SAY WORD?! — A New Dictionary of Words and Phrases Originated by Black Americans is on the Horizon
Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates is taking the lead on a forthcoming project called the Oxford Dictionary of African American English. Which has me curious.
If any linguist wanted to embark on a longstanding research project that uncovered the etymology of words and phrases that people slide into their vocabulary when they want to seem cool, that linguist would not have to scour the earth to find the origins of fresh language. In America, the words and expressions that add flavor to dialogues, provide a jolt of musicality into otherwise drab jargon, challenge the dominion of the King’s English and season speech patterns in the most colorful ways, generally come from the same source — Black folks’ vernacular.
Imagine the restitution that would be afforded to Black family kitchen table conversations, or barbershop/salon chatter, or hip-hop studio sessions, or family reunion banter, or anywhere two or three Black folks are gathered and talkin’ that talk, if the originators of the “slanguage” American enjoys filed copyright infringement suits against cultural outsiders that heisted lingo from our lips? Think about the number of people that would be outchea penniless (and mute) after a litany of lawsuits left them linguistically and fiscally bankrupt behind stealing Black dialect.
Now, consider all the times that African American Vernacular English (AAVE) was commodified and co-opted by the same people who deemed Black folks’ vibrant turn-of-phrases, playful over anunciations or abbreviated suffixes to be unsophisticated or “ghetto” or uneducated. The way language is embraced or denounced in this country has always been dependent on who the speaker is, not on what is being communicated. There’s often a presumed folksy charm when non-Black (and more specifically uneducated white folk) pronounce words or use written communication that falls outside the margins of standard English. But when Black folks speak or write in a manner that is an intentional affront to the language of colonialism, we gotta be seen as ignant or low-class. And then before you know it, our ignant and low-class colloquialisms end up in a white vendor’s Etsy shop.
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