A study analyzed the use of six nonstandard linguistic variables by eight adolescent and eight adult African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), each group equally divided into males and females, from Muncie, Indiana. The study was designed to investigate whether occupation, a social variable, also determines AAVE speakers' use of nonstandard linguistic features, and whether AAVE adolescents behave differently. Results do not indicate a significant difference between AAVE male and female adults in use of these nonstandard linguistic variables, which does not strongly support the findings of precious research that men tend to use nonstandard variables more frequently because men are recognized socially by their occupation instead of their speech. AAVE adolescents, not having occupation as a social variable, do not show significant difference either, except for one variable, conforming to linguistic behavior of their adult counterparts. Findings suggest that the social variable, occupation, does not play a significant role in this population. Contains 31 references. (Author/MSE)