Diachrony and AAE: St. Louis, Hip-Hop, and Sound Change outside of the Mainstream

Abstract

In this article, the authors provide a diachronic analysis of the urr variable as it appears in African American English (AAE) spoken in St. Louis. While many believe that this linguistic feature is a product of hip-hop, invented recently for creative purposes, the authors provide linguistic evidence that shows it to be a prevalent feature of dialects of AAE spoken in St. Louis, Missouri, and East St. Louis, Illinois, at an earlier time. The authors suggest that the increase in vowel centralization that evolved in St. Louis is similar to that found in Memphis, Tennessee, along an s-curve pattern. Finally, the authors theorize about how the use of the urr variable by hip-hop artists correlates with its increased usage in present-day local communities. They employ notions of indexicality, meaning making, acts of identity, and accommodation to argue for linguistic convergence between St. Louis rappers and local communities. They argue that the increased usage and acceptance of vowel centralization in local communities is supported by hip-hop language as opposed to innovated through it.

African American and Black as Demographic Codes

“…20 All of the second generation West Indians have some competency (i.e., can consciously code switch) in the English-lexifier Caribbean Creole spoken by their parents, in addition to dialects of American English. Blake and Shousterman (2010b) found quantitative differences in postvocalic /r/ vocalization in the speech of African Americans and West Indian Americans such that West Indian Americans retained postvocalic /r/ slightly more than African Americans. The authors argue that higher rates of /r/ retention among second generation Caribbean Americans may be tied to notions of class and prestige, as they were in Labov's (1966) department store study in New York City, and may be further elevated by the prestigious status of /r/ in the Caribbean (Wells 1982).…”

“…Importantly, African Americans are also participating in regional sound changes that are specific to their communities and not shared by White speakers in the area (cf. Pollock and Berni ; Blake and Shousterman ).…”

“…Blake, Shousterman, Lewlin-Lukowicz and Kelley (2012) acoustically analyzed BOUGHT and BOAT raising in the speech of the same two groups of speakers whose /r/ productions were studied in Blake and Shousterman (2010b). 21 Normalized speaker means for 60 vowel tokens per speaker are illustrated in Figures 3 and 4.…”

“…17 Outside the purview of this article is a full discussion of the Black Latinos. The reader is encouraged to read Alcoff (2000), Turner (2002), Candelario (2007), Flores and Jimenez (2010), Torres-Saillant (2010) and Gates (2011 (Blake and Shousterman 2010b;Blake, Shousterman, Lewlin-Lukowicz and Kelley 2012). 20 Although St. Thomas is a district of the United States Virgin Islands, it is located in the Caribbean Sea and its residents identify as West Indian.…”

The role of African Americans in Philadelphia sound change

“…Studies of AAVE in New York City found that adolescent African American speakers had 98% to 100% vocalization, considerably exceeding the white pattern (Labov et al, 1968, I:99-106). Blake and Shousterman (2010) track the development of this sound change within African American English in St. Louis and East St. Louis and trace its origins to Memphis. The general pattern shows an influence of the surrounding r-pronouncing mainstream dialect on an originally r-less AAVE.…”