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Jennifer Bloomquist
While there is well documented evidence of certain
supra-regional features in African American English (AAE) phonology and
morphosyntax (for example, see Labov 1972; Rickford 1999; Baugh 2000; Green
2002) recent trends in the study of linguistic variation suggest that the
homogeneity of the variety has been largely overstated (Hazen 2002;
Mallinson & Wolfram 2002; Friedland 2003; Jones 2003; Wolfram 2003;
Mallinson & Childs 2004). For the most part, contemporary AAE influences on
mainstream language have originated from varieties spoken in the northeast
and on the west coast which have evolved independently of one another over
the past forty years, and which vary in significant ways from southern AAE;
however, the most popular linguistic styles of rap music and hip hop culture
have shifted over the years as artists from various regions (the West Coast,
the Midwest, and the South) have put their particular speech communities on
the map in the Black Public Sphere (Pough 2005). We argue here that as
southern American rappers have become more dominant in the popular music
scene, like East and West coast rappers before them, they have had a
significant impact on the AAE spoken by hip hop’s insiders, and they have
also influenced the language of mainstream speakers as well.
This paper builds on Smitherman’s insights on Hip Hop
Linguistics (2006) even as it explores a more recent sociolinguistic
phenomenon: the imminent emergence of southern AAE forms in the music and
lyrics of the most popular rap artists of this decade and the attendant
influence that these forms might have on AAE in general. Preliminary
findings suggest that the linguistic effects of southern rap on AAE (and to
a lesser extent, mainstream varieties) are not only evident in the lexicon
(which could be dismissed simply as fleeting slang), but also in the
phonology and morphosyntax of the variety, providing us with a more complete
understanding of contemporary AAE and the ways in which the variety
continues to develop.
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