In the aftermath of the 2013 trial in which George Zimmerman was prosecuted for, and subsequently acquitted of, the murder of Trayvon Martin, an African American man, the public perception/evaluation of African American English (AAE) in the United States has resurfaced as a key issue within sociolinguistics. For example, Rickford and King (2016: 949), in a high-profile article in the journal, Language, argue that it was AAE that was ‘on trial’ in this case, and that linguists must assume some responsibility for ‘dispelling fictions and prejudices against vernacular speech.’ In this paper, I am also interested in the social evaluation of AAE in a U.S. courtroom; however, building on Rickford’s and King’s work, I suggest that a focus on ‘language and linguistics’ may not go far enough in investigations of linguistic differentiation and social hierarchies.