A word concerning political correctness and choice of terminologyFor a non-native speaker it is not always easy to evade all the pitfalls of political correctness a language has to offer. This is more a problem of cultural than of linguistic knowledge. I would like to stress that, in case any individual feels slighted by my choice of terminology, that this has never been my intention. Throughout this thesis I use the terms "African American" and "European American" to refer to the groups traditionally and/or historically referred to as "Blacks"/"Negroes" on the one hand and "Whites"/"Caucasians"/"Anglos" on the other. Some of these terms do not share exactly identical extensions, e.g. an American citizen of Egyptian origin might be considered an African American (since, indisputably, Egypt is an African country), but not to be a "Black" (as traditionally identified by skin color). This might, theoretically, have a minor distorting effect. In some contexts, especially when discussing older research on this topic, I will present quotations that contain words strongly frowned upon today. These quotations should be viewed in their historical contexts.For the form of speech under discussion here I have chosen the term "African American Vernacular English"/"AAVE". I am conscious of the fact that this term is viewed critically by those who stress the influences of African languages on AAVE more than the influence of varieties of English. I also know that my choice of calling AAVE a "variety" instead of a "language", and of referring to AAVE as "basilect" rather than "low-prestige language" might be debatable. These choices have no bearing on my research, though, since the measurement of attitudes functions in identical ways, whether I consider the attitude object to be a language or a variety.xii