African American rhetorics

Overview

"African American rhetoric" refers to written or spoken language strategies derived among African Americans from a fundamental synthesis of shared intergenerational experiences and knowledge, allowing members within the culture to communicate with and relate to each other irrespective of differences that might otherwise bar them from an effective exchange. With origins that can be traced to Africa and the varied languages orally communicated among the various tribes, the rhetoric of African Americans, also known as black dialects and Ebonics, has largely carried on the oral traditions from which it stems. These traditions have all been well documented over the hundreds of years that Africans and their descendants have been in America. Post-enslavement, a dramatic increase in literary and artistic production, correlating with access to forms of media, gave rise to a range of cultural expression. From newspapers and other publications to more creative outlets such as works of fiction, movies, and music to religion, the forms of African American rhetoric over many generations have been the source of much discussion with respect to the level of influence African Americans have had on U.S. society. In the twenty-first century, African American rhetoric in its many forms remains a polarizing subject.

Until the late twentieth century, the images and portrayals of African Americans engrained in popular culture primarily consisted of pernicious stereotypes, because of the demonstrated control that others (mostly European Americans) maintained on the distribution of cultural expression. Nevertheless, as creators and innovators, African Americans have played a central role in American arts and culture since even before the abolition of slavery. African American writers, artists, and musicians have come to occupy prominent positions in American popular culture, fine arts, and journalism, with works including but not limited to creative articulation of experiences of struggle and resistance, a rhetorical practice that derives from African oral traditions.

"Oral tradition" refer to various forms of expression that in effect serve as a conduit to pass along information (especially values and beliefs) of a cultural nature. Examples include stories, old sayings, and proverbs. This rhetorical form was used extensively during the period in which Africans and their children were subjected to the American slavery system, providing continuity with their African cultural legacies. Telling age-old lessons about life, passed from generation to generation, served as a tool for the preservation and survival of African American cultural communities.

Africans who were captured and forcibly removed to the slave-based agricultural economies in America, particularly the U.S. southern states, came from societies that relied on the power of oral communication in all aspects of life. (In the United States, reading and writing by enslaved people would be strictly proscribed.) To prevent or at least inhibit cooperation among the recently enslaved, new arrivals were separated from other Africans with similar cultural backgrounds. It, therefore, become necessary for the enslaved to evolve a means of communicating orally with fellow captives who spoke different languages and dialects. A new hybrid, consisting of elements from both African and American languages, subsequently developed. This new form of communication was more physically expressive and encompassed nonverbal cues, as Africans in America sought to communicate individuality and creativity as well as commentary on the slavery experience (Hamlet, 2011).

Through an interplay of poetry and politics, black publications, such as the Colored Tennessean (1865–1866), the Colored American (1837–1841), and the South Carolina Leader (1865–1868) helped forge what would become the beginnings of African American rhetoric post-enslavement, in effect a more unified form of communication in which black Americans, particularly men at first, could formally exchange ideas, especially about their experiences in the United States, including but not limited to their stories of struggle and oppression. However, these publications faced intensifying hostile racism on one side and social philosophers who promoted a more universal rhetoric on the other. After the Civil War, these critics argued fervently for genre-specific literary devices they deemed less disruptive, an argument that persisted through the civil rights era. Although waning in some respects, this position continues to dominate the media in the twenty-first century (Hankins, 2012). Still, African American rhetoric in all its complexity and forms persists, having grown to include a much wider open discourse than previously existed.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the progression of African Americans' power of persuasion, particularly as an art form, began to increase dramatically, especially as literacy increased. A select few men and women, such as the abolitionist and famed orator Frederick Douglass, found an audience and exercised considerable influence prior to the Civil War (Hankins, 2012). Although initially largely drawn to forms of expression such as poetry and essays, forms that were particularly useful for discussing enslavement and advocating for civil rights, newly free men and women in the wake of Reconstruction expanded both their access to and their control of media, and the tone of African American language began to shift. By the turn of the century, many issues of a social, political, and economic nature arose for African Americans. In the 1920s, an explosion in literary talents and thinkers, a movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, focused on the intellectual and cultural art forms of African Americans. This era, much like the ones before it and those that came after, were highly reflective of the language and forms of expression that were dominant at the time. In the mid-twentieth century, there would be significant movement in musical expression and in film.

Another prominent example of how the oral traditions of the African communication styles have thrived over the generations is found in the practices of black churches, where African American rhetoric has continued to shape both culture and its expression. The influence of black churches on popular music, for example, is profound, from the classic call-and-response, which is an interaction consisting of a verbal and nonverbal back and forth between the speaker and listener, to what is referred to as "semantic inversion," which consists of inverting words to mean their opposite, as exemplified in hip-hop culture (Hamlet, 2011). Further, because of their influence on the mainstream culture and irrespective of the apparent juxtaposition to mainstream English, many aspects of African American rhetoric and oral traditions of communication, such as "trash talkin" have made their way into the larger, mainstream American popular culture.

African American music in its various forms, including blues, gospel, jazz, and rap, has long served as one of the more prominent vessels for delivering messages about the issues affecting African Americans. This is especially true in hip-hop culture, which was derived as a creative means of self-expression for African American youth, who struggle to be fully included in American mainstream culture. Hip-hop has been embraced worldwide, even aiding businesses large and small in marketing campaigns designed to reach the masses. Commercial integration further drives the mass appeal of the genre and subsequently African American influence (Hamlet, 2011). African American rhetoric can also be seen in critically acclaimed films such as Moonlight (2016), Get Out (2017), Black Panther (2018), and Judas and the Black Messiah (2020) —films written and directed by, as well as starring African Americans, that focus largely on African American-centered topics yet have performed exceptionally well at the box office.

Further Insights

For over fifty years, sociolinguistic researchers have been examining the language expectations of cultural and linguistic diversity, especially the influence of minority dialects, with respect to ascertaining and addressing the existence of education disproportionalities, chiefly among African American children and their white counterparts. African American children have been statistically shown to outnumber their European American counterparts in terms of diagnosis of educational and/or learning disability. In fact, African American children make up nearly one-fourth of those children with an educational disability alone (Mills, Mahurn-Smith & Steele, 2017). Even further, regarding representation in gifted education, African American children were underrepresented in gifted programs as opposed to their European American counterparts (Mills, Mahurn-Smith & Steele, 2017). Moreover, it appears that school-age African American children's use of rare vocabulary appears to be "dialect neutral" in discerning their narrative language and distinguishing gifted children from typically developing children (Mills, Mahurn-Smith & Steele, 2017).

Although research has also shown that African American English and mainstream American English (MAE) overlap, there are noted significant differences, including phonology, morphosyntax, and pragmatics. African American English is not inferior linguistically as compared with MAE, but is rather a naturally occurring dialectical variation, a common characteristic of spoken languages (Edwards et al., 2014). One inherent issue with dialectical variations is the cultural aspect, especially as it relates to minority dialects. Such cultural aspects, which are derived from honing a mastery of the minority dialect through hearing and speaking the language in the home in early life, present themselves in the MAE classroom and thus affect the child's performance, especially when the school system relies on MAE to assess aptitude. In an assessment of the impact of dialect usage on such tasks as learning to read, it was revealed that minority dialects, such as African American English, do influence the MAE lexical comprehension of school-age children who are known to speak both African American English (predominantly among family and the community) and mainstream American English (predominantly in the classroom) (Edwards et al., 2014). Children with high levels of non-mainstream American English (NMAE) are at an increased likelihood of having difficulty understanding MAE.

Additionally, according to some researchers, among the educational disparities faced by African American children are the manner in which the teacher practices referrals as well as administers testing practices, which do not address inherent cultural and linguistic differences of African American children (Mills, Mahurn-Smith & Steel, 2017). Instead, the African American children, who enter the school system speaking a NMAE, have to embrace fluency in MAE, a dialect of American English that has been adopted by the school system. Such a preference for MAE over NMAE dialects is apparent in "norm-referenced language tests," which disadvantage African American children in measuring competence. Because African American children have a narrative foundation in place upon entering the school system, the identification of so-called dialect-neutral indices of narrative language is imperative; non-biased language assessments that are not geared toward either MAE or NMAE narrative language have been shown to level the playing field for school-age children (Mills, Mahurn-Smith & Steele, 2017).

Issues

The gap between African American children and their European American counterparts continues to persist with respect to academic performance, especially in reading comprehension. This divide clearly suggests some relationship between the use of African American English versus MAE among African American children. For example, in the home or in the community, African American children are more likely to hear and speak African American English than to hear and speak mainstream American English, thus presenting a challenge for African American children that does not present for white children, with respect to early oral and written communication skills and their development in the areas of reading and comprehension, the curriculum and materials for which are based on MAE.

In the late 1990s, in an attempt to address the divide in academic performance between African American children and their European American counterparts, psychologist Robert L. Williams led the charge in a movement to legitimize what he called Ebonics with the Board of Education of Oakland, California. The argument was that, like many minority children, African American children are also bilingual, with Ebonics being attributed as their native language, and should be given the opportunity to learn in both languages, which would then translate to heightened self-esteem and better performance in reading. Although it was initially passed by the Board of Education of Oakland, California, the national debate that ensued triggered the board's reversal. Debate in the educational community continues on how to appropriately address the needs of African American children in the classroom to close the performance gap between them and their peers in critical areas of learning such as reading and comprehension (Yancy, 2011). Edwards and colleagues (2014) suggest teaching children the differences between the two variants along with when and where it is appropriate to use them in order to avoid learning issues.

Bibliography

Assari, S. et.al. (2021, January 6). Black-white achievement gap: Role of race, school urbanity, and parental education. Pediatric Health, Medicine and Therapeutics, doi.org/10.2147%2FPHMT.S238877

Browdy, Ronisha and Esther Milu. (2022, August 25). Global Black Rhetorics: A New Framework for Engaging African and Afro-Diasporic Rhetorical Traditions. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 522(3), 219-341, doi.org/10.1080/02773945.2022.2077624

Craig, H. K., Grogger, J. T., Oetting, J., & Loeb, D. (2012). Influences of social and style variables on adult usage of African American English features. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 55(5), 1274–1288. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2012/11-0055)

Edwards, J., Gross, M., MacDonald, M. C., Kaplan, D., Brown, M., & Seidenberg, M. S. (2014). Dialect awareness and lexical comprehension of mainstream American English in African American English-speaking children. Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research, 57(5), 1883–1895. doi: 10.1044/2014‗JSLHR-L-13-0228

Hamlet, J. (2011). Word! The African American oral tradition and its rhetorical impact on American popular culture. Black History Bulletin, 74(1), 27. Retrieved May 24, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=60848730&site=ehost-live

Hankins, L. (2012, Winter). What the folk printed: Verse culture and the black press in 1865 New Orleans. African American Review, 45(4), 527–540. Retrieved May 23, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=93476361&site=ehost-live

Lyne, W. (2000, Spring). No accident: From black power to black box office. African American Review, 24(1), 39. Retrieved May 23, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=3031047&site=ehost-live

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Mills, M. T., Mahurn-Smith, J., & Steele, S. C. (2017). Does rare vocabulary use distinguish giftedness from typical development? A study of school-age African American narrators. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 26(2), 511–523. Retrieved May 23, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=123145340&site=ehost-live

Smitherman, G. (2017). Black idiom. African American Review, 50(4), 499–505. Retrieved May 23, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=128553215&site=ehost-live

Wideman, J. (2017). Defining the black voice in fiction. African American Review, 50(4), 559–562. Retrieved May 23, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=128553227&site=ehost-live

Yancy, G. (2011). The scholar who coined the term Ebonics: A conversation with Dr. Robert L. Williams. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 10(1), 41–51. doi: 10.1080/15348458.2011.539967