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African American Identity Analysis

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Does Disney’s use of AAVE strip Tiana of her African American Identity? When you think of Disney what comes to mind? Most of us would say princesses, magic, castles, fairy tales, happily ever afters. These all may be true, but one important feature is lacking from this list, stripped identities. According to critics of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), the exaggerated use of it reinforces African American stereotypes. (Rickford 14-15). Elements of AAVE are found throughout the Disney movie Princess and The Frog. The features are found in the language of the African American characters Mama Odie, Louis, Ray, etc. but never appears in Disney’s first African American Princess, Tiana. A person’s language makes up who they are, their …show more content…

Tiana instead uses Southern American English. Disney acknowledges AAVE’s legitimacy by using it in their African American characters’ dialogues, but chooses not to have Princess Tiana speak it. However, if language makes up a person’s identity, then Disney denies Princess Tiana’s African American identity by having her not speak AAVE. As stated previously, Princess and the Frog takes place in New Orleans during the 1920’s. Historically, it is a time when segregation is prominent yet there are many instances go against a segregated community. These include the fact that Tiana’s best friend is a white upper class woman and that she marries outside of not only her class but also her race. This could explain the language difference between the two …show more content…

However, if AAVE is exaggerated then it perpetuates stereotypes. So, in Princess and the Frog AAVE is appropriately used amongst their African American characters. It is evident that features such as zero copula and double negative aid in representing the vernacular form. It is a point of interest that Mama Odie heavily uses AAVE and represents the vernacular, but Tiana uses Standard English and Southern Standard English. A possible reason for this distinction would be that Tiana is stripped of her African American identity, which allows her to act like a white person and have the same privileges as the other white characters. Therefore, although Disney correctly uses AAVE, the lack of it in Tiana’s language and the use of it in other African American characters suggest that Disney’s use of AAVE does not allow Tiana to embrace her African American

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In his analysis of Disney’s movie The Princess and the Frog (which coincidentally Bruce Smith also contributed to the animation of) Richard M. Breaux claims that Disney used this movie to cash in on it’s racist past (p 1). He claims that Disney uses this movie to address complaints about their lack of representation in the past, and that even this representation makes the African American past in the US seem nostalgic, as opposed to the vast inequality of the time the movie is placed in (Breaux). TPF came before The Princess and the Frog, so it can be assumed that Disney’s smaller screen is a little more successful with their racial

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“Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan is primarily an autobiographical piece about her experiences growing up in a household that chiefly spoke “broken” English, and a reflection on how this gave her a unique perspective on the transformative properties of language. Yet, it is no way an academic analysis, a deliberate choice, Tan even includes a short disclaimer in the beginning concerning this, and the excerpts she includes come from her own background, her personal observations, something which I found quite refreshing. As someone who comes from a mixed family and identifies as Asian-American, I related a great deal to her upbringing, and in many instances down to the exact circumstance. For example, she details an incident in which she

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504 Words | 3 Pages

The power of language We all have some form of language limitations, no matter where we come from and what our background is. “Mother tongue” by Amy Tan and “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldua both share similar themes in their stories that demonstrate how they both deal with how different forms of the same language are portrayed in society. In both stories they speak about what society declares the right way of speech and having to face prejudgment, the two authors share their personal experiences of how they’ve dealt with it.

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In Chapter 1 and 2 of “Creating Black Americans,” author Nell Irvin Painter addresses an imperative issue in which African history and the lives of Africans are often dismissed (2) and continue to be perceived in a negative light (1). This book gives the author the chance to revive the history of Africa, being this a sacred place to provide readers with a “history of their own.” (Painter 4) The issue that Africans were depicted in a negative light impacted various artworks and educational settings in the 19th and early 20th century. For instance, in educational settings, many students were exposed to the Eurocentric Western learning which its depiction of Africa were not only biased, but racist as well.

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Symbolic Interactionalism is the study of things to which we attach meaning are the key to understanding how we view the world and communicate with one another. Princess and The Frog is a great movie, it uses symbolic interactionalism to show what a great symbol Tiana’s dad was in her life. Positive sanctions, core values, ethnocentrism, differential association, and The movie Princess and the Frog is about a very hard working girl named Tiana. Tiana has always dreamed of opening her own restaurant on day.

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Loosely using words we do not have recognition of is a problem we can fix with more public awareness of where they came from through a conversation about race; a conversation that may seem daunting, but that has the ability to teach profound lessons of the way our society

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Joseph Calise October 26th, 2015 Dr. Hesson Language in Society Aladdin Essay 2 When talking about linguistics in the movie Aladdin, different dialects between characters correspond directly to stereotypes from a socioeconomic and racial lens. The sentence structures from both Aladdin and Jafar in this clip expose many properties of language including morphology, syntax, as well as the patterns of phonetics. Based on dialect and linguistics throughout the clip as well as the entire movie, it is evident that Aladdin is seen as the more trustworthy person when compared to Jafar. Aladdin, being from the Middle East would be expected to have some kind of an Arabic accent.

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Kathryn Stockett uses rhetorical tools to portray the differences between her black and white characters. The rhetoric influence affects both the narrative and the portrayal of the character such as the difference in language spoken by the characters. "Dramatic/Narrative criticism focuses on language and other sign systems. Critics believe that language and other sign systems are the grounding for human reality and motivation" (Brummelt 79). Stockett has chosen to write in a stereotypical African-American "slang-like" style filled with spelling mistaken and contractions, leaving the impression on the reader.

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The Skin That We Speak The way a person speaks is a direct link to a person’s culture and the environment which he or she was raised in. A person’s language, skin color as well as economic status influences the way he or she is perceived by others. Lisa Delpit and eleven other educators provide different viewpoints on how language from students of different cultures, ethnicity, and even economic status can be misinterpreted due to slang and dialect or nonstandard English by the teachers as well as his or her own peers. The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom by Lisa Delpit and Joanne Kilgour Dowdy, who collected essays from a diverse group of educators and scholars to reflect on the issue of language

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It was once believed that the languages that the Africans spoke varied drastically from region to region but in reality they were “local variations of a deeper-lying structural similarity” (Herkovits 79). This similarity allowed communicating in the New World to be easier than if the languages were all completely linguistically independent, “whether Negro speech employs English or French or Spanish or Portuguese vocabulary, the identical constructions found over all the New World can only be regarded as a reflection of the underlying similarities in grammar and idiom, which, in turn, are common to the West African Sudanese tongues” (80). Language then became an important part of African American culture, whether it be a “secret” language used to help slaves escape, or to tell stories and folklore to children to encourage and motivate them, or express African proverbs from generation to generation. There has been many times when other races seem not to understand what African Americans are saying because of the slang terms we create that then become popular terms, most recently has been the phrases “on fleek” and “twerking”, to name a few examples. Being proficient in verbal arts was prized in Africa and now a value has been placed on verbal expression in today’s culture through riddles and through preaching and teaching (Williams

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943 Words | 4 Pages

In her writing, Tan often describes her experiences as the child of Chinese immigrants, growing up in northern California and living in American culture. Tan explains how she has learned to embrace the many Englishes her mother speaks and how her background has also caused her to have different Englishes. While others classify her mother's English as "broken" she finds no fault in it. In Tan's view, just because something is broken does not necessarily mean that it is in need of fixing. In her essay, author Amy Tan addresses the connections between languages and cultures in describing the different Englishes her mother uses.

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553 Words | 3 Pages

The United States is made up of some of the most diverse and interesting cultures in the world. Jamila Lyiscott proves this by showing her different dialects and how they are all equally important. Lyiscott believes that the way she speaks towards her parents, towards her friends, and towards her colleagues are all one in the same.  Throughout the entirety of her speech, Lyiscott changes up her vocal patterns and dialects so that the audience can understand first hand what each of these dialects are. When she talks about her father, Lyiscott uses her native tongue, when she talks to her fellow neighbors and close friends she switches it up to a more urbanized dialect, and when she is in school she masks the other two dialects with a professional sounding language.

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