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Blackish: Hegemonic Culture

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Ethnicity is a social construct that is used to group people together with a common ancestry or lineage. Similarly, being placed in an ethnic group is not based on objective means. Often times members within the ethnic group come to a common understanding on the requirements that each individual must fulfill. For the African American community these requirements may include language. African American English is used amongst African Americans “as a symbol of ethnic identity” or more importantly a uniting point to mitigate against a society that frequently discriminates their community (Mooney & Evans, 2015). In the television series Blackish, the main character, Dre, is an upwardly mobile black father often stuck in a perplexing limbo of trying …show more content…

Even though Blackish is a dramatization, Dre represents an overarching problem faced by many ethnic minorities where the speaker has a strong desire to identify with his ethnicity through common language, yet the speaker does not want to be discriminated against for aligning with a group that is stigmatized. African American English is “a set of communicating patterns and practices resulting from Africans appropriation and transformation of a foreign tongue during the African Holocaust” (Smitherman, 2000). In this paper African American English will be referred to as AAE and Standard American English as SAE. AAE has deep historical roots, but has evolved with the time and plight of African Americans. Now it is currently used by approximately 35 million African descendants. Due to the vast population, the generalization that all African Americans use a set of defined features would be inaccurate. However, …show more content…

Previously there has been an association that AAE is only used by inner city, uneducated, black youth (Pullman, 1999). However with the creation of Blackish, the series challenges existing social construction of AAE, because it emphasizes that language is more linked to creating solidarity between interlocutors than it is related to the education or status of the speaker. This is stressed by Dre whose status doesn’t match the previous social constructs. Dre uses AAE as a way to gain solidarity with other members in the black community as noted by his use of “brother” or multiple negations. Additionally, Dre does not use AAE in work environments, because he understands the stigma that is associated with the people that speak AAE. Dre’s dynamic of changing his language variety to gain status within a group represents the overarching theme that a variety is used to gain solidarity with others and is not confined to just a speaker’s

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In discussing Black English, John McWhorter talks about the theories of the origin of the language. McWhorter talks about how people have made claims that Black English is related and comes from African languages. He also tells how their research on this subject is unreliable and “sketchy.” These people making these claims are outside of linguistics, meaning they practice things such as education and speech pathology. People like Dr. Smith, a teacher at a medical college, suggested that Black English is a mixture of African languages with English, where these African languages have altered English into a new language.

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In James Baldwin’s essay titled “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me What Is?” Baldwin highlights his major argument by capitalizing the words in the title so that it can stand out to the readers. His main idea is that all languages are equal, and there is an inequality in society where one is judged by the way they speak. Baldwin wanted the readers to understand that all languages do serve a purpose no matter how a person articulates it. Baldwin also wanted to convey that there is racism that is placed upon a black person just because of the way they speak.

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Black English speakers have a strong impact on the other communities of all ages. Besides, children and teenagers are simply influenced by what they are facing. It is not that hard to repeat what they head whether it is right or wrong. That is why; they are more influenced than the adults.

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Rickford explains how Ebonics is used to express African Americans in a community, in a way that would relate with themselves, “Most African Americans – including millions who like Brown and Baldwin, are fluent speakers of Standard English- still invoke Spoken Soul as we have for hundreds of years, to laugh or cry, to preach and praise, to shuck and jive, to sing, to rap, to shout, to style, to express our individual personas and our ethnic identities.” This proves that there is a purpose for accents for example, back when slavery was still existence, slaves used different editions from the language their masters were using. The Slaves were able to communicate to each other without their masters knowing what the slaves were saying.

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