Placing: Ch 3: Slang

Where Are You Comin' From, Where Are You Goin' To:
Placing and Black Students' Discursive Construction of Community

CJM Writings > Thesis Home > Chapter 3: Out of Place (intro) > Placing & Shared Territory > Word of Mouth > Slang

Slang

People are placed not only according to what they say, but how they say it. Speech styles, dialects, and accents can indicate a person's ethnicity, economic background, country/U.S. region/local community of origin, and even racial ideology. Slang, for the purposes of this study, represents the language style and/or dialect that places a person in specific territories. I chose this word because I heard it used among informants, and I use it to represent what linguist Geneva Smitherman refers to as Black Semantics (1977). Smitherman defines Black semantics as "the totality of idioms, terms, and expressions that are commonly used by Black Americans" (pp. 42-43). She adds that "in the black community, the vocabulary of soul crosses generational and class lines and is grounded in black people's common and linguistic history" (p. 43).

Zowdi recalled, with some bitterness, the way she was treated when she moved to the U.S. from Belize. "When I came here in 1980," she mentioned, U.S.-born Blacks "used to laugh at me for havin' an accent, for bein' from a different place." According to Ms. Moore, how one talks is an important cultural signifier of being Black:

. . . when I pick up the phone--I know I know this sounds weird, but I know that it may be a Black person on the other line--not even seeing this person you can just tell by the way he talks, by the types of words that they use, I'm serious. Yeah, it's the culture. It has nothing to do with skin color 'cause I know some people who could pass for White, or who are White and they sound just like a Black person on the telephone.

Emerald recalls how she changed the way she talks in order to fit in with the Black students who gathered at the Union, and to attract the attention of a young man she was interested in. She had been accused of "talking like a White girl," and told she "wasn't down," and she "didn't know the slang."

I think I changed the way I talked, too, because I used to be so, "well I don't know exactly" [enunciates words]. Well, I used to talk in a soft higher tone where people couldn't tell if I was White; they thought I was White on the phone, and they would say, "You're Black? I would never have known." And I think, when I was with him [the person she liked], I was like, "you trippin', you trippin' anyway." I would go, "you know, you know, and you know this, man," and they'd be like like that and I would change, I mean, and I think it was just because I was around him so much, and I'd be like, "what's up, homey? Later." You know . . . that perspective of my language changed. But I think it's kind of going now.

In mentioning, however briefly, that she no longer uses the slang she adopted as a sophomore, Emerald is contesting being placed with anyone who uses that vernacular. Emerald did not currently place herself in the Union community. She says that because she didn't grow up in a predominantly Black community, and because she doesn't feel like part of the White community, that she belongs to the "middle class," expressing assimilationist views.

During conversations with members of a dominant group, such as Whites, Blacks may be especially alert to cues that they are being placed according to stereotypes. As LaTonya explained:

You know, eventually it comes out. You know, I kind of take everyone up front and then, you know. There're just things when you're talking and people aren't aware of, that kind of come out, and I'll just kind of cue into it and if it gets to a point where I'm annoyed by it then I'll say, "What do you mean by that?" or "What do you, you know?"

Again, both Word of Mouth and Face are usually considered when placing someone and anticipating how s/he will place you.

Both of these vernacular forms are situated in a material context, which is often the shared territory of a community. In the following section, the Material Contexts of Placing, two principal contexts are described: Organizations and Kickin' It: Hangouts. Organizations and hangouts are often historical, spatial, and racial territories as well as social territories shared by community members, where community is constituted through placing and ideologies are negotiated.

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CJM Writings > Thesis Home > Chapter 3: Out of Place (intro) > Placing & Shared Territory > Word of Mouth > Slang

Placing and Black Students' Discursive Construction of Community