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By: Tanishka D
By: Tanishka D
Racial tension is an issue that is commonly explored in American Media. It is a theme that occours throughout American history, wether it be slavery in the early days of the nation or the jim crow laws and segregation practices that prevailed in the American south until the civil rights movement in the 1960s. The victims of these atrocities are still alive today which is why filmmakers find it important to accurately represent people of colour to raise awareness about the issue and in some cases bring forth a call to action to inspire societal change.
One such film is spike lee's 2018 oscar winning film BlacKkKlansman. The film follows a black and a jewish police officer in the state of colorado as they work to infiltrate as well as dismantle their local Klu Klux Klan (KKK) chapter. The film is prolific in its usage of dialogue and cinematography, but what stands out is the way code switcing is utilized by the main characters to drive the story forward. This article will explore how sociolinguistic markers can subliminally reveal crucial information about the film's characters as well as how it helps enhance the film's script. lets get going!
What is a dialect?
What is a dialect?
According to the merriam-Webster dictonary, A dialect is a regional variety of a language distinguished from other varieties by differences in vocabulary and pronounciation. Dialetcs differ due to historical, geographical and cultural factors.
Perception of African american english
Perception of African american english
African american vernacular English or AAVE is a dialect of english spoken in America. It originated in the american south and has been widely spoken since. Characteristic features of the dialect include double negation such as the phrase "I ain’t see nothing" and lack of subject verb agreement such as in the phrase " It do that".
AAVE is regarded as a standard,structured dialect as it has is distinct set of rules pertaining to it's grammar and speech sounds. This is a key factor in differentiating it from badly spoken or broken english. Despite its recognition,speakers of the dialect are negative stereotyped as being less intelligent and less educated as well has having poorer character.
In popular culture, AAVE has been co-opted by the masses in an effort to cound cool and trendy. But here lies the problem, a white teen will recieve a lot of atention from their peers and online if they use AAVE slang as part of everyday language in contrast to black people, who are ridiculed for the same vocabulary due to the afformentioned stereotypes. Many have called this to be an appropriation of the language.
In the context of the film, The protagonist, Ron Stallworth ( played by John David Washington) has to switch between his normal AAVE style speech and what the KKK would consider to be a more white sounding dialect in order to not raise suspicions about his race. He famously makes this distinction by saying:
"Chief, some of us can speak the King's English and other's speak jive. Ron Stallworth, here, happens to be fluent in both"
Ron Stallworth
Kode switching to evade the klan
Kode switching to evade the klan
Code switching is the act of switching between two or more languages or dialects. People like Ron stallworth who can effectively converse in both are said to be multi dialectal. Stallworth switches his dialect based on who he is speaking with, as evidenced by him speaking in his natural AAVE dialect when he is talking to Patrice dumas ( played by laura Harrier) when they are at a rally for a national civil rights leader. He does this so as to not raise suspicions about him being an undercover police officer and to gain her trust. This also reflects on the community that we humas form around shared language, as speakers of AAVE are part of a common ingroup of english speakers and stallworths usage of the dialect in this scenario shows that he , like others are working towards a common effort to reclaim black power.
The KonKlusion
The KonKlusion
To wrap up, we can say that despite many social reforms over the years, the speech of African american individuals is still viewed in a negative light. Film can be an effective method to get the general audience to care about societal issues such as civil rights while entertaining the masses.
Thank you and I hope tou enjoyed this article. If you have a favourite peice of media you would like for me to analyse, do leave a suggestion in the suggestion box. Until next time, goodbye :)
sources and further reading:
2) https://www.toughconvos.com/post/why-is-aave-controversial
3) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8740186/
4) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dialect
5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching
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