Legitimate Language: James E. Shepard’s Use of Mitigation Strategies to Advance Black Education

ABSTRACT:This research offers a critical context-sensitive discourse-historical analysis of a speech by James E. Shepard, the Black president and founder of North Carolina Central University. Shepard’s speech negotiated his identity as an educated Black man in the Jim Crow South by using perspectivation to switch between the point of view of an African American and that of a North Carolinian, thus establishing a bond with white members of his audience based on locational loyalty. A better understanding of how language is used by oppressed populations contributes to LIS scholars’ understandings of the usage of information in society.