Q,

with regards to African Americans developing new words and sayings in "an attempt to develop communication that is apart from that of white 'standard' culture"...hmmm. I don't know. But I do think that we seem have a tendency to tire of slang terms much sooner than White people {think "That's cool"} and we appear to quickly retire those words and substitute new words when our old words are picked up by mainstream culture which is ever alert for these expressions.

Tnis may be words that we created [such as 'bling bling'] or words and phrases that we pronounce differently [like 'Whaaaasup?!] or a new way of saying something using old words or numbers [like "24-7"].

IMO, African Americans create words & sayings for the love of the spoken word. We have been socialized to like word play and to be creative about word usage. This is not something new, but comes from traditional African culture and speaks to the importance of Nommo {Word power}.

African authors such as Chinua Achebe write about the status that traditionally was given to good speakers. In "Mules And Men" and other books, Zora Neil Hurston,the African American anthropologist documented the culture of 'lying' or telling tall tales among 'country' African Americans. And most people are at least somewhat familiar with 'signifyin'", "cappin'", "dissin", "jonin", and other terms that are used for The Dozens, that contest of insults which not only depends on the opponents keeping their 'cool', but also is a means by which two people {usually of the same sex} show off their verbal skills.

I agree that Black languaging is found among non-Black people. But I don't think that this is anything new.

What I do think is new {or at least dating from the beginnning of Hip-Hop culture} is the importance given to the visual representation of language. I see examples of this in the way that more and more [African American] personal names use accent marks, or hypens, capitol letters. Like the male names "DeAndre", "De-Andre", and "DeAndre'"...

With regards to African Americans developing new words and sayings in "an attempt to develop communication that is apart from that of white 'standard' culture"...hmmm. I don't know. But I do think that we seem have a tendency to tire of slang terms much sooner than White people {think "That's cool"} and we appear to quickly retire those words and substitute new words when our old words are picked up by mainstream culture which is ever alert for these expressions.

Tnis may be words that we created [such as 'bling bling'] or words and phrases that we pronounce differently [like 'Whaaaasup?!] or a new way of saying something using old words or numbers [like "24-7"].

So the bottom line is that I think that our use of words and phrases is all about creativity. I think that this is much more important than any attempt to differentiate ourselves from others.



Azizi