Semantic and semiotic flows: Examining variations and changes of “the N-Words” within an indexical field of dynamic meanings

ABSTRACTThis study investigates Circum-Atlantic linguistic flows as language change and variation among the “n-words.” Language users do not experience this set of expressions identically. The words include a racial slur as well as expressions that vary in meaning and use. Applying Spears's discussion of semantic neutralization in tandem with Eckert's indexical field model, this research analyzes ethnographic community data from Pittsburgh AAL and online sources to elucidate the competing and dynamic meanings that have developed amidst the shifting realities of the Circum-Atlantic. The study highlights a way to account for multiple layers of interpretation and experience and to encompass the fluidity, mutability, and mobility of n-word meanings within and across linguistic, ethnoracial, and geopolitical boundaries without reductivity. The research clarifies how linguistic competences, lived experiences, and culturally grounded pragmatic and metapragmatic understandings (in)form potential meanings. It, moreover, demonstrates how AAL patterns and cultural models unsettle hegemonic racial and linguistic ideologies.KEYWORDS: African American LanguageBlack LanguagecounterlanguageFlippin the scriptraciolinguistic ideology AcknowledgementsI am eternally grateful to my father, James Woodrow Washington, for teaching me so much about our history, for recounting his experiences, and for offering his wisdom regarding the n-words for the present paper. I would like to express my gratitude to the research participants for sincerely sharing their experiences and entrusting me with their stories. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable recommendations that helped improve the manuscript.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Silverstein, “Shifters,” 14, 17.2 Milroy, “Britain and the United States”; Lippi-Green, English with an Accent; Flores and Rosa, “Undoing Appropriateness”; and Young, Your Average Nigga.3 For further discussion, see Baugh, Out of the Mouths of Slaves; Lanehart, ed., The Oxford Handbook; Mitchell-Kernan, “Signifying and Marking”; Morgan, “The African American Speech Community”; Morgan, “The Africanness of Counterlanguage”; Rahman, “The N Word”; Spears, “African-American Language Use”; Washington, “Bad Words Gone Good”; and Washington, “‘Reclaiming My Time.’”4 For further discussion of spelling ideologies and “flippin the script,” see Alim, Roc the Mic Right; Morgan, “‘Nuthin’ But a G Thang’”; Olivo, “Phat Lines”; Smalls, “Flipping the Script”; and Smitherman, “The Chain Remain the Same.”5 Eckert, “Variation and the Indexical Field”; Spears, “African-American Language Use”.6 Hill, The Everyday Language of White Racism, 38.7 For further discussion, see Davis and Smalls, “Dis/Possession Afoot”; García Peña, “Community as Rebellion”; Meek, “Racing Indian Language”; and Washington and Robinson, “De-Pathologizing Diversity.”8 Calhoun et al., “Attracting Black Students to Linguistics,” 16.9 For further discussion, see Britt and Weldon, “African American English”; and Morgan, “Indirectness and Interpretation.”10 For further discussion, see Spears, “African-American Language Use.”11 For further description of Blackfemme Language, AAWL, and AAL, see Green, African American English; miles-hercules, “‘A Way to Lift Each Other Up’”; Rickford, African American Vernacular English; Scott, “Crossing Cultural Borders”; and Troutman, “Culturally Toned Diminutives.”12 Cosby and Poussaint, Come on, People, 145.13 For examples, see Henderson, “What's in a Slur?” 53; Alim and Smitherman, Articulate While Black, 112.14 “The ‘N’ Word Is Laid to Rest.”15 Mims-Washington, “SIGN THE PETITION.”16 Spears, “African-American Language Use.”17 Souto-Manning and Yoon, Rethinking Early Literacies, 39.18 Young, “Banning the N-Word on Campus.”19 Washington, “San Marcos Mom Files Complaint.”20 Alim and Smitherman, Articulate While Black; Asim, The N Word; Croom, “How to Do Things with Slurs”; Grogan, “The N-Word”; Henderson, “What's in a Slur?”; Kennedy, Nigger; Parks and Jones, “Nigger”; Rahman, “The N Word”; Smitherman, Talkin and Testifyin; Smitherman, “The Chain Remain the Same”; Spears, “African-American Language Use”; Spears, “Perspectives”; and Washington, “Bad Words Gone Good.”21 Grieser, “Toward Understanding the N-Words”; Jones and Hall, “Grammatical Reanalysis”; O’Dea and Saucier, “Perceptions of Racial Slurs”; and Smith, “Has Nigga Been Reappropriated?”22 See Washington, “Bad Words Gone Good.”23 Spears, “African-American Language Use,” 230; see also Spears, “Perspectives.”24 Spears, “African-American Language Use,” 232.25 Silverstein, “Indexical Order”; see, for example, Eckert, Meaning and Linguistic Variation; Johnstone and Kiesling, “Indexicality and Experience.”26 Beaton and Washington, “Slurs and the Indexical Field.”27 Silverstein, “Indexical Order.”28 Johnstone, “/aw/ Goes Dahntahn,” 19.29 Johnstone and Kiesling, “Indexicality and Experience.”30 Silverstein, “Indexical Order,” 220.31 Eckert, “Variation and the Indexical Field.”32 Ibid., 464.33 Johnstone and Kiesling, “Indexicality and Experience.”34 Rahman, “The N Word,” 153.35 Lippi-Green, English with an Accent; Milroy, “Britain and the United States.”36 Flores and Rosa, “Undoing Appropriateness,” 150.37 For examples, see Mitchell-Kernan, “Signifying and Marking”; Morgan, “The African American Speech Community”; Morgan, “The Africanness of Counterlanguage”; Smitherman, “The Chain Remain the Same”; Washington, “‘Reclaiming My Time’”; and Zeigler and Osinubi, “Theorizing the Postcoloniality.”38 Morgan, “‘Nuthin’ But a G Thang.’”39 Nelson, “The Word ‘Nigga,’” 117.40 Spears, “Perspectives.”41 For example, see Jones and Hall, “Grammatical Reanalysis.”42 For example, see “Piper Nigrum - Linnaean Typification Project.”43 Judy, “On the Question of Nigga Authenticity,” 222.44 Ibid., 222, 224; Hill, The Everyday Language, 51.45 Boston (Mass.). Registry Dept. and Boston (Mass.). Record Commissioners, “Will of Robert Keayne 1653,” 25.46 Judy, “On the Question,” 222.47 Hill, The Everyday Language, 51.48 Kennedy, Nigger, 5.49 Dollard, Caste and Class, 45.50 For references and examples, see Washington, “Bad Words Gone Good”; Washington, “Desecrating the Sacred”; and Washington, “‘Reclaiming My Time.’”51 For example, see Jeyathurai, “The Complicated Racial Politics.”52 For example, see Avram, “On the Origin and Diffusion”; Cassidy, “Pidginization and Creolization of Languages.”53 Boskin, Sambo; Tate, Decolonising Sambo.54 Bireda, “The Brute.”55 Baughman, The Chain Rejoined, 287.56 Hurston, Barracoon.57 Hill, The Everyday Language; Smitherman and Dijk, Discourse and Discrimination.58 Henderson, “What's in a Slur?,” 54.59 Ibid., 64.60 Ibid., 58.61 Ibid., 67.62 Jones and Hall, “Grammatical Reanalysis”; Jones and Hall, “Semantic Bleaching”; and Spears, “African-American Language Use.”63 Spears, “African-American Language Use,” 241.64 Smitherman, Talkin and Testifyin, 62; see also Smitherman, Black Talk.65 Alim and Smitherman, Articulate While Black; Jones and Hall, “Grammatical Reanalysis”; Rahman, “The N Word”; Smith, “Has Nigga Been Reappropriated”; Smitherman, Word from the Mother; Spears, “African-American Language Use”; and Spears, “Perspectives.”66 Young, “Your Average Nigga,” 702; see also Young, Your Average Nigga, 2007.67 Young, “Your Average Nigga,” 698; see also Henderson, “What's in a Slur?,” 67.68 For a discussion of marking, see Mitchell-Kernan, “Signifying and Marking.”69 Eckert, “Variation and the Indexical Field,” 468.70 See Childs and Mallinson, “The Significance of Lexical Items,” 21–22; Smitherman, Talkin and Testifyin, 62.71 Singleton, Poetic Justice, 85; The Last Poets, Niggers Are Scared of Revolution; see discussion in Alim and Smitherman, Articulate While Black, 115–116.72 Spears, “African-American Language Use”; Spears, “Perspectives.”73 For example, see Cutler, “The Co-Construction of Whiteness,” 17.74 Jones and Hall, “Grammatical Reanalysis.”75 Spears, “African-American Language Use,” 239.76 Ibid.; for related discussions, see Morgan, “‘Nuthin’ But a G Thang’”; Rickford and Rickford, Spoken Soul; and Smitherman, “The Chain Remain the Same.”77 For further discussion of the grammaticalization of nego(a), see Carvalho, “Historicidade.”78 Spears, “African-American Language Use,” 238; for a related discussion, see Childs and Mallinson, “The Significance of Lexical Items.”79 Common and Angelou, The Dreamer.80 Rickford, African American Vernacular English.81 For examples and/or further discussion, see Jones and Hall, “Grammatical Reanalysis”; Rickford and King, “Language and Linguistics on Trial”; Washington, “Bad Words Gone Good”; and Rahman, “The N Word.”82 Smitherman, “The Chain Remain the Same,” 19.83 Bucholtz, “Word Up,” 287.84 Flores and Rosa, “Undoing Appropriateness”; Irvine and Gal, “Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation.”85 Morgan, “‘Nuthin’ But a G Thang.’”86 Ibid., 202; see also Olivo, “Phat Lines.”87 Alim, Roc the Mic Right, 77.88 Singleton, Poetic Justice; The Last Poets, Niggers Are Scared of Revolution.89 Childs and Mallinson, “The Significance of Lexical Items,” 21–22; Cutler, “The Co-Construction of Whiteness,” 17; and Rahman, “The N Word,” 5.90 For examples and/or further discussion, see “Price v. Sw. Airlines, Co.”; Rickford and King, “Language and Linguistics on Trial”; Spears, “Perspectives.”91 Jones and Hall, “Grammatical Reanalysis.”92 Croom, “How to Do Things with Slurs,” 193.93 Mitchell-Kernan, “Signifying and Marking,” 175.94 For further discussion of the global spread of Black linguistic and cultural practices, see Alim, Ibrahim, and Pennycook, eds., Global Linguistic Flows; Charry, Hip Hop Africa; Morgan, “'The World Is Yours’”; Morgan and Bennett, “Hip-Hop & the Global Imprint”; and Omoniyi, “Hip-Hop through the World Englishes Lens.”95 Williams, “What It Means.’”96 Asim, The N Word; King et al., “Who Has the ‘Right.’”97 Henderson, “What's in a Slur?”; see also Washington, “Bad Words Gone Good.”98 For further discussion, see Smitherman, “The Chain Remain the Same”; Washington, “Bad Words Gone Good”; and Washington, “‘Reclaiming My Time.’”99 Kirkland, “Black Masculine Language,” 835–836.100 For a discussion of negro as a euphemism among AAL users, see Alim and Smitherman, Articulate While Black, 113.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the 2021–2022 Research Publication Grant from the American Association of University Women (AAUW).Notes on contributorsAdrienne Ronee WashingtonAdrienne Ronee Washington is an interdisciplinary scholar and sociocultural linguist. She studies the connections among language, power, culture, and identities of race, gender, and religion among intersectional communities of the African diaspora, with a particular focus on the eastern United States and northeastern Brazil. Washington earned her MA and PhD in linguistics, her Doctoral Level Certificate in African Studies, and her Advanced Study Certificate for Latin American and Caribbean Studies from the University of Pittsburgh, and she holds a BA in Spanish from Hampton University. She was the 2021–2022 recipient of the Research Publication Grant from the American Association of University Women (AAUW).