Language, Power and Discourse in African American Culture (review)

This book is a recent contribution to the long list of resources currently available on African American English (AAE). As such, its contents are not completely unexpected. It begins with a brief history of the most prominent theories of AAE development and a concise description of pivotal US legal cases marking institutional attitudes towards AAE and its speakers. It then provides an intriguing survey of the ways in which power and culture are encoded in AAE discourse.

Where this survey sometimes suffers is in its tendency to rehash well-worn topics. The observation, for example, that ‘signifying’ is a common feature of African American male discourse is not particularly new. What is new, however, is the observation that African American women also use this form of linguistic play. Unfortunately, Morgan does not go on to provide a crossgender comparison that could have enhanced the understanding of gender variation and power negotiation. Further, M’s failure to more critically examine the political ramifications of the formulaic Yo mamma was disappointing. While it is agreed that women also participate in language games utilizing such expressions, this does not negate but only complicates the issue, one which has great relevance for a general discussion of the use of linguistic taboos in other minority communities (e.g. fag among gays, JAP among Jewish Americans, and breed among Native Americans). Given the sociopolitical slant of this book, the omission of a fuller, more critical discussion of this point is regrettable.

By comparison, the discussion of language norms and practice is fascinating. Here, the author successfully deconstructs the notion of ‘AAE speaker’ and convincingly challenges the homogenization of this diverse set of speakers. As M points out herself, many African Americans today are in fact bidialectal, regular users of both AAE and General American English. As such, they are remarkably adept at managing multiple linguistic codes to negotiate power and identity.

Where the author truly excels, however, is in her ability to weave personal narrative into linguistic analysis. For example, her comparison of the ways in which Northern and Southern African Americans depict the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till is as fascinating as it is disturbing. The regional differences in the speakers’ reconstructions of this still topical murder are a reminder of the incredible power of language to mirror social reality, casting images which are clear for one speaker and perversely distorted for another. And therein lies the true contribution of this book.

Where some reference works on AAE become bogged down in linguistic details, antiseptically detached from the political reality of its speakers, this book demonstrates how linguistics can powerfully bring together history, politics, culture, and literature. To do this, M invokes Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem ‘We wear the mask’, Carter G. Woodson’s The miseducation of the Negro (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1990), and Ice Cube’s album The predator and thereby confronts the reader with some of the most articulate political observers of American society. Although the book sadly leaves the equally stirring voices of African American women comparatively silent, this oversight is almost compensated for by M’s own eloquence. In the end, M’s book demonstrates that the African American voice is not simply a reaction to the injustices of US cultural history. It is also the articulation, the affirmation, and the celebration of the spirit’s power to overcome.