Nadia, top left, pictured in cap.

To speak about African American English is to also speak about the children and the communities who speak this language. The Academy Award winning 1993 feature film,  I Am A Promise, documents one year in the life of African American children attending Stanton Elementary School, an elementary school in urban Philadelphia.

The film opens with the following information:

“Stanton Elementary School is located in North Philadelphia, a troubled inner city neighborhood. Stanton is designated a Chapter One School which receives federal funds to help educate disadvantaged poor children who test below national norms in reading and math. All of the students are African American boys and girls between the ages of four and ten. At Stanton over 90% of the children come from single-parent homes and live in poverty.”

In this film, one cannot help but be moved by Nadia, a precocious ten year-old who has a gift for writing. We learn that although Nadia is the daughter of two parents who at the time are addicted to drugs, she is a straight-A student in the academically-gifted track at Stanton Elementary School. At the age of eight, a homeless Nadia takes it upon herself to seek out a healthier environment with a neighbor who she becomes a positive grandfather figure to her. The clip below from I Am a Promise introduces us to Nadia and her grandfather.

In the film, Nadia highlights the year 2011 as the year that she will be 31 years old and married. We at Word. wanted to know what happened  20 years later to the little girl who held such great promise? As Rickford and Rickford note in Spoken Soul (p. 163), “African American students, particularly the majority, who come from working-class and underclass backgrounds, have been failing in schools nationwide. Or rather, schools nationwide have been failing African American students.” What happened to Nadia, a child who grew up in an environment like so many African American children, where kids are forced to deal with abject poverty, neglect, hunger, and crime, all while pursuing an education, and a life of hope and promise?

We found her. And what she tells us is that her ‘grandfather’  is responsible for her success in life. While others doubted her ability to overcome her circumstances, Nadia’s grandfather believed in her. His unwavering support helped her stay focused and motivated because she never wanted to disappoint him. After high school, Nadia went on to pursue a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and later started her own beauty salon. She is currently writing her memoir.

Nadia at 30 years old in 2011.

In this powerful film, the analyses of the educational system and the ways in which it fails young, talented African American comes from the   highly dedicated principal, Deanna Burney.

The historical  plight of  many African Americans due to economic and racial segregation and  inequality had been well documented as the cause of the achievement gap that exists between African Americans and White Americans. And while this distance  has been improving, the gap continue to exist. So perhaps Nadia serves as an inspiration for young African Americans who must find the resilience to succeed in spite of limited resouces and historical odds stacked against them. Nadia reminds us:

If you see someone in any of those situations, just pretty much do whatever you can to help them because when you like that, you need it…I’m no different. It’s just that I see different and I want different. You know what I mean? So you can put that in a child that lives in an abandoned house on a corner that barely got shoes to go to school. You can make them want something for themselves. Just show them that someone else wants it for them.

The take away lessons for us all from Nadia’s life is that all children need to feel supported and nurtured throughout their education. They need to feel as though what they do matters, not only for themselves, but for those around them. Such a simple, yet crucial element to academic success is not always available in working class communities where often times parents themselves have historically  grown up in depressed situations where they have not had opportunities to advance educationally, socially and economically. Or, parents must work multiple shifts at work just to put food on the table. Then, it is critical that the educational system plays a role in  fostering  a community in which students can learn, in addition to  finding positive self-reinforcement.

Special thanks to Renee Blake’s  Spring 2011 Graduate Class on African American Language (NYU Department of Social and Cultural Analysis), especially Devon Moss, Lashaya Howie, Sereetta Adams and Lucy Odigie.

YouTube sensation, Jose Hustle.

Written by guest bloggers LaShaya Howie and Akintoye Moses.

We BEEN considering how to break down the linguistic features of African American English.  BEEN contemplating the oral tradition of boastin’ and braggin’ within the African American experience. The bottom line, is that we BEEN in need of an examination of the complexities of how we, as African Americans, have BEEN using language in profound ways.

Jose Hustle, YouTube phenomenon since 2008, gained notoriety though his charismatic bragging in several of his clips which have gone viral.  Repeatedly, he boasts about his excessive material possessions –his abundance of Ralph Lauren Polo gear, his multiplicity of flavors of Vitamin Water, his ridiculous stacks of paperwork on his desk. Yes —stacks. of. paper.

But something in addition to Jose’s obsession with consumption is drawing hundreds of thousands of YouTube viewers.  Let’s be serious.  Who cares that he has hundreds of Polo t-shirts, some “still in the pack”?  Does it really matter that the mini fridge in Hustle’s dorm room is stocked with every flavor of Vitamin Water? Paperwork???… Who really cares? Actually, we care. We care because we recognize and appreciate that Jose Hustle is performing common aspects of the African American oral tradition.

Jose Hustle has become famous using the catchphrase “I BEEN had ________ (polo/vitamin water/ etc.)”. This phrase makes use of a syntactic construction not found in standard English (“BEEN had”). It’s thought that the first “BEEN had” video was done by a rapper named Ju from the group D4L, in his single Been Had Money. This video then sparked the creation of a number of response videos, including Hustle’s, which went on to gain internet notoriety. But that doesn’t mean everybody gets what he’s saying. In fact, one YouTube commenter had this to say about Been Had Polo:

@youngsheed1: you seem to be confused about the meaning of the phrase “I’ve been had”. It doesn’t mean “i have” (some object) with emphasis, it means “I was the victim of a scam (or similar).”, and takes no object. In addition, the stress generally goes on the “had” (I’ve been HAD!), not the “been”, unless you wanted to emphasize that you’ve /already/ been had.

Unfortunately what this commenter doesn’t realize is that Jose’s use of the phrase “BEEN had” means something different in African American English (AAE) than it does in Standard American English (SAE). In fact,  Hustle is making use of what noted linguist, John Rickford, calls  “stressed BIN” (BIN=BEEN), which is a marker of African American English. It is called “stressed BIN” because of the emphasis the speaker places on the word been in the sentence. Contrary to what the above commenter thinks, the SAE equivalent of “I BEEN had polo” wouldn’t be about getting taken advantage of, but would actually be something like, “I have had many Polo items and for a very long time.”   In one word, Jose’s use of stressed BEEN captures this same meaning; consistency sustained over a long period of time.  Jose says, over and over, that he “BEEN had Polo.” Polo ain’t new to him and he has several t-shirts, jackets, and flip flops to prove that his collection ain’t going nowhere.

Besides his use of BEEN, Jose’s use of language is consistent with African American English oral tradition in another way.  According to another noted linguist, Geneva Smitherman, AAE consists of several distinct features of verbal performance.  In other words, our use of language is often an artistic expression. One of these features is boasting, or more specifically, what Smitherman calls braggadocio. She describes braggadocio as boasting about one’s “physical badness, fighting ability, lovemanship, and coolness.”  In this regard, Jose Hustle epitomizes the pursuit of coolness. We, and the other nearly 240,000 viewers watch, respond, imitate, and in many ways, relate to Hustle. Is it because his piles of Polo make him cool? Maybe. Or is it because we are wowed by his use of language? Perhaps. Or maybe we are attracted to his use of language as art.

Jose Hustle may not change his name to Jose Linguist anytime soon, but he is skilled in what he does—and he may not even realize it because it comes so naturally. He draws you in. He makes you notice him. Maybe he even makes you envy him.  His use of language is undeniable. Through Jose’s flaunting of his material possessions, he commands notice and visibility; triumphantly using an essential part of the African American experience, language.

LaShaya Howie is an enthusiastic recent graduate of NYU with a Master’s in Africana Studies and Museum Studies. She currently works at Weeksville Heritage Center, an African American historic site, in Brooklyn.

Akintoye Moses is an educator, photographer, and poet from San Francisco.  He currently lives in New York City, where he is pursuing an M.A. from New York University at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study. 

In many cultures, proverbs are used to counsel, impart wisdom, and motivate others.  The beauty of proverbs is that while their use and interpretation reflect universal human experiences, they also carry localized meanings and frames of reference unique to individual cultural groups.  Proverbs allow community members to orally transmit knowledge and cultural values to one another.

Geneva Smitherman, one of the foremost experts on African American English (AAE), maintains that ‘the use of proverbs as a rhetorical tradition’ in the African Diaspora ‘reflects the continuity of the African consciousness among new world Blacks’.

The education I received while growing up in the rural south was not limited to one source.  Though I attended school Monday through Friday, I also went to Sunday school and church, participated in cultural events at home and in the community, and spent a little bit of time out in the streets.  My mother wit, or God-given wisdom, helped me navigate many difficult situations, adding to my personal growth and development.  But I learned some of my most important life lessons from my elders in the form of proverbs.  These proverbs are a source of truth and inspiration that I will carry with me always.  I discuss a few of my favorites below.

Here are a few of my favorites:

• To this very day, my grandfather reminds me not to be naïve or gullible by telling me don’t take no wooden nickels.

•  My great-grandmother would say, every closed eye ain’ sleep and every goodbye ain’ gone, which means that things aren’t always what they seem.  This proverb lets us know that people are always watching our actions.

• Feed ‘em with a long-handled spoon means that there are certain people in life that you have to keep at a distance.

• If by chance someone tells you that you got to ease your hand out the lion’s mouth, it means that you must take great care in getting yourself out of a sticky situation.

•  Using an analogy from needlework, my great-grandmother used to tell my mother to knit and tuck, meaning that as you work and go about your daily life, you should constantly save or ‘tuck’ something away for hard times.

The cultural knowledge stored in proverbs is often not fully appreciated until you reach adulthood.  I find myself using proverbs more and more, mainly when speaking to African American peers and those younger than me.  Sometimes, however, I test them out on elders to display my competence in African American English and my home culture after so many years of formal schooling.

In sum, proverbs play an integral role in the formative experiences of many African Americans, and they help to guide their steps throughout the rest of their life.  They’re a source of wisdom for me, which I, in turn, share with others, providing cultural continuity for future generations. In this way, the circle remains unbroken.  And as the old saying goes, though the players may change, the game remains the same. 

Simanique Moody is a postdoctoral researcher in the Linguistics Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  Her research examines the grammatical structure of African American English and the historical relationship between African American English and Gullah-Geechee in southeast Georgia.  She is also interested in contact linguistics and language variation. A profile of Simanique and her work appeared in Word. last fall.

Singer Joy Denalane.

Written by guest blogger Casey Wong

From Jamaica, France, Puerto Rico, Japan, to Palestine, to almost every continent on Earth, hip-hop has gone global.  Joy Maureen Denalane, born to a German mother and South African (Xhosa) father in Berlin, adds a new twist to the global spread of African American English (AAE) and culture.

With a new album (“Maureen”) on the way, her third studio album to date, Joy Denalane has risen from an ambitious 16 year-old pursuing her love of music, to a critically-acclaimed international soul-singer and performer. So what’s the catch? She’s singing in German. So what’s the real catch? She’s singing in German with African American English features.  In an interview from 2007 we find Joy pointing out a reason for some of her African American English influences, “I was born and raised in Berlin, I am really a German but people might sometimes think because of my accent that I’m American . . . the reason why I speak the way I do was just because I work with African-Americans. So, I just picked it up like that, you know?”

Although Joy was exposed to virtually no African American English speakers during her childhood, she grew up in a household filled with African American music.  At the tender age of sixteen Joy decided to leave school and pursue a music career, greatly influenced by her father and her brothers’ introduction of hip hop music (“when I was a teenager I would listen to hip-hop from my brothers”), and caught her first break collaborating on the single “Mit Dir” with popular local German hip hop group Freundeskreis.

Although Joy released an album in English in 2006, “Born & Raised,” which featured collaborations with Lupe Fiasco (“Change”) and Wu-Tang Clan’s Raekwon (“Heaven or Hell”), her reputation and power rests on her first solo studio album released in German in 2002, “Mamani.” While Joy has not yet found widespread sales and recognition in the United States, she has been referred to by many of her German fans as “Germany’s First Lady of Soul.”

Joy lists her greatest “contemporary inspirations” as Mary J. Blige, Lauryn Hill, Alicia Keys, Faith Evans, Tweet, and Beyoncé.  Below is a list of some African American English features found in one of her popular singles, “Höchste Zeit,” from her hit album “Mamani.”

• Use of Hip Hop Nation Language (HHNL) vocabulary, derived in the context of and utilizing African American English.

In the line “Ich seh’ uns pimpin’ in videos, egotrippin’ in interviews,” Joy uses the vocabulary items pimpin’ and egotrippin’, which originate from hip hop and ultimately AAE,  in her German lyrics.

• Speakin’ on “gittin’ ovuh,” a feature of the African American oral tradition.

Translated from German, Joy says, “What the hell is going on with us, I see us pimpin’ in videos, egotrippin’ in interviews, and we call it rhythm and blues.” She makes reference here to the common criticism by hip hop pioneers and hip hop “heads” about how contemporary hip hop music and culture has lost its way and become a commodity relying upon the “gangsta-pimp-ho” trinity to sell records (for more see Tricia Rose’s The Hip Hop Wars).  Joy speaks on what is needed for the survival of rhythm and blues, what is needed to “git ovuh” on a corrupting music business.

• Gerund reduction (when the word-final ng is reduced to n’).

In the line, “Ich seh’ uns pimpin’ in videos, egotrippin’ in interviews,” we find Joy enunciating pimping as pimpin’ and egotripping as egotrippin’.

• Use of rhyme and assonance, commonly found in the African American oral tradition.

In Joy’s music, she makes use of not just rhyme, but also alliteration:

Was zum Teufel ist mit uns los

ich seh’ uns pimpin’ in videos

egotrippin’ in interviews

und das nenn’ wir dann rhythm & blues

wir sing’ den soul verkaufter seelen

die vergänglich sind, nie mehr aufersteh’n

Joy rhymes los and videos, pimpin’ and egotrippin’, interviews and rhythm & blues, sing’den and seelen, and Sind and aufersteh’n.  Joy also makes use of assonance with the recurring “i” sound (as in the word “in”) in the successive words pimpin’, in, videos, egotrippin’, in, and interviews:

• Tonal semantics in the African American oral tradition.

Joy frequently makes use of intonational contouring and talk-singing in the tradition of African American soul artists.  Although Joy’s vocals are for the most part in German, it is easy to see how she has been undeniably affected by the African American Language musical tradition of singers as Aretha Franklin and Etta James.

• African American oral tradition of blending the sacred and the secular.

Joy makes use of the African American musical tradition of artists like Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige, Ray Charles, James Brown and Michael Jackson, whose music we find blending the sacred and the secular; that is, incorporating religious or spiritual ideas, imagery, or practices into primarily secular music.  The translation of “Höchste Zeit” from German is “High Time,” and we find Joy’s song concerned with a message that can be seen to be blending the sacred and the secular.  The recurring chorus is a good example:

Es ist höchste Zeit aufzusteh

aus dem Totenreich der verkauften Seelen

was nützt uns all das Geld, wenn das Ende naht

es gibt nur eine Welt zu bewahr (2x)

which can be translated to . . .

It is high time to get up

from the dead souls of the sold

what good is all this money, when the end draws near

There is only one world to be preserved (2x)

We at Word. hope to hear much more from this phenomenal artist in the future.

Casey Wong is a second year Sociology of Education Master’s student at NYU.  He dedicates this blog post to M.A., an inspiration for his study of African American English.

LMFAO DJs Redfoo and SkyBlu (son and grandson, respectively, of Berry Gordy, founder of Motown record label)

An eclectic mix is topping the Billboard Charts this week and everything from pop to electro-hop songs seem to reflect features of African American English (AAE). Now don’t get us wrong, we’re not claiming artists such as Lady Gaga are native AAE speakers! But we do argue that many of the artists we hear on the radio are influenced by African American music and language. Highlighted here are features commonly associated with AAE. Keep in mind, these features are not exclusive to AAE, and can be found in other non-standard dialects of English spoken across regions and social groups.

Let’s take a look at the lyrics:

• #1 “Give Me Everything”- Pitbull, featuring Ne-Yo, AfroJack, and Nayer

“I could make you my queen/ make love to you endless”

Here we see Pitbull dropping the word-final -ly when he says “endless” instead of the Standard American English (SAE) version of the adverb “endlessly”.

• #3 “Party Rock Anthem”- LMFAO featuring Lauren Bennett and GoonRock

“We gon’ make you lose your mind” (chorus)

In this Electro-hop hit, DJs Redfoo and SkyBlu mean, “we are going to make you lose your mind” (SAE gloss). Gon’ is thought to be a reduced form of gonna, a non-standard auxiliary derived from going to.

• #5 “Super Bass”- Nicki Minaj

“When he come up in the club, he be blazing up”

Nicki Minaj is playing with AAE to describe her crush. Her lyric features the absence of third-person -s in come (comes in SAE), and habitual be. This be is particular to AAE; it indicates that the described action tends to occur often, habitually, or continuously. Finally, Minaj uses slang, blazing, to tell us he is extremely attractive. Essentially, Nikki is letting everyone know that “he usually looks good when he enters the club”.

• #6 “Edge of Glory”- Lady Gaga

“There ain’t no reason you and me should be alone tonight”

The use of multiple negative forms (in this case, ain’t and no) in a sentence, without a change in the sentence’s negative interpretation, is called negative concord. The SAE gloss of this is “there’s no reason you and me should be alone tonight”.

• #8 “Moves Like Jagger” – Maroon 5 featuring Christina Aguilera

“But if I share my secret/ you’re gonna have to keep it”

Once again we see gonna in lieu of going to, to express “but if you share my secret/ you’re going to have to keep it” (SAE).

• #9 “The Lazy Song”- Bruno Mars

“No I ain’t gonna comb my hair”

Here we see the use of ain’t for is not/are not, gonna for going to, and reduction of because to ’cause. This would be like saying, “I’m not going to comb my hair” in SAE.

• #10 “How to Love” – Lil’ Wayne

“When you was just a young’un/ your looks were so precious”

In this lyric, Lil’ Wayne uses was-levelling, which is when the verb form was can be used not just with the first person singular pronoun (I) or with the third person singular  pronoun (he/she/it), but with any pronoun, including we, you and they. Wayne also employs the term young’un, which usually refers to young children or teenagers. The SAE version of this would look something like: “When you were a teenager, your looks were so precious”.

As you enjoy the holiday with your loved ones, see if you note any of these features on the radio. As always, we’ll have our ears tuned for AAE and keep you in the loop!

*Top ten songs as recorded by Billboard Hot 100 for the week of July 9, 2011

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

(From http://www.usconstitution.net/dream.html)

Researchers at the Black ASL Project have highlighted features of black American Sign Language (ASL). This signed language differs from that used by whites. For example, black signers tend to use two hands as opposed to one for certain signs. Two handed signs include “REMEMBER” and “DON’T-KNOW”. This is particularly evident in the Southern parts of the United States that were most affected by school segregation. African American signers also tend to sign certain words higher (at the forehead level) than whites typically do, such as  “BLACK” and “TEACHER”. Certain lexical items from spoken African American English have also permeated the sign language of the black deaf community. Thus, younger black ASL speakers are signing words like “MY BAD”, “STOP TRIPPING”, “GIRL, PLEASE”, and “WASSUP”.

Since many deaf schools in the United States did not become de-segregated until the mid 1960s, researchers are studying these changes in the ASL linguistic system before and after integrative legislation to figure out what’s happened with black sign language since the integration of these schools. The Black ASL Project is comparing the signing of people who attended segregated deaf schools in the southern U.S. (North Carolina, Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, Virginia and Louisiana), to those who attended the same schools after they became integrated. We at Word. are looking forward to learning more about this African American variety of English.

To see black ASL in action, check out the videos on the Black ASL Project Facebook page.

Rapper Nicki Minaj

This week we’re going to focus on the new queen of hip hop, Nicki Minaj. Nicki’s been all over the airwaves in 2010, lending verses to an array of tracks alongside the likes of Drake and Eminem. She recently had the highest-selling 1st week ever for a female rapper with the debut of her first album, Pink Friday, on November 19th.

Onika Tanya Maraj, or Nicki Minaj (as she is better known), was born on December 8, 1984 in Trinidad. She came to the US around the age of 5, where she was then raised in Queens, NY. Minaj used to perform via Myspace, until she appeared in a music DVD that caught the attention of hip hop star Lil’ Wayne. Shortly afterward, she signed with Lil’ Wayne’s record label, Young Money Entertainment. Since then, Nicki Minaj’s animated and creative public persona has grown to reflect the drama skills she learned while studying at LaGuardia  Arts High School in Manhattan. Nicki incorporates her acting skills into her music through what she calls her “alter egos.” These characters are very different from one another, as they each express things that Nicki herself would not say, according to the rapper in an interview with Chelsea Handler on Chelsea Lately.

(Chelsea asks about Nicki’s alter egos at about 2:26)

There are at least three alter egos that make up Nicki Minaj: Barbie, Roman, and Martha, Roman’s mother. (Nicki also mentions Rosa, a Spanish-speaking alter ego she created for George Lopez.) Sometimes she performs these alter egos in conversation with one another, other times they seem to interject Nicki’s raps with interesting points. Regardless of whether they’re talking to the audience or one another, the characters are very distinct. As Nicki explains on Chelsea Lately, they each have their own ‘accent’ and express themselves quite differently.

First, there’s Roman. According to Minaj, he is an angry and vicious gay boy prone to lashing out. He has a deeper, rougher voice than Nicki’s normal one. Roman also plays with prosody to produce emphatic, choppy speech in his raps. Nicki often pronounces his name as Roe-man, with what linguists call a fronted o. This pronunciation of the o vowel is a feature that researchers have found to be associated with the speech of gay men (as well as several regional dialects), although we don’t actually hear it too much in Roman’s speech.

Unlike her “son”, Martha (Roman’s mother) is  formal and mild mannered.  She speaks English with a British accent, which involves making use of r-lessness and changing her vowel pronunciation to sound more British and less American.

Then there’s Barbie, the sweet, naive girl with the high-pitched sugary voice. Barbie’s speech most closely approximates Standard American English, although she tends to hyper-articulate her vowels and word-final rs, which produces a kind of mocking effect.

Finally, we have the real Nicki, who refers to her own accent as that of a “South Side Jamaica, Queens girl”. It’s clear that she is speaking a variety of African American English (AAE) that is particular to New York City. You can hear her New York City AAE accent in the way she pronounces words like all, called, boss and on. The raising of the vowel in these words is strongly associated with New York City speech and is often portrayed in the media, for example on the early nineties Saturday Night Live segment Coffee Talk with Linda Richman.

Interestingly, Chelsea Handler reacts at one point to a shift in Nicki’s speech, which occurs following a number of short and one-word answers to Chelsea’s questions. Nicki begins to tell a story, and her speech speeds up significantly. “You’re going all Puerto Rican on my a**, all of a sudden,” Chelsea says. To which Nicki replies in AAE “Chelsea sit yo a** down!” (To see this, begin viewing the clip at 1:40.) So why did Chelsea read Nicki’s speech as Puerto Rican?

One explanation might be this: When Puerto Ricans first arrived to the US, they settled among African American communities and attended the same schools. As a result of living in such close proximity to African Americans, they picked up AAE. As such, we find quite a bit of overlap between Puerto Rican English and African American English.

Check out Nicki Minaj’s verse in Kanye West’s Monster to get a sense of her incredible ability to switch between different ways of speaking as she switches between characters.

(Note: this song contains language that some may find offensive).

“The book is packed with the stories from my life that are the foundation of my lyrics… But it always comes back to the rhymes. There’s poetry in hip-hop lyrics–not just mine, but in the work of all the great hip-hop artists, from KRS-One and Rakim to Biggie and Pac to a hundred emcees on a hundred corners all over the world that you’ve never heard of. The magic of rap is in the way it can take the most specific experience, from individual lives in unlikely places, and turn them into art that can be embraced by the whole world.” When you open this dense manuscript you may not know where to begin. We at Word. suggest that you start with the book’s yellow pages which include Jay-Z’s songs, where he will direct you to his footnotes. Here, you will enter his world, his sharp mind, his lyrics, his experience and African American language and expression at its highest form. Then start at the beginning of the book. You will get a new perspective on a lived black experience.

2. To fully appreciate Decoded, check out the #2 book on our list, Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English, by John Russell Rickford and Russell John Rickford. This is the quintessential book on African American English. This book was awarded the 2000 American Book Award. If you or your loved ones don’t believe Ebonics (or Black English, or AAE) exists, this book is a must read. Spoken Soul has the power to change minds. It empowers readers by giving them an in-depth understanding of the structure of AAE. We learn about the history of this dialect of English and how it originated. We are also introduced to how AAE is skillfully used within the African American community by writers, comedians, actors, and in the church. We all have heard Ebonics jokes. This book puts those jokes in perspective in terms of the how the language is portrayed by the media and the educational consequences for our nation’s young African Americans.

3. At #3 is John Baugh’s Out of the Mouths of Slaves: African American Language and Educational Malpractice. It is a great follow-up to #2. What better way to bring in the new year than thinking about equity and justice. This book does just that by dispelling myths about African American English and educating educators and the public about the origins of African American English and its place in American history and society. Baugh couches his discussion of AAE in the context of cross-cultural communication and shows how many African Americans are systematically discriminated against because of the language they speak. We come to understand the debates around African Americans English within the U.S. educational system. Hopefully, by the end of this book, readers will have a fuller appreciation of the dialect of English many of the nation’s children bring to school, which has strong historical roots.

4. Rickford’s in the house! This time at #4 is I Can Fly: Teaching Narratives and Reading Comprehension to African American and other Ethnic Minority Students by Angela Rickford. Research has shown that African American students, unlike their white counterparts, do progressively worse the longer they stay in school. This book is timeless in its argument that for all students to fly and soar in an academic setting we must expose them to reading that is culturally relevant and meaningful. Furthermore, teachers can connect to their students and provide a nurturing learning environment by accessing the students’ cultural backgrounds. We at Word. were most struck by two lessons that Rickford gives to educators of our children. The first is that students excel most when given more challenging reading. She reminds us that

Poor readers are not de facto poor listeners or poor understanders, and even though it might be reasonable to assume that they need manageable materials for reading on their own, it does not follow that they should be deprived of the challenges and cognitive journeys that more sophisticated texts afford whenever reading is required.

Rickford’s second critical lesson is that ethnic minority students come to school with already well-developed contextualizing and creative imagination skills. However, these same students are tested in reading comprehension with techniques that are decontextualized and require only literal and factual recall. For Rickford, “higher-order” kinds of questions should be part of the curriculum and testing procedure. Finally, in Rickford’s research she used ethnic narratives that featured African and African American characters, but the other ethnic minority students connected to them based on cultural similarities.  This speaks the power of inter-ethnic exposure and appreciation, which is also important in creating a environment in which students can achieve even more.

5. We started this post with Jay-Z, an individual hip-hop artist and we end at #5 with hip-hop again, this time with an organization. At # 5, Marcyliena Morgan, founder and director of the Hiphop Archive brings us The Real Hiphop: Battling for Knowledge, Power, and Respect in the LA Underground. Morgan gives us an in-depth look at the individuals who make up Project Blowed, a strong network of young men and women in a Los Angles underground hiphop community. According to Morgan,

“Hiphop does not simply answer questions about language, discourse, and society on a regular basis but it tests, teases, manhandles, and critiques those questions in order to display and analyze the social, cultural and political reality of the local and social world as  seen by the MC.”

The  words, rhymes, lyrics, thoughts and expressions of MCs or “Masters of Ceremonies” in the LA hip-hop scene are exposed for us to view. Morgan shines a light on these youth that allows for an appreciation of their art, skills and knowledge.

Happy holidays from Word. The Online Journal on African American English!

As we approach the holiday season and church seats get filled with worshippers, we thought that we would revisit one of out most sort after posts from April 22, 2010, The Black Bible Chronicles.

Our post noted:

In September of 1993, P.K. McCary published the first of a two-volume set entitled Black Bible Chronicles. McCary explained that she wanted to create a version of the Bible that would relate to young people “in the streets”, and insists that there is no meaning lost through the translation. She felt that in order to reach young people of the streets and to get them to learn about God, the Bible has to be translated into a language they could understand–namely, African American English. Her version of the Bible is written with AAE features and vocabulary.

We then asked a question that generated much discussion among commenters:

What do you think of the Black Bible Chronicles? Do you think it will actually have a positive effect on the lower-class community and among speakers of AAE? Many people are likely to find her work offensive; not only within the religious sphere (for altering the Bible), but also among African Americans themselves, for numerous reasons. One is that the title (Black Bible Chronicles) suggests that all black people need or would benefit from a version of the Bible translated into AAE. We know this is not true, since every African American is not an AAE-speaker. Also, McCary’s version contains controversial and outdated terms and phrases, several of which are more like slang than AAE. Many people may also see her work as comical, and therefore fail to take it seriously. This would defeat the purpose of helping African American English speakers better understand and relate to God and Christianity.

And now we have heard from the Author, P.K. McCary, who writes to Word:

I find language an exhilarating experience of getting a message across. Just FYI for most of you, Black Bible Chronicles was actually written in the early 80s–but was part of my Sunday school class for urban teenagers. When talking about Joseph in the Bible and his refusal to enter into a sexual relationship with another man’s wife, one of my students said, “She was probably a dog anyway.” This generated laughter from the other young people, so my response was, “No, baby. She was a brick house!” And then we got down to real discussions rather than my finding his effort to be funny wasted. I used it. Still, some of your readers are correct when they say the language is problematic (which is why I want to reissue them), but like Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes before me, it depends on a number of issues–place of origin (I’m from Texas and no, we don’t consider ourselves Southern), when the language took place (40s, 50s, 60s, 70s–different genres of slang), and male, female–the list is endless. Hope we can have further conversations

We invite you to continue joining in on the conversation.