Introduction
Language plays a huge and critical role in different sociocultural contexts. In the African-American community, language brings out their cultural identities and social realities. African Americans use language to express their cultural practices and life experiences. Mainly, their language use encompasses their African culture and slavery experiences. Indeed, people from other cultures often misunderstand the blacks’ use of language. This paper is a discussion of a research proposal, literature review, and use of language from a stereotypical perspective. Thus, language reveals cultural identity and social realities in the African-American sociocultural context.
Research Proposal
I chose the topic to be the role of language in the African-American sociocultural context. I chose this topic because the community has a different and controversial use of language. Many people from other races find their language explicitly offensive and direct. However, the language is okay and appropriate among the community members. This research aims to find out the exact role language plays in the African-American sociocultural context. In this research, I intend to solve the question of which role is played by the use of language in African American sociocultural context. For my career goals, I need to know whether language use plays a role that could cause educational barriers or conflicts, especially in communication. I would like to know whether the community’s language use is inappropriate or whether people refuse to understand their sociocultural context.
The research methodology will be qualitative, which entails reviewing various types of literature for data collection. One of the things I already know is that language used in this sociocultural context represents cultural practices and social experiences. It is also clear that the African-American sociocultural context uses language to express slavery struggles. I intend to use various information sources such as books, journal articles, photos, charts, and Internet documents.
The anticipated results will be the details about language’s specific role in African American sociocultural context. The results ought to have solved the research question adequately. Indeed, it should have answered all the questions that might arise from the literature review. Finally, I will write the paper so that I can use it as a foundation for my future research. I will ensure the research’s reliability by consulting the most accurate ad credible sources for information.
Approach
Language plays the role of representing the origins of African Americans by differentiating their pronunciation, lexicon, grammar, and semantics. According to Zięcina, their vernacular English has deep roots in the African accent and pronunciation. The African-American community use language to differentiate themselves from the native Americans. This source is reliable because it was published in the recent year, 2019. It also confirms some commonly known information about the community, making it accurate.
African Americans are known to use obscene or uncensored speech. Their moderation of this language varies according to their socioeconomic status, level of education, age, and gender (Spears 251). While people of high status may use uncensored language moderately, those of low status use it excessively. Furthermore, younger males tend to curse more than females of all ages. Although this source is relevant to the topic, it does not directly give the role played by the language in the community. Instead, it gives language structure and uses while ignoring the role it plays. The source is, however, reliable because it provides some factors that influence the role played by language use.
African Americas use abusive language to express their cultural-related injustices and experiences. According to Bailey and Erik, black people are likelier to use obscene language to express sadness and censored language to show happiness (98). Black people’s anger stems from slavery injustices and other related experiences that remind them of slavery days. Therefore, to effectively communicate their emotions, the community members often use explicit language (Bailey and Erik 109). However, they use censored language when they are happy, especially illustrating community pride. In other words, the blacks use language to express their emotions regarding daily happenings. This source is relevant to the topic because it sheds more light on the role played by language amongst blacks. The authors do not only look at the negative side but also the positive one.
Examination of Dialogs
While men are direct and precise, women are more expressive and repetitive. Females are more likely to repeat a single word more than once to stress its importance or meaning. For example, in the children’s storybook Goodnight Moon, Margaret Wise Brown writes the word ‘and’ 15 times and Goodnight 21 times (Brown 1). Although this form of communication is suitable for children, the female writer expresses how females repeat words to stress their meanings. Furthermore, through the repetition of words, the female writers show how women are expressive. In The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle illustrates how direct a male’s figure of speech can get. For example, at the beginning of the story, he tells how an egg lay on a leaf; the next thing he says is how the egg became a caterpillar (Carle 1). Men are direct about what they intend to say and may not repeat words.
Blue colors and trucks are associated with male characters in most stories. For example, Little Blue Truck’s Christmas by Alice Schertle is about a blue male truck (Schertle). Blue and other darker colors are associated with males, while lighter colors are relative to females. Male children are predicted to play with trucks, while females play with toys. The colors and items illustrate strength in men and softness in women. Women are illustrated to love bright and soft colors in different stories. For example, in Swatch: The Girl Who Loved Color by Julia Denos, the girl in the story is shown to love lighter and softer colors (Denos). These colors illustrate the softness or weakness associated with women.
Different dialogs above reveal different forms of language used by males and females. One thing in common between the literature and the dialogs is that women are soft-spoken. Women are shown to be more careful with their words and more expressive. Another similarity shown is the role of language in expressing cultural norms. The dialogue shows that women prefer toys to trucks because they are weak and need tender love. Differences exist in various forms of men’s and women’s expressions as they play varied roles in communication.
Conclusion
Language plays the role of expressing cultural identity and social realities. Multiple kinds of literature show that African Americans heavily use explicit language to express their emotions. Different dialogs have also shown how language features and speech patterns reveal cultural and social assumptions regarding both genders. Females and males take critical roles in language use to relate to sociocultural contexts. Therefore, language helps individuals to indicate who they are and what they go through.
Works Cited
Bailey, Guy, and Erik Thomas. “Some Aspects of African-American Vernacular English Phonology.” African-American English, edited by Salikoko Mufwene, John Rickford, Guy Bailey and John Baugh, Routledge, 2021, pp. 93-118.
Brown, Margaret W. Goodnight Moon Big Book. HarperCollins, 1947.
Carle, Eric. The Very Hungry Caterpillar. World Publishing Company, 1969.
Denos, Julia. Swatch: The Girl Who Loved Color. Balzer + Bray, 2016.
Schertle, Alice. Little Blue Truck’s Christmas. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014.
Spears, Arthur K. “African-American Language Use: Ideology and So-Called Obscenity.” African-American English, edited by Salikoko Mufwene, John Rickford, Guy Bailey and John Baugh, Routledge, 2021, pp. 249-276.
ZiÄ™cina, Marta. “African American Vernacular English in Cultural and Historical Linguistics.” LinkedIn, Web.