Counterlanguage powermoves in African American women’s language practice
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.20317Keywords:
African American, counterlanguage, intersectionality, gender, racism, sexuality, speech communityAbstract
This essay considers some of the insight we have gathered about language, feminism, racism and power. In many respects, it celebrates the linguistic power of the many theories about how Black women navigate intersectionality where racism and sexism intermingle, suggesting that our analyses should always recognise that a lethal combination of factors are in play. Black women, in particular, actively insist on forms of language and discourse that both represent and create their world through words, expressions and verbal routines that are created within and outside of the African American speech community to confront injustice. One example involves the verb ‘play,’ which I argue often functions as a power statement or ‘powermove’ that demands respect while presenting a threat to the status quo. This use of ‘play’ is the opposite of inconsequential games of play or joking.
References
Asare, Janice Gassam (22 September 2020) Misogynoir: the unique discrimination that Black women face. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2020/09/22/misogynoir-the-unique-discrimination-that-black-women-face/?sh=233c010856ef
Austin, John (1962) How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bailey, Beryl (1965) Toward a new perspective in Negro English dialectology. American Speech 40(3): 171–177. https://doi.org/10.2307/454064
Bailey, Moya (2013) New terms of resistance: a response to Zenzele Isoko. Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society 15(4): 341–343. https://doi.org/10.1080/10999949.2014.884451
Butler, Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge.
Crenshaw, Kimberle (1989) Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989(1): 139–167.
Duggan, Maeve and Brenner, Joanna (2013) The Demographics of Social Media Users – 2012. Pew Research Center. www.pewresearch.org
Duranti, Alessandro (2015) The Anthropology of Intentions: Language in a World of Others. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139207706
Grice, Paul (1975) Logic and conversation. In Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan (eds) Syntax and Semantics Vol. 3, 1st edition. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Kondo, Dorinne (1997) About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theater. New York: Routledge.
Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks (1993) Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks (2017) ‘The metalanguage of race,’ then and now. Signs 42(3): 628–642. https://doi.org/10.1086/689893
Gal, Susan and Irvine, Judith (2019) Signs of Difference: Language and Ideology in Social Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108649209
Jones, Feminista (2013) Is Twitter the underground railroad of activism? Salon.Com 17 July. https://www.salon.com/2013/07/17/how_twitter_fuels_black_activism/
Lanehart, Sonja (ed) (2015) The Oxford Handbook of African American Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Morgan, Marcyliena (1994) No woman no cry: the linguistic representation of African American women. In Mary Bucholtz, A.C. Liang, Laurel A. Sutton and Caitlin Hines (eds) Cultural Performances: Proceedings of the Third Berkeley Women and Language Conference 525–541. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Women and Language Group.
Morgan, Marcyliena (2002) Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511613616
Morgan, Marcyliena (2020) ‘We don’t play’: Black women’s linguistic authority across race, class and gender. In H. Samy Alim, Angela Reyes and Paul V. Kroskrity (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Language and Race 261–290. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190845995.013.13
Morrison, Toni (2017) The Origin of Others. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674982628
Nichols, Patricia Causey (2009) Voices of Our Ancestors: Language Contact in Early South Carolina. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.
Poole, Emily (2014) Hey girls, did you know? slut-shaming on the internet needs to stop. San Francisco Law Review 1: 221–260.
Rapsody (2019) Nina. Eve. Jamla/Roc Nation.
Searle, John R. (1983) Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139173452
Tate, Greg (2003) Everything But the Burden: What White People Are Taking From Black Culture. New York: Penguin Books.
Wade-Lewis, Margaret (2008) Beryl Loftman Bailey. In Henry Lewis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Higginbotham (eds) African American National Biography 214–216. New York: Oxford University Press.
Washington, Adrienne. R. (2020) ‘Reclaiming my time’: signifying, reclamation and the activist strategies of Black women’s language. Gender and Language 14(4): 358–385. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.41607
