{"id":1524,"date":"2019-03-26T21:35:01","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T21:35:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/?p=1524"},"modified":"2019-03-26T21:35:03","modified_gmt":"2019-03-26T21:35:03","slug":"african-american-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/writing-project-2-voice-in-its-cultural-contexts-and-consequences\/african-american-english\/","title":{"rendered":"African American English"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Iggy Azalea sparked discussion in the music industry because of her emergence as a popstar and a rapper. Azalea\u2019s vision was to become one of the top white artists in the rap industry. She dropped out of high school at age sixteen and moved from Australia to Miami. Controversy arises because Azalea is a white, Australian female rapping in black tones. At age eighteen, a producer named Mr. Lee helped hone her rap skills. Azalea rose to fame in 2014 with her big hit \u201cFancy,\u201d but her career quickly became labeled as another bad white rapper. The article The Making and Unmaking of Iggy Azalea<\/em>displayed the criticisms of her career. It mentions a quote from pop artist Halsey, \u201cShe had a complete disregard for black culture\u2026I watched her career dissolve and it fascinated me.\u201d She was the center of controversy about culture appropriation and authenticity in hip hop. Critics of Azalea becoming a white rapper emphasize how dialect is racialized. Today\u2019s society links voice and dialect to specific communities and cultures. Voice is implemented through discussion, music, reports, and other aspects of communication. It is an imperative agent in society today because it intensifies culture discernment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voice and dialect are linked to specific communities, and African-American English is a prime example of this. African-American English (AAE), also known as blaccent or Ebonics, refers to the distinctive speech of the African-American community. Slang words such as ashy\u2014the whitish appearance of black skin when dry\u2014are common in AAE, and it is not restricted to particular regions. However, there is more to AAE than just slang words. Its pronunciation includes the shortening of words through the omission of the final constants in words and dropping the b, d, and g at the beginning of auxiliary verbs. For example, omitting the d would result in \u201cIon know\u201d for \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d Another example would be the pronunciation of \u2018past\u2019 shortened to \u2018pas.\u2019 John R. Rickford, Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University, declares, \u201cThese distinctive Ebonics pronunciations are all systematic, the results of regular rules and restrictions; they are not random \u2018errors\u2019\u2013and this is equally true of Ebonics grammar.\u201d (Rickford) It is also very common in AAE to fabricate sentences without present tense \u201cis\u201d or \u201care,\u201d as in \u201cJohn trippin\u2019.\u201d AAE is prominent among black comedians, singers, and especially rappers, in speech for dramatic or realistic effect. However, other people, black and white, view AAE as an indication of limited education due to the barrier to socioeconomic mobility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iggy Azalea has received criticism for her appropriation, but the discussion also includes her mastery of blaccent. The article How Iggy Azalea mastered her \u2018blaccent\u2019 <\/em>discusses how Azalea\u2019s songs embody a more sophisticated understanding of how black artists speak. The article mentions two linguists Maeve Eberhardt and Kara Freeman who listened to and analyzed her discography. In their paper for the Journal of Sociolinguistics, they argue \u201c\u2026that the rapper\u2019s songs reveal remarkable fluency in the sounds of syntax and of what linguists call African-American English.\u201d (Guo) However, the controversy over Azalea\u2019s blaccent is due to her personal identity. She is a tall Caucasian female with blonde hair and an Australian accent. Many critics and artists find it offensive that she implements the blaccent because it is not hers. They see it as a mimicry of black speech. Rapper Jean Grae described her voice as a \u201cverbal blackface.\u201d (Guo) Even though Azalea still speaks with an Australian accent during interviews, she owns her blaccent as she believes, \u201cI don\u2019t think the voice makes me fake, it makes me an artist.\u201d Her statement is acceptable because even though society links dialect to specific speech communities, all dialect is shared between communities and cultures which merges all dialects together. A prime example of merging dialects is how black comedians use a white tone during comedy shows. In Kat Williams \u201cKat Williams: The Pimp Chronicles Pt. 1\u201d<\/a>, he jokes about the need for white friends and imitates a white person\u2019s tone of voice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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