DEDICATION: To Dr. Ida J. Stockman1

In 2013, issue editors Yvette D. Hyter and Kenyatta O. Rivers, along with two other colleagues, gave an invited lecture at the National Black Association of Speech-Language-Hearing focused on speech act behaviors produced by young African American children (DeJarnette, Hyter, Rivers, & Wyatt, 2013). During the discussion that followed this invited presentation, one of our esteemed mentors and colleagues, Dr. Ida Stockman, called for more published information on the diverse and rich range of pragmatic language behaviors produced by African American children and adolescents. This issue of Topics in Language Disorders (TLD) is in response to that call. We are indebted to Dr. Stockman's leadership in the area of African American child language and dedicate this issue to her.

Much of the literature on the language of African American children and adolescents has focused on the morphosyntactic aspects of African American English (AAE). Less of the extant literature has addressed pragmatic aspects of language, defined generally as the use of language in social situations. African American children whose language does not include features of AAE morphosyntax and phonology may exhibit pragmatic language behaviors that are valued and utilized in many African American communities, associated with their sociolinguistic heritage. Pragmatic language skills are essential for successful communication and are facilitated by collective social and cultural expectations and practices (Hyter, 2007; Rivers, Hyter, & DeJarnette, 2012), as well of cognitive skills of the communicator (Hyter, 2012; Perkins, 2007; Timler, 2008). If these behaviors are not well understood by speech-language pathologists and educators, African American children may be over- (or under-) identified for needing speech-language intervention (Hwa-Froelich, Kasambira, & Moleski, 2007).

Over the past 30 years, research on pragmatic language of African American children has largely focused on the structural and content analysis of narrative discourse skills (Hyter, Rivers, & DeJarnette, 2012). Articles in this issue of TLD address pragmatic language of African American children and adolescents in a variety of contexts. This issue addresses two goals. The first goal is to help TLD readers understand the full range of pragmatic language skills produced by African American children and adolescents in such areas as theory of mind, speech acts, and spoken and written language discourse (e.g., exposition). The second goal is to add to the language knowledge base, research on pragmatic language aspects of African American children and adolescents, a topic area that has been underrepresented in the literature.

This issue begins with, "Pragmatic Language of African American Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Synthesis of the Literature," in which Hyter, Rivers, and DeJarnette (2015) synthesize findings from 55 peer-reviewed journal articles and dissertations. In this overview article, the authors identify the major pragmatic constructs that have been investigated in the literature, describe the sampling sizes and participants of the studies examined, discuss the range of research designs and data gathering procedures employed in the analyzed articles and dissertations, and summarize the major research findings and their implications.

In the article, "African American Preschoolers' Emotion Explanations Can Provide Evidence of Their Pragmatic Skills," Curenton (2015) reports on an emotion-explanation task she used to examine the pragmatic language skills of young African American children. That task includes responding to Wh- questions about emotions, understanding mental states, and providing responses related to a conversational topic. The results of Curenton's study suggest that young African American children can employ a variety of emotion explanations and provide on-topic responses related to a given topic. In addition, age is associated with clear explanations of emotions, and prosocial skills are correlated with positive emotional explanations (e.g., happy), but not necessarily with negative emotional explanations.

DeJarnette, Rivers, and Hyter (2015) examine two different ways to analyze speech at behaviors in "Ways of Examining Speech Acts in Young African American Children: Considering Inside-Out and Outside-In Approaches." The etic approach is one that uses evidence from speakers of general American English to apply to the speech acts behaviors of African American children. In contrast, the emic approach consists of letting the characteristics of speech acts emerge from the behaviors of African American children. Using an emic approach, the authors highlight some "culture-specific" speech acts and assert that the addition of an emic approach to research on the pragmatic language of African American children and adolescents will provide a more complete picture of typical and atypical speech acts produced by young African American children.

In "When It Comes to Explaining: A Preliminary Investigation of the Expository Language Skills of African American School-Age Children," Koonce (2015) underscores the importance of expository text for academic success, as well as the limited number of studies that have focused on the expository language abilities of African American children and adolescents. Koonce found that the expository language of African American children is similar to the existing literature on expository language of their European American counterparts when performing the task of explaining a favorite game or sport. In Koonce's examination of the relationship between pragmatic and syntactic skills, she found that scores for syntactic skills were not related to scores for pragmatic effectiveness.

In the article, "Pragmatic Features in Original Narratives Written by African American Students at Three Grade Levels," Kersting, Anderson, Newkirk-Turner, and Nelson (2015) examine the written narratives of fourth, sixth, and ninth graders for pragmatic features of discourse style that occur in the African American oral tradition. The authors found that pragmatic features of the African American oral tradition were present in the written narratives of both African American and European American school children but African American children used some of these features (parallelism and cultural references in particular) more frequently than their European American counterparts. Kersting et al. emphasize the importance of recognizing pragmatic features in discourse that are characteristic of cultural discourse styles for the richness that they may add to writing.

In summary, this issue of TLD has taken a "road less traveled" to explore areas largely neglected in prior research. As Issue Editors, it is our hope that the articles in this issue will bring into sharper focus the rich tapestry that makes up the pragmatic language behaviors of African American children and adolescents.

-Yvette D. Hyter, PhD, CCC-SLP

-Kenyatta O. Rivers, PhD, CCC-SLP

Issue Co-Editors

REFERENCES