All About Dat Bass Or Linguistic Blackface: White Pop Artists and African American English Sovoya Davis
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Eastern Michigan University DigitalCommons@EMU Senior Honors Theses Honors College 2017 All about Dat Bass or Linguistic Blackface: White Pop Artists and African American English Sovoya Davis Follow this and additional works at: http://commons.emich.edu/honors Part of the Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Davis, Sovoya, "All about Dat Bass or Linguistic Blackface: White Pop Artists and African American English" (2017). Senior Honors Theses. 530. http://commons.emich.edu/honors/530 This Open Access Senior Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Honors College at DigitalCommons@EMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Senior Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@EMU. For more information, please contact lib- [email protected]. All about Dat Bass or Linguistic Blackface: White Pop Artists and African American English Abstract This work explores America's love-hate relationship with African American English (AAE). As Linguist Geneva Smitherman points out, AAE is both stigmatized and superficially celebrated in the U.S. Focusing on White pop artist Meghan Trainor, I examine the role of AAE in her music and interviews and how her use of AAE relates to her image, the content of her songs, and how she is viewed. Even though some people benefit from its commodification, AAE and its native speakers continue to be discriminated against in most contexts. This work explores AAE's status in American society through Trainor's commodification of the language variety. Degree Type Open Access Senior Honors Thesis Department English Language and Literature First Advisor Eric Acton Second Advisor T. Daniel Seely Keywords AAVE, Ebonics, Meghan Trainor, Language Variation, AAE, Appropriation Subject Categories Linguistics This open access senior honors thesis is available at DigitalCommons@EMU: http://commons.emich.edu/honors/530 Davis 1 ALL ABOUT DAT BASS OR LINGUISTICBLACKF ACE: WHITEPOP ARTISTS AND AFRICAN AMERICAN ENGLISH By Sovoya Davis A Senior Thesis Submitted to the EasternMichigan University Honors College in Partial Fulfillment of theRequirements forGraduation withHonors in English Language and Literature Approved at Ypsilanti,Michigan, on this date �·,� \1J ,'l.. b\ 1 Table of Contents Abstract........................................................................ ........................ 2 Introduction........................................................................................ 2-4 Background About Artist and Album..................................................... ...... 5-6 Methods ............................................................................................. 6-8 Figure 1 ................................................................................................9 Results ............................................................................................I 0-26 Discussion ........................................................................................ 26-28 Commentary on Trainor's Use of AAE...................................................... 29-31 Comparing Meghan Trainor to Iggy Azalea .................................................31-34 Conclusion....................................................................................... 34-35 Davis 2 Abstract This work explores America's love�hate relationshipwith AfricanAmerican English (AAE). As Linguist Geneva Smithermanpoints out, AAE is both stigmatized and superficiallycelebrated in the U.S. Focusing on White pop artist Meghan Trainor, I examine the role of AAE in her music and interviewsand how her use of AAE relates to her image, the content of her songs, and how she is viewed. Even thoughsome people benefit from its commodification,AAE and its nativespeakers continueto be discriminated against in most contexts. This work explores AAE's status in American society through Trainor's commodification of thelanguage variety. Introduction Pop music is a genre enjoyed by a wide audience and participatedin by a diverse set of singers. Although there are pop artistsof everyrace, mainstreampop music seems to be a genre that is dominated by White musicians, or at least not as heavily associated with Black musicians as genres like Hip Hop or Rhythm andBlues. In 2016, the Billboard Hot 100 charts had a total of 39 out of 100 artistswho were AfricanAmerican. Most of these artists were hip hop or R&Bartists like Drake, Lil Wayne, ChrisBrown, Future, Whiz Khalifa,and Desiigner. 1 Most of the 61 other artistswere White, with exceptions like thegroup Fifth Harmony, DJ Khaleel,and Zayn. AfricanAmerican English (AAE), an Africanizedvariety of English mostly spoken by Black people in theUnited States (Smitherman,1977), has begun to crossover more heavily into mainstreamAmerican media and thusinto mainstreamAmerican music.2 Some White artistswho arenot native speakers of AAE have been utilizing this language varietyin their music and some, such as Iggy Azalea, have been heavily Davis 3 criticized forit. 3 On theother hand, some 'White pop artists have avoided as much criticismsfor using AAE in theirmusic, perhaps because their use ofAAE is more subtle. The United States has a very complicated relationship with AAE.4 On one hand, people use AAEin music, clothing, andadvertisements to profit and market things as cool, and in other instances AAEis considered improper and unacceptable,and its native speakers stereotyped as unintelligent.5 Native speakers ofAA£ are often discriminated against. It is not uncommonfor speakers ofAAE to be denied employment or housing opportunities based on their speech. 6 Linguist Geneva Smitherman coined the termLinguistic Push Pull for America's love-hate relationship with AAE.7 This concept has also been discussed by otherlinguists such as John Rickford The double standards in American society forAAE explain the reason for the criticisms of White pop artists profitingfrom its use. The crossoverof AAE into pop music is not new, but there is something to be said when musicians who are not nativeAAE speakers canbenefit fromits use while nativeAAE speakers are discriminatedagainst forsomething that is a part of their culturalidentity. In this paper, we will explore the dynamics ofWhite pop artists using AAE, specifically MeghanTrainor. We will look forthemes andmessages to see ifWhite pop artistsuse AAE to present certainthemes and messages in their music, using Trainor for insight. We will also see ifTrainor has fully integratedA.AE into her natural speech, as opposed to just using it in her music. The primary focus ofmy analysis are ten tracksfrom pop artist Meghan Trainer's album 'Title'. Trainor provides a valuable case study because although AAEis not the predominant language variety ofher music or the broader pop genre, Trainor uses AAE Davis4 in selectiveand potentiallytelling ways. While there is some criticism of Trainor's language out there, she bas escaped intense scrutinyabout her use of AAE in comparison with artistslike Iggy Azalea, which will be furtherdiscussed in thiswork. I will begin the investigationofTrainor's language use withan overview ofher lifeand her role in pop music. Turningto the analysis, I will examine Trainor's use of AAE in her music, lookingfor commonly observed featuresof AAE. I will compare Trainor' s language in her music and her naturalspeech in interviews.In addition, I will explore the themes and tones of her songs and how they relate to Trainor' s usage ofAAE to better understand the role of AAE in her music comparedto her natural speech. Previous researchhas examined White women who are not native speakers of AAE,but adopt AAEto use in their music. More specifically,Eberhardt and Freeman looked at White hip-hop artist IggyAzalea and her use of AAE. • Meghan Trainor provides aninteresting point of contrast forthis study because she is American, unlike Azalea who is Australian. She is a pop artist,unlike Azalea who is a hip•hop artist.Also, the two appear to use AAE at differentrates. There has also not been anyscholarly work done on MeghanTrainor's speech even though her use ofAAE is verynoticeable. It should be noted that borrowingor appropriatingAAE is not limited to Trainor and Azalea.For instance, White pop artistKaty Perryreleased a song titled"This is How We Do", where she utilizesa lot ofAAE lexicon and racialized imageryin her music and in the video, and there arecertainly other examples, as well.' Davis 5 BackgroundAbout Artist and Album Backgroundon MeghanTrainor and her album is provided to give anidea on factorsthat influencedthe development of Trainor's natural speech and her language use on her album. If there were any songwriters that were AAE speakers onthe album or if Trainor was raised by AAE speakers, then thiswould give important insight on why Trainor makesuse of AAE. Meghan Trainor was born in Massachusetts and raised on the island ofNantucket.10 In 2000 and 2010, Nantucket's population of African Americans was less than 9%. 11• il Trainor camefrom a musical family andwas creating music from an early age. She has a middle-class background, and her parents are both jewelers Aside from Trainor, the firstsongwriter mentionedon ''Title" is Kevin Kadish. 13 Kevin Kadish speaks with a veryStandard American English (SAE)dialect. A video interview of Kadish reveals that thereis nothing about his speech thateven remotely mimics AAE.14 He helped write "All About That Bass", "DearFuture Husband", "Close Your Eyes", ''Walkashame", "Title", "What If' and ''Lips areMovin". The next songwritercredited on the albumwas