I think both, likely, play a part. But AAVE is a real dialect, pretty uncontroversially recognized by linguists (even if my explanation about the use of ‘nigga’ is at least a bit controversial).
(Jeff Foxworthy voice…) If you’ve ever asked: “Why should Black people get their own parade…You might be a redneck. I mean racist.”
It’s a real dialect, but use of a dialect is a different topic than in-group out-group dynamics.
I cannot become fluent in AAVE and then earn the right to use any term for black folks without censure. That privilege is not within the power of the dialect to give. People who fluently speak hick (my particular dialect) still don’t get to call my husband babycakes without weirdness.
Yes, what Jsgoddess said. The point is not whether AAVE is a dialect or a sociolect or some other linguistic classification. The point is that the linguistic classification is not a relevant part of the discussion.
This is not what I said – I said that native speakers (that is, people who grew up speaking AAVE in a family and community that spoke it as a first language) likely understand the non-slur way to use the term, and non-native speakers likely do not. Even if they become fluent later in life, it’s likely to be as unnatural-sounding to a native AAVE speaker as it would be to hear a German-born person who acquired fluency in English late in life use American hip-hop colloquialisms.
So again, I don’t believe it’s about “earning the right” to use it, I believe it’s (at least partially) about how language is learned and acquired. Non native-AAVE speakers are largely unable to use the term ‘properly’ and in the right context as a non-slur (and, as has been noted, many native AAVE will choose not to use the term at all and scold those who do).
You’re stretching too far with this. Human beings are inherently multilingual. There’s no linguistic reason that one person cannot learn a new dialect and still not understand how to use certain delicate words.
You can imagine a black person who grew up not speaking AAVE learning it and then being able to use the words without problems.
This theory also doesn’t stand up to Occam. The answer is much simpler—it’s about group membership, not dialect.
This happens all the time with various languages. There are many unusual colloquialisms, slang, and other terminology in various languages in which pretty much nobody but native-born speakers who grew up in a family and community that speaks it as a first language truly understand and can use properly.
This is possible, and it’s why I don’t discount that group membership also has something to do with it.
I think both explanations likely play a part.
You can go ahead and think that, but you’ve come up with an explanation that’s complicated, tortured, unlikely, and incomplete without further speculative juggling.
Furthermore, it runs counter to what we know about learning and using dialects.
The problem with use of slang is not that a person is unable to learn how to use it properly. It’s because slang is a shibboleth for group membership.
Become a member of the group and your use of slang will become accepted.
And it sits right next to an explanation that is observed, simple, and completely accounts for the observed phenomenon.
So go ahead and believe it if you want, but if you want other people to believe it, then you’re going to have to come up with substantial independent scholarly support.
I didn’t come up with the idea on my own, of course – I’ll try and find the articles/arguments that convinced me.
Thank you for the thoughful discussion and critique.
Considering that there’s no controversy as to whether AAVE exists, I’m actually surprised that my argument, that the AAVE dialect plays a role in societal norms about who gets to use this particular term without social consequences, is controversial at all.
Do you really think AAVE plays absolutely no part as to how ‘nigga’ is utilized and perceived in society?
It’s problematic because it runs counter to the way we understand that dialects work. You don’t need to be able to speak a dialect perfectly in order to use its vocabulary.
Not from my understanding, at least with regards to things like slang, slurs, colloquialisms, and the like. Many people around the world with different first languages are fluent in English but are unable to use American slang and colloquialisms properly. In fact, many or even most native English speakers who did not learn English in the United States are unable to use much of American slang and colloquialisms properly.
These misuses aren’t as notable or memorable as the misuse of terms that can be used as racial slurs are, because most misuses are not racial slurs.
With all due respect.
I didn’t bother because it’s so well known. There are zillions of them. But in any event, you yourself have since provided an example of stats which back up me up, so we don’t need to look further.
I’ve helpfully bolded the relevant portion. Please pay attention to this and try to understand what it means for purposes of our discussion, instead of just pasting blocks of text.
I don’t know about historical rates, but I know what’s now. And you should too, if you read and understand your own cite. It does not appear that you’ve done this.
Just you try and stop me! :mad:
The idea that being able to use “nigga” it’s solely a matter of fluently speaking a dialect strains credulity. If you take the extreme case – some hypothetical white baby raised by black parents in an AAVE speaking black neighborhood, he may locally be able to use “nigga”, simply due to familiarity with the people there. However, transpose him to another area where he doesn’t know anybody and I’m heavily skeptical he could use “nigga” and have it end with nobody noticing because he “used it correctly.”
In fact, I’d argue that part of fluently speaking AAVE as a white person would involve understanding the intricate dynamics of when it’s okay to use that word, and accepting that those dynamics are much different and more limited for you than they are for your peers.
I agree – dialect certainly is not the only explanation. I think it’s part of the explanation, along with the in and out group dynamics also mentioned by other posters.
That’s fairly lazy. “Zillions” and you can’t find stats? Since when is “it’s fairly well known” count for shit around here?
This is also intellectually lazy. You seem to be fixated on the general offender rate, which Wise explains is exacerbated by other compounding factors. It takes a willfully ignorant person to look at a statistical finding without context. Disproportionality in surveillance, arrests, convictions (particularly with non-violent drug offenses) and the compounding effects of poverty. That gives you a higher offender rate for Blacks. Feel free to produce some evidence to refute this.
None of this makes sense when your daughter brings home a Black person she knows. Generalized fear without context is the very issue we’re discussing here. No statistical analysis is worth a damn without context.
Having gone through the rigors of peer review publishing and tenure, I might suggest you take some time to read the whole thing.
Nor do you seem to care to examine it. Fixating on one finding without discussing the entire context makes the discussion pointless. Feel free to try to convince others.
Anecdote time:
I am not African-American. In the early 1990s I was fluent in AAVE. I *understood *how “nigga/nigger” were used among the young black men I worked with within the boundaries of the dialect. I grokked what it meant in different contexts, and how it could be used in conversation.
But because I was not black and, perhaps as importantly, had not been raised in the culture of my co-workers, I was not able to use the term, even purely as an artifact of AAVE. That is to say, there is no way to divorce the dialect from the racial and cultural contexts in which is it spoken.
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Counts with me.
There are some discussions that interest me and some that don’t. Trying to prove things that are backed by zillions of cites and only disputed by people who are either extremely dimwitted or willfully blind is not one of them.
I didn’t see where Wise explains this, but it makes no difference anyway. If some guy is concerned about his daughter being abused by some guy, it’s not a comfort to know that she’s being abused due to the compounding effects of poverty.
And you shouldn’t be talking about “non-violent drug offenses” since we (meaning you, me, and Wise) are specifically discussing violent offenses.
Of course, you could argue the same about a black daughter bringing home a white boy she knows. But no one really knows anyone well enough to make this assessment definitively. No one brings home a boy she thinks is going to assault her.
[It should be noted at this point that I’m not saying that it’s rational for either white or black fathers to object to their daughter dating inter-racially based on fears of violence. I’m just saying that if we were to justify or “understand” this based on fears of violence - which is your argument - then it’s a lot more rational for someone to object based on current statistical likelihood than based on historical circumstances decades and centuries back.]
This is where I, honestly, just broke out in a laugh. Startled the cat, too.
Firstly, the objection in this hypothetical is not based on “current statistical likelihood,” it’s based on a perception of that likelihood. Rationality doesn’t enter into it one bit.
But secondly…Whether intentional or not (and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter) you are displaying a considerable degree of subjectivity here yourself. A less charitable person might use words like “arrogant” or “paternalistic,” and they’d have a fair case.
You don’t have standing to decide what impact decades and centuries of violence–ongoing, not in the past–should have on someone.
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