Sonja L. Lanehart

Lanehart began her involvement with The Linguistic Society of America as a graduate student at the University of Michigan, and has had several roles within the organization, including as a presenter, an event organizer, and a chair. She became more involved in the society while at the University of Georgia as an Associate Professor of English Language Studies and Linguistics. She co-chaired the Committee on Ethnic Diversity in Linguistics for several years, and continues to be involved in that sector of the LSA. The LSA named Lanehart a 2021 Fellow, one of nine chosen for the year’s class. Fellows are “Members of the Society who have made distinguished contributions to the discipline” which may include “scholarly excellence, service to the LSA, service to speech communities, teaching and mentoring excellence” among others.

Anne H. Charity Hudley, Professor of Linguistics at the University of California Santa Barbara, offered her review of the OHAAL in the Journal of Sociolinguistics (21:2, 2017). Charity Hudley also praised the book for being comprehensive and for allowing the voices of both established and new scholars in the field to be heard. She commented that the variety of methodologies represented through the diverse authorship allows readers to understand the developments in the study of African American language within linguistics and in African American studies more generally. Charity Hudley stated one of the biggest shortcomings of the OHAAL to be “the lack of big picture perspectives in the individual chapters,” along with it leaving unanswered questions relating to the implications for African American culture as a whole. According to the reviewer, the chapters would have been more effective by prioritizing a broader contextual analysis over specific studies. Charity Hudley finishes by commending the authors, and names Lanehart, specifically, for their thorough and inclusive work.

The OHAAL received a largely positive response. Jessica Grieser, an Assistant Professor in Rhetoric, Writing, and Linguistics at the University of Tennessee, praised the book for its comprehensiveness in the academic journal Language in Society (45:5, 2016). She highlighted its effectiveness in including both long-standing issues in the field as well as contemporary research to push the boundaries of African American linguistic study. Grieser commented that some of the authors did not demonstrate a full understanding of every detail in their subfield, but that this was remedied by the breadth of topics discussed and by the book’s appeal to many different audiences. She states that the OHAAL makes an "indelible contribution" to the study of African American speech communities, and "[recognizes] the multiplicity and the richness of the African American Language."

Lanehart edited The Oxford Handbook of African American Language (2015), or OHAAL, a research text on language use in African American communities containing seven parts with forty-eight chapters total. The parts appear in the order as follows: "Origins and Historical Perspectives," "Lects and Variations," "Structure and Description," "Child Language Acquisition and Development," "Education," "Language in Society," and "Language and Identity." The chapters are authored by various scholars in the field, including John R. Rickford and Salikoko S. Mufwene. In addition to her role as editor, Lanehart co-authored the introduction with Ayesha M. Malik and wrote a chapter titled “African American Language and Identity: Contradictions and Conundrums” in the section “Language and Identity.”

Lanehart's work has been cited by other sociolinguistic scholars, such as in Robert Wardhaugh's An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (2011) and in Miriam Meyerhoff's Introducing Sociolinguistics (2018), who utilized Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American Language (2001) and The Oxford Handbook of African American Language (2005), respectively. Lanehart's texts have also been applied in the context of linguistic prejudice and of education. To name a few, in Black Linguistics: Language, Society, and Politics in Africa and the Americas (2003), Lanehart's Sista, Speak! (2001) is cited in the chapter "Linguistic Profiling" by John Baugh; John Edwards' Language Diversity in the Classroom (2009) cites The Oxford Handbook of African American Language (2005); and the article "Why Study the U.S. South? The Nexus of Race and Place in Investigating Black Student Achievement" in SAGE Journals (38:1, 2009) uses material from Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American Language (2001).

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.

In 2006, the University of Texas at San Antonio’s College of Liberal and Fine Arts named Lanehart as the Brackenridge Endowed Chair in Literature and Humanities, a title she held until 2019. The George W. Brackenridge Foundation was established in 1920 to provide financial support to students in Texas public schools and charter schools, as well as to those pursuing higher education. With the finances from this grant, Lanehart distributed funds to her students, attended linguistic conventions, and organized academic conferences (such as the one that led to the publication of African American Women’s Language (2009)). The funding also contributed to the publication of The Oxford Handbook African American Language (2015) through the hiring of a copy-editor, an indexer, and research assistants.

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.

A year later, Geneva Smitherman and Arthur K. Spears published “Response to Kirk Hazen’s Review of Sonja L. Lanehart’s Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English” in American Speech (79, 2004). Spears, Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology at The City University of New York, and Smitherman, retired Professor and Director of the African American Language and Literacy Program at Michigan State University, each contributed a chapter to Lanehart’s book. They assess and rebut each of Hazen’s criticisms individually.

In this same year, Hazen published a brief reply to Smitherman and Spears’ response in American Speech (79, 2004). He begins by clarifying the purpose of a book review: to motivate the audience to read the book, to provoke meaningful thought about the book by considering the reviewer’s comments, and to improve overall knowledge on the topic. Because Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English (2001) is an extensive text with input from many scholars, Hazen explains that writing a review allowed him to reflect on how developed research on African American English was at the time. Although he presented “critiques” in the review, he did not aim to “establish criticisms.” Hazen finishes by returning to Smitherman and Spears, citing them as “respected elders” in the field. The differences in opinion of the parties, he explains, are natural, are indicative of the varying backgrounds and orientations in linguistics, and are essential to progressing scholarship.

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.

Several years after its publication, Lanehart’s book Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English (2001) ignited a controversy. In 2003, West Virginia University linguistics professor Kirk Hazen published a review in the academic journal American Speech (78:1, 2003) summarizing, commenting on, and critiquing each chapter. According to Hazen, there are certain problematic aspects of the book, including having unclear terminology such as “creole-like” and “language of thought,” focusing mainly on the language of African American English and not on the “sociocultural and historical contexts for it,” and only using empirical data in one subsection. Additionally, Hazen comments on Lanehart’s introduction section in which she addresses the ten questions she posed to the presenters. In this chapter, Lanehart acknowledges that all of the questions “were not resolved nor were they expected to be,” to which Hazen responds that the authors “[were] given impossible tasks.”

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 has been a member of the American Dialect Society since 1998. She has worked as a Proposal Reviewer (as of March 2020), is on the Nominating Committee for a four-year term that began in 2019, and has a position on the Editorial Advising Committee from 2021 to 2023. Lanehart has presented and spoken at various American Dialect Society symposiums, such as on January 2–5, 2020 for the "Unapologetically Black Language, Linguists, and Linguistics" conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, where she was the Invited Presidential Address Speaker.

While working towards her Ph.D., Lanehart was a graduate student teaching assistant from 1992–1993 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.

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.

The introduction discusses how the study of African American English has developed since the 1990s to encompass a broader range of topics, both within linguistics as well as in other fields. Examples include research in education policies, on African American women’s language, on child language acquisition, in anthropology, in sociology, among others. Lanehart and Malik also state the goal of the book, that being to collectively display contemporary and traditional research on African American language from a range of scholarly perspectives with a broad readership in mind. They believe collaboration and dialogue to be important in furthering the inquiry into and knowledge of African American English, and so OHAAL serves as a tool for future academic work to be more effectively executed.

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.

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."