Interestingly, though I have no doubt you are already aware of this, I seem to remember reading sometime in the let 80's that Pidgin in Papua New Guinea had replaced the Queens English as the official language of their parliament.

I think it is important to note that while there are indeed different types of English all over the world, and British English isn't governed by the same rules as some other languages, it remains nonetheless disticnt from other types.

American-English is defined by clear differences in spelling and the American-English dictionary has a clear identity of itsa own, despite the overriding similarities.

Which brings me to ask; would it be fair to describe what you are doing as an attempt to compile some kind of definitive text of Black American English in relation to folksongs?

This seems like a pretty complex and hard to define task.

To what extent will you be looking at socio-political factors?

To what extent will you be charting the evolution from African linguistic/cultural roots and the intermingling of other cultural factors?

You have quite a task before you just identifying the focus of your novel.

Are these questions helpful?

Could each of these considerations be the foundation of individual chapters?

Are they each hugely complex topics in their own right that could merit multi volume texts per topic?

What will the basic investigation be?

What is the premiss?

What are you hoping to clarify?

could you get funding to do something like this?

could you approach some uni somewhere to use their research facilities and maybe get some letters after your name in the process?

If these are questions that interest you, who could you go to to get them answered?


Just some thoughts ...