“Talking Black in America” is the first film to ever focus solely on African-American speech. This seems strange considering the dialect has many regional variations and a heavy influence on all speakers of American English, but it is highly marginalized and often misconstrued. “Talking Black in America” seeks to be the documentary that shatters the damaging misconceptions often held about black speech.

The project has been in the works for three years after NC State’s Language and Life Project received a grant from the National Science Foundation, but its executive producer has studied this dialect for more than 50 years. Walt Wolfram, a professor in the English department, attributes his passion for linguistics to his own background.

“My parents were German immigrants,” Wolfram said. “It was right after World War II [that they moved] and Germany wasn’t that cool, and so I had to learn English. I developed a sensitivity to language because I wanted to be a cool American.”

Wolfram started studying black speech in the ‘60s when segregation was still prevalent. The film explains that the linguistic isolation of slave descendants and crowded, segregated housing in urban areas as African-Americans later moved north were major factors in the development of the dialect.

“To me, it was fascinating that people in the same city could speak so differently,” Wolfram said. “Blacks and whites interacted through sports, and so I was just fascinated that these two linguistic worlds existed within the confines of one city and basically right next door.”

The project’s Neal Hutcheson and Danica Cullinan worked together to produce and edit the pivotal documentary. The production team, under Wolfram’s guidance, received a grant in 2013 and, after 6 months of planning, went on the first production trip to South Carolina in 2014.

“I remember, around the time when we were just starting the project, a white friend asked me what I was currently working on,” Hutcheson said. “I told him and he immediately responded, ‘black English is totally ungrammatical,’ perfectly demonstrating the prevalent social perspective, as well as people’s presumption to make authoritative statements about language.”

The film explains that many American cities sought to restrict African-American housing to one specific area within their city limits, and they often built living quarters up vertically as opposed to letting them sprawl out horizontally. Verbal skills within these neighborhoods were often ways in which residents won respect.

“What surprised me was how well our production trips tended to work out,” Cullinan said. “There was only so much we could do ahead of time to connect with people — we needed to be able to meet speakers once we got there, people who were willing to go on camera and talk about their personal experiences with something that is stigmatized by many in our society.”

Participants in “Talking Black in America” range from black linguists to everyday people on the streets. One interviewee, in particular, wondered what black speech was even supposed to be. He said that if he was black, then his speech must automatically be black, yet he often had people ask why he talked white.

“I understand the irritation,” Wolfram said. “The definition of black speech casts a very wide net. Often, black people who don’t use these vernacular features are irritated that they’re excluded because the focus is on the vernacular, the things that are most different.”

And it is not uncommon for people to code-switch, which is a shift into more socially acceptable patterns of speech in formal settings. Standard African-American English is not stigmatized but is still uniquely black in intonation, according to Wolfram, and he gives the example of a colleague that would code-switch.

“In the seven years she was a friend, and a good friend, I never heard her talk like she talked to her mother and her sister,” Wolfram said. “People are very natural at switching based on circumstance and interaction … People often code-switch. It’s a sensitive issue. They’re not thinking about it until we make them think about it and talk about it.”

The documentary is still undergoing editorial changes, but it was screened at Hunt Library on March 23. A discussion followed with Wolfram as one of the panelists, Craig Brookins, a psychology professor at NC State, as the second and poet Shirlette Ammons as the third.

Despite stigma and marginalization, there are many aspects of black speech that are revered and used as models in the entertainment industry. Ammons said that she sees her black speech as being magnetic.

“When I think of black language, I think of it as one of our greatest exports.” Ammons said.

Wolfram has been involved in documentaries on language before and he hopes that this one will last for a long time to help shine more light on black speech. Even as slang terms continue to constantly evolve, grammar rules tend to be more resilient.

“The life of a documentary on language is actually pretty robust; it’s up to 25 years,” Wolfram said. “Our studies are more focused on pronunciation and the rules of grammar which change a lot slower than slang terms.”

This is just another misconception that people often hold about black speech — the idea that it has no grammatical structure. But just like any other language, African-American English has its own set of rules and features. “Talking Black in America” hopes to advocate for its recognition, and Ammons continues to advocate for a wider-spread appreciation of it.

Ammons took a Nikki Giovanni quote, which states that black love is black wealth, and she made it her own for the “Talking Black in America” viewing.

“Black talk is black wealth,” Ammons said.

The Language and Life Project has conducted fieldwork on a variety of the 15 specific dialects existing within the 300 recognized languages in the U.S., examining everything from the “mountain talk” in the Southern Appalachian mountains, to the speech patterns of Ocracoke Island of the Outer Banks. The project has produced 13 total documentaries along with multiple podcasts and recordings in order to bring awareness and acceptance to the many stigmatized dialects that exist within the U.S.