You Know My Steez: An Ethnographic And Sociolinguistic Study Of Styleshifting In A Black American Speech Community

by Alim, H. Samy

• ISBN13: 9780822366089
• ISBN10: 0822366088
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-05-30
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

You Know My Steez is the culmination of nearly four years of direct study and hands-on experience by a teacher-researcher and active community member in the working-class suburb of Sunnyside, California. Focusing on the language and linguistic practices of students at Haven High School, an ethnically and linguistically diverse school, the author examines both the internal linguistic constraints and the external social constraints (race, gender, and cultural literacy, among others) that shape speech styles, particularly amongst Black male and female hip hoppers. Contributing to the development of a more refined methodological approach to the study of linguistic styleshifting, the author integrates the study of sociolinguistic variation, interactional analysis (the use of discourse analysis to examine the implicit rules and roles that govern social interaction), and ethnographic fieldwork to develop a deeper understanding of how, when, and why speakers shift their styles.

Table of Contents

Foreword, John Baugh	ix
Preface: Real Talk	xiii
Shout Outs	xxvii
1. Introduction: You Know My Steez	1	(13)
2. Designing Sociolinguistic Research on Speech Style	14	(25)
3. How the Other Half Speaks: Ethnosensitivity and the Shifting Roles of the Researcher	39	(39)
4. "This Is Corporate America Takin Over": Schooling, Survival, and the Sociohistorical Context of Life in the Occupied Territories	78	(63)
5. We Some BaaaddDDD Styleshifters: The Copula in Stylistic Variation	141	(20)
6. Our Steelo Switch Up: Third-Person Singular -s, Possessive -s, and Plural -s Absence	161	(12)
7. We Be Word Sorcerers: Invariant be and the Equative Copula in BL	173	(18)
8. It Take Two to Make a Thing Go Riiiiight: Examining Interaction in the Coconstruction of Style	191	(40)
9. The Gentrification of Speech and Speakers: Black Language in White Public Space	231	(18)
Appendix A: Example Transcript of One Semistructured Conversation	249	(37)
Appendix B: SSC Questions: Hiphopography Conversations	286	(4)
Appendix C: Coding Keys	290	(3)
References	293