Articulate While Black

What do Language Varieties do?
EBONICS RANT

• IT SHAPES IDENTITY.
• not just a list of features that belong to a given race, rather, linguistic features can be employed by speakers as they shape their identities or more accurately engage in a process and projects of identification.
• IT IDENTIFIES RACE: project here is to "language race". It is an importnat aspect of "racializing" individuals 

What about Black language?

• any black person who is successful must be able to speak several different forms of the same language fluently (multi-dialectal)
• "blaccent"-John McWhorter (all the aspects of Black English that can be coded in speech)
• language remains relatively UNEXAMINED by scholars of race and ethnicity, it plays a crucial role in the construction of racial and ethnic identity.
• not seen as a site of cultural struggle, so it is not part of our public national discourse

How about Obama?

DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION 2008

• seen as a "good" speaker
• clear
• direct
• down to earth
• careful
• measured
• deliberate
• inspiring
• empowering
• motivating
• highly educated
• articulate
• handsome, nice looking
• speaks standard

• language entails all aspects of communication (these are very NUANCED for fluent speakers) Entails communicative and linguistic competence.
• vocabulary
• grammar
• prosody
• stylistic modes of expression
• linguistic play
• paralingusistic features
• knowledge of the culture (hip hop, etc)
• rules for style shifting 
• examples
• nah
• copula absence
• signifying (snappin, bustin, crackin, playin the dozens, dissn)- entail use of wit and humor
• shifting style closer to the person he is speaking to
• preacher style (pauses metaphors, rhythm and repetition, cadence, timing, signifying and storytelling)
• cites scripture
• offers the flock a choice between good and evil, right and wrong
• offers a way to perfect our character
• call and response
• referencing the black struggle

YES WE CAN, New Hampshire

• Courting the White audience
• speaks standard English-whites don't feel alienated by his language
• educated, calm and polite
• white mother
• WHITE SYNTAX
• CHRISTIAN (not Muslim)
• linguistic links between him and famously admired African Americans
• Funny (diffusses)

• Courting the Black audience
• familiar with black style
• black father (African)
• Member of Black Church, CHRISTIAN (Reverend Wright)
• BLACK STYLE
• sounds Black but not too Black (linguistic shame)
• linguistic links between him and famously admired African Americans

A MORE PERFECT UNION SPEECH

• ARTICULATE; While Black
• "racially coded" meaning
• linked with Standard English, Whiteness, and intelligence
• theory of "exceptionalism"-he's not like those other Blacks (lazy, dumb, criminal)
• The "New" racism (Yoshino), Racism 2.0
• The language of African Americans is intensely scrutinized-social monitoring, language policing in the public sphere (like Black Bodies)
• subtext of amazement and bewilderment when used by Whites about Blacks (assumption-inarticulate) 
• can cast them as "White" (good or bad)
• Intentionality is no longer a measure of racism
• praised for abiding by White linguistic norms
• evokes long standing tradition of Black language as "deficient"
• Linguistc hegemony is beneficial to linguistic minorities and linguistic homogenization is preferable to linguistic diversity

Linguistic Profiling