Aggressively feminine
the linguistic appropriation of sexualized blackness by white female characters in film
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v8i3.289Keywords:
African American, European American, Gender, Race, SexualityAbstract
This article builds on previous research on white male cross-racial linguistic appropriations of blackness by considering similar appropriations by white female characters in film. Specifically, it examines how such characters use semiotic resources of hip-hop, particularly its language and music, to perform an aggressive femininity that is simultaneously raced, classed, sexualized and gendered. While these performances are racially complex because they push against the boundaries of US racial categories, they also erase the distinctions between black, Latino, gang and hip-hop cultures. Furthermore, in using hypersexualized blackness to construct a white female hip-hop and/or gangster identity, black females become invisible in these films. The study demonstrates that the mediatized representation of white hip-hop relies on problematic ideologies of both race and gender
References
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Sweetland, J. (2002) Unexpected but authentic use of an ethnically-marked dialect. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6(4): 514–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9481.00199
Thompson, K. (2011) Zanzibar women’s discursive and sexual agency: violating gendered speech prohibitions through talk about supernatural sex. Discourse and Society 22(1): 3–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926510382841
Troutman, D. (2001) African American women: talking that talk. In S. L. Lanehart (ed.) Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African-American English 211–37. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g27.14tro
Alim, H. S. (2006) Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip Hop Culture. New York: Routledge.
Alim, H. S. and Smitherman, G. (2012) Articulate while Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the US. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Boyd, T. (2004) The New HNIC: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop. New York: New York University Press.
Brown, R. N. (2009) Black Girlhood Celebration: Toward a Hip-Hop Feminist Pedagogy. New York: Lang Publishing.
Bucholtz, M. (2011) Race and the re-embodied voice in Hollywood film. Language and Communication 31: 255–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2011.02.004
Bucholtz, M. and Lopez, Q. (2011) Performing blackness, forming whiteness: linguistic minstrelsy in Hollywood films. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15(5): 680–706. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2011.00513.x
Clarke, S. and Hiscock, P. (2009) Hip-hop in a post-insular community: hybridity, local language, and authenticity in an online Newfoundland rap group. Journal of English Linguistics 37: 241–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0075424209340313
Collins, P. H. (2000) Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge.
Coupland, N. (2001) Dialect stylization in radio talk. Language in Society 30: 345–75. Cutler, C. A. (1999) Yorkville crossing: white teens, hip hop, and African American English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3(4): 428–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9481.00089
Hammonds. E. M. (1997) Toward a genealogy of black female sexuality: the problematic of silence. In J. Price and M. Shildrick (eds) Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader 93–103. New York: Routledge.
Hill, J. H. (1999) Language, race, and white public space. American Anthropologist 100(3): 680–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/aa.1998.100.3.680
Hooks, b. (2004) We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity. New York: Routledge.
Irvine, J. T. and Gal, S. (2000) Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In P. Kroskrity (ed.) Regimes of Language 35–83. Sante Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.
Kitwana, B. (2006) Why White Kids Love Hip Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America. New York: Basic Civitas Books.
Kubrin, C. E. (2005) Gangstas, thugs, and hustlas: identity and the code of the street in rap music. Social Problems 5(3): 360–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/sp.2005.52.3.360
Lopez, Q. (2009) Imitation or influence: white actors and black language in film. Texas Linguistic Forum 53: 110–20.
Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Symposium About Language and Society – Austin, 10–11 April. Austin, TX: University of Texas. Retrieved on 6 September 2014 from http://studentorgs.utexas.edu/salsa/proceedings/2009.html.
Lopez, Q. (2012) White bodies, black voices: the linguistic construction of racialized authenticity in US films. Dissertation, University of Texas, Austin, TX.
Mendoza-Denton, N. (2011) The semiotic hitchhiker’s guide to creaky voice: circulation and gendered hardcore in a Chicana/o gang persona. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 21(2): 261–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1395.2011.01110.x
Morgan, M. (2004) ‘I’m every woman’: black women’s (dis)placement in women’s language study. In M. Bucholtz (ed.) Robin Tolmach Lakoff, Language and the Woman’s Place: Text and Commentaries (2nd edn) 252–9. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Muhammad, F. N. (2007) How to not be 21st century Venus Hottentots. In G. Pough, E. Richardson, A. Durham and R. Raimist (eds) Home Girls Make Some Noise: Hip Hop Feminism Anthology. 115–40.
Mira Loma, CA: Parker Publishing. Rampton, B. (2005) Crossing: Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents (2nd edn). Manchester: St Jerome Publishing.
Ronkin, M. and Karn, H. (1999) Mock Ebonics: linguistic racism in parodies of Ebonics on the Internet. Journal of Sociolinguistics. 3(3): 360–380. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9481.00083
Rose, T. (1994) Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press
Silverstein, M. (2001) The limits of awareness. In A. Duranti (ed.) Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader 382–401. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Strausbaugh, J. (2006) Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult and Imitation in American Popular Culture. New York: Penguin.
Sweetland, J. (2002) Unexpected but authentic use of an ethnically-marked dialect. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6(4): 514–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9481.00199
Thompson, K. (2011) Zanzibar women’s discursive and sexual agency: violating gendered speech prohibitions through talk about supernatural sex. Discourse and Society 22(1): 3–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926510382841
Troutman, D. (2001) African American women: talking that talk. In S. L. Lanehart (ed.) Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African-American English 211–37. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g27.14tro
Published
2014-10-14
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Lopez, Q. (2014). Aggressively feminine: the linguistic appropriation of sexualized blackness by white female characters in film. Gender and Language, 8(3), 289-310. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v8i3.289
