In my African American Studies course, I have analyzed many films as to how blacks have been portrayed in the media. As I have been reading and watching boyfriend brought to my attention that authors and movie producers often portray the villan-like or uneducated black like characters as speaking stereotypical slave-like English in things like the film Cabin in the Sky (1940) and Even the crows in Dumbo grow very suspect. Hence Jim Crow is the name of the leader of of the Crows in Dumbo.. Interesting choice Disney. The media has continued to play on Ebonics (a.k.a. African American English) and Black Music Culture for centuries. Vershawn Young in Should Writers Use They Own English argues that we should be mo flexible, mo acceptin of language diversity, language expansion, and created language usage from ourselves and from others in both formal and informal settings (65). However, It sure is hard to feel comfortable being expressive of your dialect in America when racist stereotypes are attached to dialects of speech in a racial cateogory. Vershawn Young forwarded Elaine Richardson about stereotype threats (When someone is forced in the face of racial perceptions to keep the most expressive parts of her language out of formal communication, whether writin or speakin) (Young, 64). I find this to be very true, and that if racism and stereotypes continue to exist, co-existance of dialects will continue to be difficult. One too many of my African American friend shared with me that people even discriminate against blacks when they do speak in 'standard' English, and say something similar to "wow, you are very articulant" as if it is a suprise that blacks can speak 'standard' English. How long does the African American community have to continue to 'loud-talk' this atrocity? (Loud-Talking: A Black English device where the speaker insults a authority figure loud enough so they can overhear the conversation) (Young, 70). I'm sure people heard the issues by now, but choose to ignore it. The first Youtube clip is from Disney's Dumbo from Youtube user Dumbo Lover called When I see an Elephant Fly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s35puUhqQJc The second youtube clip is from Youtube user propergandersaul who created the most racist cartoon ever compilation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sls5H4xVHys&list=PLUHTrYufBKlvM34UKPsQtakP22_1mlh1j&index=1
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Twenty first centure langauge and literacy lessons should not only address the totality of language in life but should also allow for edu-tainment
-Geneva Smitherman "Language Policy and Classroom Practices" I was riding in the car with my little cousin last weekend. He's a junior in high schoool and always has earbuds in his ear. He didn't care who heard him, if it was a song that he really liked he'd rap loud and proud along with it. It's not like I never heard hip hop or rap before, in fact I grew up with it. Why was it that I could barely understand the new rap that is out there today? Something similar happened when talking to my little sister a couple weeks ago. Everytime she was pretending to do something, would kid around, or saw something as improbable she would smile and yell "YEET!" I was so confused. I laughed asking her what it meant. She explained that it is from a song and the meaning changed. It is equivilant to when I was younger and used to say "SIKE". After reading Talkin black talk: language, education, and social change by H. Samy Alim, I found something very interesting. 97-98% of African American students are influenced by Hip Hop culture (21). It's interesting how big of a role music plays in langauge and identity . Talkin black talk: language, education, and social change insists that we use this in education. It's hearing your "favorite thing" is a space where people open up (98) Unfortunately jazz that is being taught in institutions often looses it's association with black culture because it's divorced from sociocultural contexts (111). I think it would be very beneficial and innovative to incorpate language in cultural context. Interesting enough, I saw that the first Hip Hop linguistic course was begun in September 2014 at the University of Calgary In Canda by Dr. Darin Flynn.Check out the link below to see the cool textbooks they use! http://www.howtorapbook.com/?p=244 |
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April 2015
J.RadA college student obsessed with the magical world of linguistics. This page focuses on multi-lingualism. Categories |