Webinar: From Word to Voice: Representing Pronunciations in the Oxford Dictionary of African American English by OUP Academic Marketing

From Word to Voice: Representing Pronunciations in the Oxford Dictionary of African American English

About

The Oxford Dictionary of African American English (ODAAE) is nearing publication of the first set of dictionary content.

Now that a significant portion of entries have been drafted, the team has turned to pronunciations editing. Join us for this virtual panel discussion where the program team will share some of ODAAE’s approach to developing written and audio pronunciations:

How to represent the broad range of pronunciation variation in African American English in ways that are both authentic and accessible to dictionary readers of all backgrounds
How the program will preserve the 'living form' of each headword and/or phrase
Some examples on which the team has worked so far
Audience Q&A

Please note that this event will be recorded, and all registrants will be notified once the recording is available for viewing.

When

Thursday, 24/09/2026 · 17:00 London (UTC +1:00)

Presenters

Dr Tracey Weldon (panel chair)

Professor and Senior Associate Dean, University of South Carolina

Dr. Tracey L. Weldon is a Professor of English and Linguistics at the University of South Carolina, where she also serves as Senior Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Faculty Development in the McCausland College of Arts and Sciences. Weldon completed her PhD in Linguistics at The Ohio State University, specializing in quantitative sociolinguistics with a particular focus on African American English. Weldon currently serves as Vice-President/President-Elect of the Linguistic Society of America. She is an Associate Producer of the Emmy award-winning documentary “Talking Black in America,” author of Middle Class African American English (Cambridge, 2021), an inaugural member of the editorial board for the Journal of Black Language and Culture (Cambridge), and an Executive Editor and advisory board member of the forthcoming Oxford Dictionary of African American English.

Anansa Benbow

Senior Lexicographer, Oxford Dictionary of African American English, Oxford University Press

Anansa Benbow is a Senior Lexicographer for the Oxford Dictionary of African American English (ODAAE). She completed her B.A. in Linguistics from the University of Rochester and her M.A. in Applied Linguistics at Teachers College, Columbia University. For her M.A. project, Anansa discussed "aight so boom" as a pragmatic marker in African American English. Previously, Anansa has worked with multilingual youth in Providence, RI and New York, NY. This motivated her to give a TEDx Talk entitled, Grammar Skool, which discussed language discrimination towards Black children in the K-12 space. Most recently, Anansa was a dialect coach for a theater in Chicago, IL working on their production of Sister Act. Anansa is the host of The Black Language Podcast, which seeks to honor Black people of the past, present, and future - a goal she hopes to continue with the ODAAE.

Dr Sharese King

Associate Professor, Linguistics, University of Chicago

Sharese King is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Chicago and she received her PhD in 2018 from Stanford University. Her research draws on phonetic, ethnographic, and experimental techniques to explore how African Americans' speech is constructed and racialized and the implications for these racialized voices within the judicial system in the United States. King has a coauthored editorial in The Los Angeles Times and has published in journals such as Journal of Sociolinguistics, Language, and Nature.

Dr Holly Dann

Senior Pronunciation Lexicographer, Oxford University Press

Holly Dann has been working as a Senior Pronunciation Lexicographer with Oxford Languages since 2022. Her editorial work spans a variety of Oxford Languages projects, including the Oxford English Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary of African American English. This work involves researching and creating pronunciations – both written transcriptions and audio – for dictionary entries, and developing editorial policies and practices for pronunciation lexicography. Outside of her work as a lexicographer, her academic research has broadly explored the connection between accent and social identity. Before coming to Oxford Languages, she completed a PhD in sociophonetics at the University of Sheffield and worked as a postdoctoral Research Associate on the Manchester Voices project.

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