Dear All,

I'm writing to advertise the upcoming talk (March 3 @ 3:30 Trimble Hall 200) and visit for Dr. Jennifer Bloomquist, a candidate for our position in sociolinguistics and African American English. (Abstract and title below.)  Dr. Bloomquist has a PhD in LInguistics from SUNY at Buffalo, and she is currently an Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Linguistics and Coordinator for Africana Studies at Gettysburg College.  Dr. Bloomquist's work intersects with a number of areas (linguistics - especially sociocultural and race issues, African American Studies, media and pop culture, semantics & pragmatics, child language acquisition) in which different people on campus have interests, so I'm taking advantage of that to let a wider range of people know about the job talk.  Please feel free to publicize her talk.  We are having a reception after the talk, from 5 pm - 6:30 pm in the Physics Executive Conference room.

Best,

Colleen Fitzgerald

 

************************************

Dr. Colleen Fitzgerald

Chair

Dept. of Linguistics & TESOL

The University of Texas at Arlington

Box 19559 Arlington, TX 76019-0559

 

Webpage: http://ling.uta.edu/~colleen

Email: [log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>

 

 

Dr. Jennifer Bloomquist, search candidate for the position of Assistant Professor of Sociolinguistics/African American English, will be giving her research talk entitled “The Dirty Third: Contributions of southern hip hop to the study of regional variation within African American English,” on Tuesday, March 3rd in Trimble Hall Room 200 at 3:30pm.

 

Abstract

 While there is well documented evidence of certain supra-regional features in African American English (AAE) phonology and morphosyntax (for example, see Labov 1972; Rickford 1999; Baugh 2000; Green 2002) recent trends in the study of linguistic variation suggest that the homogeneity of the variety has been largely overstated (Hazen 2002; Mallinson & Wolfram 2002; Friedland 2003; Jones 2003; Wolfram 2003; Mallinson & Childs 2004). For the most part, contemporary AAE influences on mainstream language have originated from varieties spoken in the northeast and on the west coast which have evolved independently of one another over the past forty years, and which vary in significant ways from southern AAE; however, the most popular linguistic styles of rap music and hip hop culture have shifted over the years as artists from various regions (the West Coast, the Midwest, and the South) have put their particular speech communities on the map in the Black Public Sphere (Pough 2005).  I argue here that as southern American rappers have become more dominant in the popular music scene, like East and West coast rappers before them, they have had a significant impact on the AAE spoken by hip hop's insiders, and they have also influenced the language of mainstream speakers as well.

           This paper builds on Smitherman's insights on Hip Hop Linguistics (2006) even as it explores a more recent sociolinguistic phenomenon: the imminent emergence of southern AAE forms in the music and lyrics of the most popular rap artists of this decade and the attendant influence that these forms might have on AAE in general. Preliminary findings suggest that the linguistic effects of southern rap on AAE (and to a lesser extent, mainstream varieties) are not only evident in the lexicon (which could be dismissed simply as fleeting slang), but also in the phonology and morphosyntax of the variety, providing us with a more complete understanding of contemporary AAE and the ways in which the variety continues to develop.