Yorkville Crossing: a case study of hip hop and the speech of a white middle class teenager in N.Y.C.

The notion of "language crossing" advanced by Rampton (1995) provides a useful framework for understanding the widespread use of "black youth language" among young whites and other non-African American young people in the United States. Language crossing unifies these forms of outgroup language with a range of other sociolinguistic practices such as the use of prestigious minority codes and pejorative secondary foreigner talk (Rampton 1995; Hill 1993). Here I focus on the use of AAVE as a prestigious youth language employed by non-African American young people to construct "cool," "hip hop" and sometimes also "black" identities.

As a longitudinal study this paper explores how Mike experiments with alternative identities through language crossing during his teenage years and how he acquired AAVE features given that his peer group consists primarily of white middle class speakers of American mainstream English. We trace Mike's early attempts to identify with African Americans as a "wannabe" starting at age 12 to his later self-redefinition as "white" in opposition to "black" and the emergence of anti-African American sentiments at around age 16. Paradoxically this shift did not result in the disappearance of AAVE features from his speech.

For young people like Mike black youth language creates an aura of toughness and street smarts. Essentially it has become a prestige language for today's youth just as hip hop fashions and music have come to dominate adolescent buying habits. Crossing into AAVE allows young people to experiment with alternative identities and has the potential for breaking down ethnic barriers by creating new forms of youth culture. The potential for this sort of development among the droves of white hip hop fans in suburbia exists even in the face of substantial opposition from other whites and blacks. It is particularly interesting to observe these trends in light of the recent controversy surrounding the adoption of "Ebonics" in Oakland's public schools. Despite decades of research to the contrary AAVE is openly ridiculed as "slang" and "broken English" in the media. Are young crossers trying to legitimize a form of the language shunned by their parents? Despite the prestige black youth language enjoys among many young people, it remains to be seen whether this will lead to greater acceptance of AAVE in mainstream society.

Language crossing covers a range of sociolinguistic practices including the dominant outgroup use of prestigious minority codes, pejorative secondary foreigner talk and the notion of "marking" as a way of differentiating oneself from those being imitated (Rampton 1995; Bucholtz 1996; Hill 1993). Here I focus on the white use of AAVE as a prestigious youth language employed by non-African American young people to construct "cool," "hip hop" and sometimes also "black" identities. As Jacob-Huey’s (1996) study shows, whites can go quite a long way toward convincing others (and themselves) they are black through language and this has implications for the way terms like "ethnicity" and "speech community" are used in sociolinguistic research.

The study of language crossing behavior raises important questions about the motivations as well as the ultimate success of outgroup language use as well as the reception attempts to "transgress" ethnic boundaries receive in society at large. The extent to which individuals can define or redefine their own ethnic identities may depend on the extent to which ethnicity is perceived as rigid and unchangeable (Rampton 1996b). In the US the continuing importance that race plays as a defining way dominant groups (mainly whites) define and distinguish themselves from others (mainly non-whites) thwarts attempts by young people in this country challenge received ethnic categories.

This work suggests that AAVE crossing can have many different purposes: it can express the desire to be part of the black community; it can locate a young person in the hip hop/rap youth culture scene; or when used in a pejorative way it can emphasize that the speaker is not a member of the group being imitated.

References:

Labov, William (1980). Is there a creole speech community? In Theoretical Orientations in Creole Studies, Albert Valdman and Arnold Highfield (eds.). New York: Academic Press. 369-388.

Rampton, Ben (1995). Crossing: Language and Ethnicity Among Adolescents. New York: Longman.