What is Hiding Behind Media Portrayals of Accents? (Part 1)
In some cases, an entire language and culture is hidden behind an accent, meme, or word. This week, we're looking at how African American English (AAE) is portrayed through TikTok.
In media, there are certain costumes and caricatures that are blatantly racist. An influencer in blackface, for example, would (hopefully) get cancelled instantly. However, when these caricatures are performed through language, the same backlash rarely ensues. In fact, it often goes unnoticed.
Just imagine: you open TikTok and scroll down the page to see post after post of people moving their mouths to match pre-recorded audio. Sometimes it’s done to make people laugh. Or to make money. But more often than not, it uses a voice or accent that doesn’t match the creator’s variety. For example, a phenotypically White creator will use audio which contains African American English (AAE) to get a certain effect.
Our topic for the next two newsletters is how the media affects how we perceive different accents, and what happens when viewers are only exposed to a certain accent through media. This week, we’re touching on TikTok and AAE. Next week, we’ll look at which accents Disney movies use for heroes and villains.
The History of Using Blackness for White Entertainment
Before we get into TikToks, it’s important to know the history of using Black caricatures for White entertainment in order to place these TikTok trends on a historical continuum.
Minstrel shows began in the 1830s in the U.S. and were popular for around a century. The original shows would have White actors who would paint their faces Black, wear tattered clothes, impersonate enslaved Africans, and further a narrative that Black people are ignorant and lazy (Edwards, 2021). All of this was done for White entertainment.
The most important part that Edwards 2021 highlights is that most of these shows took place in Northern parts of the U.S, where there weren’t enslaved people. The people who attended these shows had “little to no interaction with real Black people,” she says. In other words, the attendees learned about Blackness through these shows.
An AAE Interlude
African American English is a language with a deep and rich history. While linguists are unsure whether the language originates from Western Africa or whether it began as a Creole1 (a pidgin is when two communities create a third language to communicate with each other. When a pidgin is taught to another generation, it becomes a creole), it is a language that arouse through the conditions of chattel slavery. Enslaved people were separated from those who spoke their own language and found a new way to communicate with one another.
While the language has been continuously stigmatized as ungrammatical and unintelligent by non-linguists, linguists have documented how AAE has syntactic and phonological patterns that are extremely consistent. In other words, linguists know that AAE is as much a language as Standardized American English. And just like any other language, AAE has several dialects and is spoken differently throughout the country.
Though many people don’t know it, many words in Standardized American English have roots in AAE:
okra
gumbo
yam
All these words come from Western Africa and entered Standardized American English through AAE. To emphasize how remarkable these words are, they survived the Trans-Atlantic passage and carry that history in their words.
The Present-day Version of Using Blackness for White Entertainment
TikTok has had a number of trends in which an audio which contains AAE or Black culture goes viral, like the “don’t do it” trend, seen here. These trends are called digital black voice by scholars (Connor, 2020), as well as digitalizing minstrelsy, which Roberts (2016) defines as, “the practice of appropriating Black bodies, sounds, and culture by non-Black people online for humorous and playful purposes.”
Keep that definition in mind when looking over the following list of words:
lit (as in, that’s lit!)
tea (as in, what’s the tea?)
period (as in, that’s what I said, period.)
slay (as in, slay, queen!)
extra (as in, that’s so extra.)
All these words originate from AAE, and are seen all over social media. They’re used in a humorous and playful way, but their origin is largely hidden. And with their origin hidden, these words are often mis-labelled internet speech or Gen Z language. Just consider this video:
Speakers of AAE have used this language and have dealt with: lower grades in school, fewer employment opportunities, and general negative perceptions. In other words, non-Black people are taking Black language for their entertainment and leaving behind all of the struggle that comes from being Black in the U.S. And most creators don’t even realize they’re using AAE.
If this is true for people in the U.S.—as well as around the globe—it creates a situation quite similar to the minstrel shows in which most viewer’s first (and often only) impression of Black culture comes from TikTok trends.
When we abstract language from the people who speak it, then these words seem like linguistic borrowings. However, we can never separate language from the bodies the language comes from. This topic is the epitome of that fact: When non-Black people use these words, they’re often viewed as trendy; when Black people use these words within AAE, they’re often perceived as uneducated.
Thank you for reading!
I would love to know your thoughts! Please comment below or email me what you think about:
Have you noticed these trends? What do you think about them?
Have you only been exposed to AAE through these trends?
Works I used
For the history of minstrel shows and their connection to social media today, I used this article.
For AAE being labelled as Internet Speech, I used this article, this article, and this article.
For the etymology of AAE words that have entered Standardized American English, I used this article.