This investigation attempts to determine the social distribution and contextual shifting of African American English (AAE) within rural Southern African American communities. The study compares selective diagnostic AAE variables and features of speech rate and pause in the speech of three recognized sociopolitical leaders in public presentations and sociolinguistic interviews. The results show that there are not significant shifts in the use of AAE from the sociolinguistic interview to the public presentation settings and that leaders do not necessarily align their speech with their age and sex cohorts in terms of vernacular AAE usage. The authors conclude that the relative autonomy of the community, its endocentric versus exocentric orientation, the primary public service constituency of the leader, the different social affiliations and divisions within the community, the speaker’s personal background and history, and the socialized demands and expectations for public presentation are all factors in understanding the leaders’ use of local vernacular and mainstream standard variants.
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