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African American English
Literary content on racism
African American English
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In Verhsawn Ashanti Young’s article titled, “Nah, We Straight: An argument Against Code Switching,” he makes his objectives clear as he argues against people Right to their own language. The author questions the advantage of standard American English as opposed to other types of English. He refers to those aspect as code switching, which he believes can lead to racist thinking. Code switching, according to Young, calls out for one way of speaking to be omitted in favor of others, based on one's rhetorical situations. The author points out that students are required to translate from Afro-American English or Spanglish to standard English and not the other way around, which is concerning. Youngs method to get around this segregation is the usage
The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011) is a 1 hour and 40 minute documentary that observes the black power movement in American history. This film is directed by Swedish director Goran Hugo Olson and has detailed footage that was shot during the 1960s and 1970s by Swedish journalists. The footage largely focuses on the black power movements. The film allows viewers to not only grasp a better understanding of this movement but allows us to understand why this movement appealed to Swedish journalists. The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975 includes vintage interviews with Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis, Huey P. Newton, and other prominent leaders during the Black Power Movement. The documentary also contains contemporary audio interviews and commentaries from various entertainers, artists, activists, and scholars, including but not limited to: Harry Belafonte, Talib Kweli, Melvin Van Peebles, Erykah Badu, Abiodun Oyewele, and Questlove from The Roots.
The article “ In Defense of “Trap Queen” as our generation’s Greatest Love Song” by Hanif Abdurraqib, who is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio, writes about todays modern “love song’s” and their meanings. Hanif believes that todays modern generation love songs are not the same as they once were, because the meaning of love has evolved over time. Love songs have a different kind of passion then the once did, they have evolved the passion of love towards each other to a whole different level of passion. The meaning of a love song has changed its not all about only love towards someone, its changed to the love for the life style they live with the success they 've made to be where they are. This life style involving money, drugs. and sex, which is very blunt about how they describe it, is what “love” is to them and the young crowd
When people in todays society code-switch, we enhance our character and overall roundness to ourselves. There are instances where people code-switch to communicate with others in a different language, or we change our tone with certain groups of people. Speaking multiple languages in a household, can lead to a lot of code-switching because you can have that one relative who can’t speak english, so you become a “translator” to help them with daily tasks. Even though code-switching can happen with different languages, the most common code-switching is used when speaking to different groups of people. Talking to an adult would have a different type of tone, rather than speaking to one of your friends. Code-switching is used to help strengthen
The human race is an incredible group that expresses their feelings in numerous ways! Singers and rappers express their feelings through song; poets express their feelings through their poetry, and artist express their feelings through their art. Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr., better known by his stage name Lil Wayne, is a 33-year-old American hip hop recording artist from New Orleans, Louisiana, he produced a political and controversial rap song entitled “Georgia …Bush” An incredible seven and a half minutes of music as a tribute to New Orleans, and to criticize the way president George bush handled hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq, and the way he was governing the country. The setting for this song takes place in New Orleans; right after Hurricane, Katrina destroyed most of the city. The music video featured a large pool of water, destroyed communities, as well as human remains. This song was a massive controversy. Did Lil Wayne go too far when he published this song? Did he let his feeling get the best of him?
“You Was Right” by Lil Uzi Vert is fairly easy to understand lyrically. The essence of the song deals with unfaithfulness in a relationship as well as the aftermath. Lil Uzi Vert spends a large portion of the song admitting his mistakes to his presumed girlfriend in hopes of making things right between them. The song starts off with the hook, which rests upon the premise of how Lil Uzi Vert should have stayed loyal rather than taking another girl home with him. For example, he says, “You was right, I was wrong” (6) in an attempt to console his girlfriend and apologize. Following the hook, the first verse centers on Lil Uzi Vert’s riches due to his success as a rapper. He ties that in to his relationship by expressing how he wants to share his wealth with his girlfriend. At this stage in the song, Lil Uzi Vert is attempting to win his girlfriend back with his money and general success as a rapper. The hook then repeats itself to indicate that the argument between Lil Uzi Vert and his girlfriend is still continuing. The second verse signifies an escalation in their conflict, as he says, “You just locked the door, so I gotta text you” (42). His girlfriend is refusing to even listen
In Lupe Fiasco 's song "Words I Never Said," he collaborates with Skylar Grey to bring awareness to hard topics that no one wants to converse about, by expressing his own emotions, supplying factual evidence, and challenging the credibility to back up his statements. Throughout the song, Fiasco gives his opinion on subjects he finds important, like conspiracy theories, terrorism, and drugs. After rapping about all these issues and more, Fiasco explains, why it is important to stand up and talk about the unfair and unjust problems in the world, instead of being afraid of what people think. Fiasco 's purpose of the song is successful because he exemplifies the feelings that the audience can relate to and uses metaphors, alliteration, and facts to explain his reasoning. He succeeds in persuading his audience, by bringing up his own judgments on real life events, supporting those judgments with
Rap music has given me personally something to look up to. Not a role model but hope of continuing my dreams because rappers successfully made it. “For what’s money without happiness, or hard times without the people you love” is from a song called “Love Yourz” by J. Cole. He clearly understands how there is “beauty in the struggle and ugliness in the success” because he’s lived that life. Other songs such as “2Face” or “The Autograph” were instantly relatable to me because he has been through several struggles from the beginning of his childhood. Cole’s father left when he was six leaving his mother and younger brother alone. Cole became “the man of the house” but becoming a rapper is not as easy as it seems. Cole’s messages in these two songs are relative because I too, have had several issues with my mother and father creating a sense of lonesome. Hearing music like Coles helped me overcome my
America is home for thousands of cultures and languages. Most people can speak at least two different languages either because of the environment and family or simply by taking another world language class in school. One of the advantages with knowing more than one language is that code-switching becomes a part of you and it happens naturally. In “‘ I Don’t ‘Code-Switch’ to Hide my Identity. I ‘Code-Switch’ to celebrate It,”’ Vaidehi Mujumdar states that code-switching is enriching and exciting based on her personal experience. In “learning How to Code-Switching: Humbling, But Necessary,” Eric Deggans claims that code-switching is valuable and necessary in everyday lifestyle and it is lot more than just being about cultural differences. If one were to put Deggans and
Fifth graders do not speak Ebonics, they just simply have not learned how to speak proper English yet. So, when many African Americans hear other African Americans speaking Standard English, they start to make fun of them and say that they are “talking white” or “acting like a white person”. It might have less to do with his/her speaking and more to do with the setting that he/she is in. I believe that if a student is in school, or a professional setting, they should speak Standard English and leave the Ebonics or the vernacular English for places like home, or informal conversations with their friends. Although some people have the ability to code-switch, others do not. However, because they are not able to speak Standard English all the time, should they be made fun of or should they be called dumb? I think the answer is of course not. Nobel Prize winning journalist Toni Morrison made an incredible and deep remark in an interview in the New Republic on March 21, 1981. “There are certain things I cannot say without recourse to my AAVE (African American Vernacular English) language. It’s terrible to think that a child with five different languages comes to school to be faced with books that are less than his own
Code switching can occur not only during social situations where the same language is spoken, but ethnicities may be different. Kumea Shorter-Gooden, co-author of “Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America,” and chief diversity officer at the University of Maryland argues that code switching is used for survival, stating that its roots date back to pre-antebellum slavery times. Modern examples include people of color in predominantly white cultures or women in male-dominated situations, have had to “quickly figure out ‘How do I manage?’ and read situations that ‘they weren’t set up for in the first place,’” (O’Neal). Caucasians, who may normally speak in Standard American English, can be perceived as racist if they use AAVE. This is because whites have not had to communicate using AAVE in order to survive in society, unlike African-Americans and other people of color that feel pressured to use SAE to fit into society. When Caucasian people use AAVE, it can sound forced or offensive. In contrast, African-Americans who use SAE may be perceived as more intelligent and better fitting into society if they code-switch from AAVE to SAE. Also, problems can arise in the classroom, where many young people who are competent in English and children who have not been sufficiently exposed to both languages (Pfaff). One mainstream example is trying to “sound white.” Speaking “proper,” or Standard American English, in black or ghetto areas can get you bullied (O’Neal). In contrast, sounding “black” in white places can make you feel “alienated and unheard,” (O’Neal). Rather than fulfilling a new role, code switching marks these conversational functions. In addition, code-switching research focuses usually on the code-switcher, but not how it influences the person, or persons, for whom the code switching is
Very interesting he use of code-switching in “Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes” by Eduardo C. Corral. I am not a native Spanish speaking person but I was able to pick out a few Spanish words from his reading: Jalapeño, Sangron, borracho. My whole attitude and personality changes when used in a different language. I maybe misinterpret the word Sangron but I think in this context it is referring to “Jalapeño”. As an illegal-American, this person must work many jobs to support his family especially if he is not literate in English. Code switching affects my experience by giving a whole different aspect of the writing. In general, code-switch certain things in multilingual is not proper. It does not make sense to the non-Spanish
Chicano code switching has been defined by Metcalf (1974: 53) as “a variety of English that is obviously influenced by Spanish and that has low prestige in most circles, but that nevertheless is independent of Spanish and is the first, and often only, language of many hundreds of thousands of residents of California”. As explained by Florian Coulmas, “It is not necessarily for
Code-switching is ability to switch from one language to another in the same sentence or utterance. (Bhatia and Ritchie 2004: 284) . This process in concerned with bilingual or multilingual people. In case of Chicano English, code-switching consists of English and Spanish. Many bilinguals Latinos switch from English to Spanish and from Spanish to English very often. Code-switching can concern more than two languages.
Due to the cultural differences, we may find what is appropriate in one culture may not be suitable for another culture. Under such conditions, people need to learn to speak in a more flexible way and make compromise if necessary. By doing so, people can express themselves in a more acceptable way by not offending anyone. Chua serves herself as an example to show that how inappropriate word can make gaps between hyphenated Americans and other Americans, “I once did the same thing to Sophia, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectfully toward me. When I mentioned that I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized” (53). When she says she did the same thing, she means her dad once called her “garbage” in their native Hokkien dialect, and that explains why she would call Sophia “garbage”. Chua’s goal is to make Sophia realize her mistakes, but not making Sophia and other guests feel embarrassed and uncomfortable, which required Chua to learn when to speak which voice. If Chua can simply change her way of speaking, she can have more relax relation with Sophia. Over time, hyphenated-Americans may be less separated by their multiple backgrounds. Differed from Chua, Smith states a positive demonstration of how president Obama can turn his biracial identity into advantages by knowing to speak flexibly to make American citizens accept him, “Throughout
Mainly (Macneil 311) where we see a teacher instructing students in translating languages. She is able to teach this through a "jeopardy game", asking the students, "what language is it in", and "what linguistic feature is in" said language. “[Teacher: “What language is it in?” Student: “AAL” Teacher: “It is in African-American Language. What linguistic feature is in AAL?” Student: “Past-tense marker-ed” Teacher: “Past-tense marker-ed. That’s cool! And how do you code switch it to Mainstream American English?”]. This juxtaposition of “African-American Language” and “Mainstream American English” exemplifies the unique style that each individual culture gives American language. This style reflects back to the thesis, in particular the words “melting pot”. The dynamism of the paper is increased through implementation of dialogue. This dialogue transmits in a few lines what would normally take a paragraph to express. This decreases unnecessary filler within the paper and allows the reader to focus more on the concrete points that are being stated vs exorbitant