 4 ("Performance and Community") examines the ways a speaker performs linguistically and the particular environments in the African American community where African American women's language is employed.