The ideological and indexical aspects of linguistic representation have been extensively examined in contemporary sociolinguistics both through investigations of language crossing in everyday interaction and through analyses of mediatized linguistic performances. Less well understood are the indexical meanings achieved when language crossing itself becomes the focus of linguistic representation. One prominent instance of this phenomenon is the use of African American English by European American actors in Hollywood films as part of what is argued to be a complex language‐based form of blackface minstrelsy. As mock language, linguistic minstrelsy in such films involves sociolinguistic processes of deauthentication, maximizing of intertextual gaps, and indexical regimentation of the performed language, but unlike earlier forms of minstrelsy these performances are typically problematized within the films as transgressions of the ideology of racial essentialism. In the two films analyzed in detail in the article, linguistic minstrelsy is shown both to reproduce and to undermine the symbolic dominance of hegemonic white masculinity.
This article builds on previous research on white male cross-racial linguistic appropriations of blackness by considering similar appropriations by white female characters in film. Specifically, it examines how such characters use semiotic resources of hip-hop, particularly its language and music, to perform an aggressive femininity that is simultaneously raced, classed, sexualized and gendered. While these performances are racially complex because they push against the boundaries of US racial categories, they also erase the distinctions between black, Latino, gang and hip-hop cultures. Furthermore, in using hypersexualized blackness to construct a white female hip-hop and/or gangster identity, black females become invisible in these films. The study demonstrates that the mediatized representation of white hip-hop relies on problematic ideologies of both race and gender
This article builds on research in queer linguistics and linguistic scholarship on race in the media to examine the semiotic representation of race, gender, and sexuality in The Wire, often considered one of the most “authentic” media representations of Blackness. Based on an analysis of the entire series, the article argues that this authenticity effect is partly due to the show’s complex African American characters, who reflect a range of gendered and sexual subjectivities. The analysis focuses on three queer Black characters on The Wire who are represented as both “authentically queer” in their social worlds and “authentically Black” in their language. However, the semiotic authenticity of the series is linked to its reification of familiar stereotypes of Blackness, especially hyperviolence and hypermasculinity. Thus, these characters both contest and complicate traditional representations of queerness and gender while reinforcing problematic representations of Blackness for its largely white, affluent target audience.
This article examines a national Volkswagen commercial, broadcast on American television during the 2013 Super Bowl, and the intense public debate that met it. It shows a cheerful European American owner of a 2013 Volkswagen Beetle, who despite being from Minnesota speaks in a Jamaican Creole (JC) accent with features of Rastafarian speech. The focus of analysis is the linguistic performance of the JC as well as the linguistic reception by American and Jamaican audience members. The linguistic analysis reveals that the primary objective in how the character uses forms of JC is not linguistic authenticity, but simply to index Jamaican culture and identity through selective feature use. Our discourse analysis of the ad’s reception shows that linguistic ideologies, including ideas about what constitutes linguistic racism, vary widely among American viewers and are generally divided along racial lines. On the other hand, Jamaican viewers were found to have a more homogenous perspective. We conclude that the selection of non-local racialized stereotypes as the target of cross-racial stylization practices complicate, but do not eliminate, modern types of linguistic minstrelsy.
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