Mr. T is an American actor known famously for the television series The A Team, he has also appeared in several other movies such as Rocky 3 in which he played as Boxer Clubber Lang (Macleod, 2009). During his long and illustrious career in the entertainment industry Mr. T has developed certain trademarks and catch phrases such as I pity the fool which a catch phrase that he borrowed from his Lang Character in Rocky 3. Mr. T has a trademark hair cut that is worrier style. In adverts, Mr. T acts as a tough guy who challenges timid behavior. In the particular advert, Mr. T uses a helicopter to and challenges a timid guy to dive into the pool and stop wasting time testing the waters because the waters temperature puts him off. Mr. T yells at him …show more content…
before unleashing a rapid fire volley of sneaker chocolates at the guy. Sneakers is a chocolate brand that is made by the American company Mars, Inc. it is made up of nougat, caramel, peanuts and milk chocolate. The adverts usually end with the words “get some nuts” a phrase that is ambiguous because it challenges men to have what is considered manly behaviour and not otherwise. The scene sends the subliminal messages of strength, will, energy and toughness hence the catch phrase get some nuts. Linguistic Characteristics The speaker of the words is Mr.
T an African American who was born in the city of Chicago. The English version that he speaks is called African American vernacular English. It is a dialect that is spoken by working class and African American. The language has many similarities with the rural dialects of the southern United States. It shares large portions of grammar and phonology with these rural dialects (Jennifer Smith) The use of this dialect is influenced by a lot of factors these include age, status, social setting and the topic under discussion. Because of the connections that African Americans have with slavery in the United States, the African American vernacular English has much connection with western African languages. These include pronunciations, grammatical structures and vocabularies. Example of borrowed vocabulary is the word bogus a derivative of the word book from the Hausa language. African American English also has different sound systems than Standard English although not all sounds are different. An example is variation in the use of consonants. As an example, when two consonants appear at the end of the word, they are often reduced examples include t in the word west which is reduced to wes as in wes side instead of west side. Exceptions to this case have been noted to occur especially when the next word begins with a vowel as in west in west …show more content…
end. The speech by Mr. T use the Standard English sound th in a different way. In this case he pronounces it as da as in It's time to get in da pool a variation that is of the same family as de, dey and dat replacements to the, they and that. The placement of the word is grammatically correct as opposed to other parts of the speech that differ from Standard English. An example is the phrase Yo makin' me mad sucker, which shows the characteristic of leaving out a verb a common feature of African American vernacular English. The speech by Mr T also has other English words in which the sounds are also systematically reduced, these are makin' goin, swimmin and cryin. This is also a notable characteristic of AAVE as is the use of yo instead of the Standard English you Social reasons for the use of this language by Mr. T Mr.
T is of African American heritage the group of people that predominantly uses the particular variety of English used in the phrase. The dialect used by Mr. T and African Americans has origins that can be traced back to the slave trade and the slave experience. There are two hypotheses that try to explain how this dialect arose. One theory asserts that the dialect arose from communities that were from West African and who had contacts with English speakers of different varieties (Dillard, 1972). These groups took what they could from the English language in order to facilitate communication with native English speakers who were the slave owners. Because of the origins from West African languages, AAVE a lot of vocabulary and grammatical structure is shared. This theory asserts that the language developed through second language acquisition and that through the years the language has undergone what is known as decreolization; this being the move towards standard American English. The other theory notes that the language developed just like any other American English dialect (Kurath, 1964) As with all other dialects, the dialect of Mr. T there it is associated with certain social class and social situations (Labov, 1972). The language is mostly used in informal settings between friends, family and as this serves the intentions of Mr. T well by bringing about humour. It is also serves the purpose of bringing out the main themes of the advert and these are strength, toughness
and energy. Not to mention, the use of an informal language creates an association of the product with everyday situation as the use of Standard English would have diminished the humour.
In the article “Do You Speak American?,” Robert MacNeil is trying to reach the american public, especially those who do not have a complete understanding of the ongoing changes that are happening to the English that is spoken throughout the United States. He uses a multitude of examples to prove this very fact. For one he wants to inform the people that one reason for this change is that average people now have more influence in the way language is spoken.Which to him is a good thing. He enjoys the new evolution that American English has undertaken. He believes that it is a step in the right direction. Another, example he uses are the changes different regions and/or group of people have made on the English language. He uses the different accents and dialect to show the growth and improvement that occurred. Even though, some linguist view these changes as wrong, MacNeil views them as necessary and as something that is unique to the United States. In essence, a necessary growth that only makes the United States grow into a better country. Thus, making it more diverse.
In “Do You Speak American?” by Robert MacNeil, MacNeil uses outside sources, personal anecdotes, and familiar diction in attempts to prove that the transformation of American English is a positive outcome and should be accepted.
In the essay if Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What is? by James Baldwin and Mother Tongue by Amy Tan both shows idea of uses of slang and language in different context. In the essay if Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What is? Baldwin states that how language has changed and evolved overtime, Baldwin describes how black English were used as white English, in civil rights movement where blacks were treated as slaves and the used slang language to communicate so that the whites won’t understand. This slang was taken from black language and now everyone uses to make the communication short. In the essay Mother Tongue Tan explains that how language could affect people from different culture. Tan states that how Asian students in America struggle in English. Tan also states that her mother is smart but she couldn’t communicate in English. Tan thinks that’s a big disadvantage for her mother and people coming from different countries cannot show their talent because of their weakness in communication.
While some features of AAVE are apparently unique to this variety, in its structure it also shows many similarities with other varieties including a number of standard and nonstandard English varieties spoken in the US and the Caribbean. Speakers and writers of this dialect use some distinctive aspects of the phonological, lexical, and grammatical traits associated with this dialect. Many sociolinguists would reserve the term AAVE for varieties which are marked by the occurrence of certain distinctive grammatical features.
Smitherman is certainly qualified to address her colleagues about the treatment of “Black English” in academia, but with such a charged writing style it is possible that her audience would not make it to her conclusion. Smitherman assumes that the general base of her audience are “White English” speakers that can understand “Black English”. She also assumes that all African Americans speak the same way. These assumptions are her first major problem. At the time of this articles publication in 1973, it is conceivable that certain scholars would have ignored the piece because of its hybrid u...
The propagandists use informality to sound more convincing and imply that “your dad” is a role model, creating good impressions of him. As in “he got two numbers in the same night”; meaning that his sagaciousness is a glorified quality, not every man is able to do it; and in “damn right he drank it”, emphasizing the action – almost an obligation as a man – of having sex with more than one woman. The ad tries to persuade readers with the concept that “their dads” correctly follow the ideals of manliness, so in order to be “real men” they should be like “their dads”. Since the father figure drinks Canadian Club, so should the
Rickford, John R. "The Creole Origins of African American Vernacular English: Evidence from Copula Absence." Http://www.modlinguistics.com/. Http://www.modlinguistics.com/, 1998. Web. 7 Apr. 2014.
It must be noted that for the purpose of avoiding redundancy, the author has chosen to use the terms African-American and black synonymously to reference the culture, which...
In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary “Pike County” dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech. I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding. (Twain 2)
In Baldwin 's article If Black English Isn 't A Language Then Tell Me What Is? starting off by telling the readers about French speaking people. He is explaining how different dialects doesn 't mean people aren 't speaking the same language. Going deeper about language saying that it ties into the culture. Give an example of Black Culture and how their expression of English is different. Talking about the phrases like jazz me, baby, sock it to me, and funky; being used that way they weren 't meant to. Finally introducing how the African American culture has been disrespected or ignored. Telling
Language in the South varies according to which area someone is in and what the person’s ethnic background is. Most white people that live in the South have a country draw in their accent or talk very proper. Most black people in the South talk using Ebonics or are really proper, but some do have a draw in their accent. The other ethnic groups talk in their native language or in English with a distinct accent associated with their ethnicity. If one is in Southern Louisiana their accent will be Cajun. The language in the South is alike in most places according to the person’s race except in Southern Louisiana.
This commercial uses several of the qualities of modern advertisement outlined by James B. Twitchell (1996). The most obvious quality that is employed by this advertisement is the use of the profane. The advertisement not only includes actually profanity with Aubrey cursing and calling out the marketing developers on their questionable choices, it also uses profane humor by poking fun at itself and the idea of a marketing conglomerate throughout the entire commercial. The use of profane
Slave’s masters consistently tried to erase African culture from their slave’s memories. They insisted that slavery had rescued blacks form the barbarians from Africa and introduced them to the “superior” white civilization. Some slaves came to believe this propaganda, but the continued influence of African culture in the slave community added slave resistance to the modification of African culture. Some slaves, for example, answered to English name in the fields but use African names in their quarters. The slave’s lives were filled with surviving traits of African culture, and their artwork, music, and other differences reflected this influence.
Analyzing dialects can be difficult due to the fact that is it hard to transcribe the pronunciation of an individual dialect because English is not spelled the same way it is pronounced. Furthermore, one person’s interpretation of spelling a dialect might not match up with another’s, so the reader might not “hear” the dialect properly. Regardless, written versions of dialects are essential to discussing dialectical differences.
For this reason, English-speaking people constituted majority of the settlers who brought in the deferent dialects spoken in different parts of Britain (Bueltmann et al., 2014). These varieties of the early British English had a substantial impact on the emergence of the various dialects across America. For instance, some words that are regarded as American were actually the lower speech words in the British English at the time. In addition, these settlers spoke English very similar to the one spoken in America today. This implies that they contributed in terms of