The evolution of Bruh: A Historical and Rhetorical Exploration of the Usage of African American Vernacular English Within Modern United States Culture

The first official documents written by the Founding Fathers followed the canons of Aristotelian or classical rhetoric, the current communication backbone of academia. Rhetoric is sometimes associated with empty words, which would be the case for the First Amendment of the United States, stating, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” (U.S. Const amend. I). When tracing the history of African American Rhetoric, the First Amendment did not provide the protections promised to all Americans, being just another catalyst for the usage of African American Rhetoric to create space for black communities to speak their truths in a language representative of the culture. This language is African American Vernacular English (a part of African American English) and is one of many facets of African American rhetoric. Geneva Smitherman’s Talkin and Testifyin (1977) sparked the push to accept African American Vernacular English (AAVE) both culturally and in academia, and the shift is noticeable 50 years later, also in part to hip-hop, social media, and generational cultural changes. Now with more access to cross cultural/cross rhetorical communication, tracing the roots of AAVE will aid in understanding how does language evolve when a culture has unabated access to increasingly diverse internet content, communication, and communities. Exploring shifts in language and usage becomes imperative as the population of the United States grows in diversity and demand for the same to be reflected within the culture and representation of all institutions.

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Colonization and subsequent mass migration from Europe established a white patriarchal dominant culture, thus weaving the unofficial dominant rhetoric of the classical western tradition into every institution created in the United States. The western classical tradition is the product of Classical Greek philosophers and scholars, emphasizing the use of logically structure and carefully calculated arguments to persuade the audience to agree. Classical rhetoric’s roots in philosophy nurtured an insidious aspiration to find universal truth, a task yet to be complete by mankind. But when the universal truth isn’t available, one may look for any truth, or perhaps their own truth. Now that it’s become personal, the pursuit of persuasion may come at the cost of authenticity. However, African American rhetoric is grounded in the Black perspective, foregrounding the cultural experiences of African Americans with emotional intensity and the specific context of lived experience allows for authenticity. The Black perspective begins with slavery in the U.S, where a need arose for a new communication method between individuals who shared little to nothing in common, whether that be with white Americans who spoke English, or with other enslaved Africans who most likely spoke different regional West African languages. Presented with the challenge, a new language formed to communicate with everyone; “this lingo [involving] the substitution of English for West African words, but within the same basic structure and idiom the characterized West African language patterns” (Smitherman 1977). The “lingo” in question is AAVE, and while its evolution began with slavery in the United States, the nature of orality is ever changing.

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Lacking access to academic institutions and other social structures required for acceptance by the dominant culture facilitated the persistence of orality and daily communications as the main rhetorical context. However, the first slave narrative was published in 1770 by James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw. Despite being a primary cultural and rhetorical text, researchers are able to identify the characteristics of early African American English and rhetoric, as noted Gronniosaw and subsequent early authors were “talking black and talking back” (Gates and McKay 2004). These early narratives also emphasized the transformative powers of literature and literacy, a key theme of the slave narratives, which is one of the three big influences on African American rhetoric, the other two being built upon the foundation laid by first generation African Americans. After time allowed for black communities to grow cultural roots, the Black church and the African American jeremiad became the other two defining influences. Built on foundations of African American rhetorical principles, black institutions were able to amplify black voices wherever African American communities had formed across the country, which spread from the southern United States in two maim drifts. First from 1910-1940 there was the “First Great Migration,” where African Americans moved north to urban areas like Chicago and New York. 30 years later, the western United States also experienced larger black population percentages like Los Angeles, Denver, and the Bay Area. Urban cities were already hotbeds primed for cross-cultural spread and community participation (Jones 2015). Dense, diverse populations put pressure on a system of communication because of the varieties of other rhetorical practices causing constant outside cultural stimulus.

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 It is important to note that while new generations make verbal adaptations to an oral rhetorical tradition reflecting their updated cultural context and identities, the original structure remains intact. This would include no neighboring consonants at the end of words, substituting /d/ for /th/, repeating verb form, dropping “do” from questions, and above all the style of speaking. Ex. “Nothing”, nuttin, nun. African America rhetoric’s components may continually evolve with generational changes in language usage, but the power of the spoken word continues to strengthen the rhetorical practice and the story behind it (Smitherman 1977). The cultural rhetoric emphasizes personal logic and Nommo to communicate with individuals and share perspectives to help make sense of the world. Nommo originates from Western African culture, equating to the power of the spoken word, implying it’s not only the words holding the utmost importance, but also the human being who speaks the word. Yielding personalization as a rhetorical tool, components like improvisation, soundin, stylin, and storytelling have evolved along with the practice. Another central component is community and using communication to cultivate a space for encouraging individual expression and shared cultural experiences. This aligns flawlessly with social media’s introduction in the 21st century with new platforms for communicating across multiple contexts, and opportunities to create community everywhere. On platforms like vine, Instagram, and twitter, individuality, quick wit, and style are all rewarded by likes and followers, and these characteristics mirror those of African American rhetoric. Due to the nature of promoting popular posts, African American Vernacular English is now encountering new audiences, and potential new uses.

             

In a 2015 study on the usage of AAVE in the U.S., Twitter was used to geographically pinpoint texts implementing AAVE by coding an algorithm to find geotagged tweets with words developed under AAVE. These words tend to follow the West African linguistic influences like few long vowels, lack tense indication, and others like the structures mentioned earlier. Examples would be bruh, finna, nun, and other commonly used words in the language. Data followed the trends of the Great Migrations, with the highest number of tweets tagged by the algorithm to contain African American Vernacular English and a geotag illustrating the large urban cities in the United States tweeting at far higher rates of AAVE than rural areas. Geotagging additionally showed the regionality of different words, like yeen (you ain’t) used exclusively in the south and jawn (thing) used comparatively at much higher rates in Philadelphia (Jones 2015). The one question the data is unable to answer is who the author of the tweets in question actually is. Lacking a demographic analysis, future research could continue to better quantify and qualify AAVE usage across the United States.

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If presented within one’s community with the habitual experience and communication with a different rhetorical practice, an individual would start picking up aspects of the new tradition and may try to implement them within and outside of the community, just like in the origins of African American Vernacular English. An example would be “code switching,” where the speaker adjusts rhetorical usage based on the audience and context, however modifying ethos is a characteristic traditional to classical western rhetoric. Because of the emphasis on authenticity and rhetorical element of suasion (urging of an issue), Keith Gilyard proposed the descriptor translingualism to acknowledge an increasingly diverse and interconnected reality of the world. Translinqualism is defined as the ability and conscious choice to use more than one language only if one understands the rhetorical context of said language. The constant stimulation provided by social media platforms allows users to share and digest language faster than ever in history, making it easy for translingualism to integrate itself further into the overall cultural rhetoric of the United States.

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Twitter data has larger social implications, as Jones’s 2015 study also mentioned young black usership accounts for the slight majority. As already historically exemplified by the rise and maintenance of hip hop and rap in popular culture, young black people act as catalysts for the perpetuation of Black culture and African American rhetoric (Richardson 2015). The growth since the era of slavery for the practice is dramatic, but one of the last barriers has proved difficult to overcome. Academia perpetuates its exclusive connotation by resisting the inclusion of African American Vernacular English in any form when going through the American School system. Considering social media use is almost a given in high school aged students, translingualism and the possibility of AAVE becoming more prevalent in academic populations warrants the question of inclusivity. Classical western rhetoric’s emphasis on the traditional structure makes it more difficult for student to master the usage, especially when approaching communication from a constantly evolving rhetoric. Moreover, this narrowing of permitted communication not only strips students of their language, but of their culture and identity tied to that language. Vershawn Ashanti Young wrote, “… Black boys not only feel coerced to give up their masculinity if they do well in school, but they also feel forced to abandon their race” (2004), illustrating how impactful academia’s approach to rhetorical education is on individuals. The African American language scholar then went on to say the realm of academics has the most negative and exclusive opinions about the incorporation of any non-standard American English than any other institution. The United States currently struggles with equal access to education and opportunity and narrowing the scope of what this education must look like does nothing but drive a greater divide between cross cultural groups.

 

References:

Garner, T., & Calloway-Thomas, C. (2014). African American orality. Understanding African American Rhetoric, 43–55. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315024332-3

Gilyard, K. (2016). The Rhetoric of Translingualism. College English, 78(3), 284–289.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/44075119

Jones, T. (2015). Toward a description of African American vernacular English dialect regions using “Black twitter.” American Speech, 90(4), 403–440. https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-3442117

Richardson, E., Pough, G. (2016) Hiphop literacies and the globalization of Black

popular culture, Social Identities, 22(2), 129-132, DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2015.1121

Smitherman, G. (1977). Talkin and testifyin: The Language of Black America. Houghton Mifflin.

Young, V. A. (2004). Your average nigga. College Composition and Communication, 55(4), 693. https://doi.org/10.2307/4140667