Black Langue and White Parole

Signifiers and Signifieds in the Grammar of Racism

Autori

  • Luisanna Fodde
  • Alessio Pisci

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2023.i21.1342

Parole chiave:

hegemony, modality, AAVE, coloring ear, multilingualism

Abstract

Our paper aims to carry out a stylistic and linguistic study of the representation of cultural, racial and linguistic hegemony (Gramsci 1975) in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (2016). First of all, we will use Simpson’s (1993) point of view framework to analyse the representation of the slave identity through the eyes of the protagonists as filtered by the narrator but also that of the white masters, especially in their dialogical contacts with the black characters. Point of view will be studied in particular with reference to the characters’ perspectives in moments of doubt, to illustrate how they question the American society of the time. Secondly, we will discuss Whitehead’s linguistic depiction of white oppression and black subordination. The author normally translates the slaves’ dialect into standard English (leaving, nonetheless, some occasional vernacular elements to preserve the ‘spirit’ of the original) apparently disregarding linguistic ‘authenticity.’ However, he shows episodes where there is a
contrast between the idiolects of the characters who take part in a dialogue (generally in conversations between black characters and the white man) and instances where such contrast is absent (usually in dialogues between black characters only). Our twofold hypothesis is that the overwhelming prevalence of white over ‘incorrect’ black parole not only makes the text more comprehensible to a wider public, but it also shows how, by delegitimizing black speech, the white master enforces his hegemony, which, according to Gramsci (2014), can be more effectively sustained “through cultural leadership” (Dale Parker 2008, 218). All in all, our analysis will attempt to show how the racism issue addressed through the stylistics and dialect theoretical frameworks manages to show the impact of hegemonic forces on social and cultural relations.

Riferimenti bibliografici

Arau, Alfonso. A Walk in the Clouds. 1995.

Baugh, John. “Linguistic profiling.” Black Linguistics: Language, Society, and Politics in Africa and the Americas. Edited by Sinfree Makoni, et al. London: Routledge, 2003. 155-168.

---. “Plantation English in America: Nonstandard Varieties and the Quest for Educational Equity.” Research in the Teaching of English 41.4 (May 2007): 465-472.

Beecher Stowe, Harriet Elizabeth. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 1852. New York: Penguin Books, 1986.

Conrad, Joseph. Nostromo. 1904. London: Penguin Books, 2007.

Dale Parker, Robert. How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies. 2008. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Ellis, Rod. Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Fodde, Luisanna. Race, Ethnicity and Dialects: Language Policy and Ethnic Minorities in the United States. Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2002.

---. “African American English: Race, Ethnicity and Language Diversity in the U.S.A.” English, but not Quite: Locating Linguistic Diversity. Edited by Oriana Palusci. Trento: Tangram Edizioni Scientifiche, 2010. 97-114.

Fodde, Luisanna and Alessio Pisci. “The Underground Pride: A Road Map to the Grammar of Freedom.” Intertextuality: Intermixing Genres, Languages and Texts. Edited by Maria Grazia Dongu, et al. Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2021. 83-99.

Gilmour, Rachael and Tamar Steinitz, edited by. Multilingual Currents in Literature, Translation and Culture. New York: Routledge, 2018.

Gramsci, Antonio and Valentino Gerretana, edited by. Quaderni del carcere. 1975. Torino: Einaudi, 2014.

Hiddleston, Jane and Wen-chin Ouyang, edited by. Multilingual Literature as World Literature. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.

History.com Editors. “Underground Railroad.” History.com 29 March 2023. https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/underground-railroad. Last visited 25/05/2023.

Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Black Girl, Written by Herself. 1861. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009.

Jones, Katie, Julian Preece and Aled Rees, edited by. International Perspectives on Multilingual Literatures: From Translingualism to Language Mixing. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021.

Knauth, K. Alfons. “Translation & Multilingual Literature as a New Field of Research in between Translation Studies and Comparative Literature.” Translation & Multilingual Literature—Traduction & Littérature Multilingue. Edited by K. Alfons Knauth. Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2011. 3-24.

Meer, Sarah. “Minstrelsy and Uncle Tom.” The Oxford Handbook of American Drama. Edited by Jeffrey H. Richards and Heather S. Nathans. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 81-96.

Milroy, Lesley and James Milroy. Authority in Language: Investigating Standard English. 1985. London: Routledge, 1987.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. 1987. London: Vintage, 2022.

Mufwene, Salikoko S., et al. African-American English: Structure, History and Use. London: Routledge, 2022.

Rangan, Pooja, et al., edited by. Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice. Oakland: University of California Press, 2023.

Rickford, John Russel. African American Vernacular English. Malden: Blackwell, 1999.

Saville-Troike, Muriel. Introducing Second Language Acquisition. 2005. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Selinker, Larry. Rediscovering Interlanguage. 1992. London: Routledge, 2013.

Simpson, Paul. Language, Ideology and Point of View. London: Routledge, 1993.

Trimble, Rhys. “Trans/Pluri(Lingual): Wenglish Poetics.” International Perspectives on Multilingual Literatures: From Translingualism to Language Mixing. Edited by Katie Jones, Julian Preece and Aled Rees. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021. 52-69.

The Pulitzer Prizes. “The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday).” Pulitzer.org 2017. https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/colson-whitehead. Last visited 23/05/2023.

Whitehead, Colson. The Underground Railroad. New York: Doubleday, 2016.

Pubblicato

2023-06-27

Fascicolo

Sezione

Articoli (sezione generale) - lingua e linguistica inglese