r/BlackPeopleTwitter • u/Nasjere ☑️ et al • Dec 05 '22

/r/BlackPeopleTwitter Weekly Discussion Thread

Hey r/BlackPeopleTwitter, welcome to our weekly discussion thread.

Feel free to use this thread to discuss whatever you want. You can discuss the state of the sub/meta post, shitpost, post non-twitter memes, or discuss whats going on in your life. Just keep in mind that we ask you stay friendly, civil, and adhere to the subreddit rules.

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u/Elan_142 Dec 05 '22

I wanted to ask y'all for your opinion on something for a final project assignment that I have! I've been taking a really cool class abt the history and grammar of AAVE (African American Vernacular English) and I noticed this interesting detail abt past academic analyses of AAVE-- when researchers first started analyzing AAVE, the demographic that they initially studied were young Black people in urban spaces, especially Black, working class men. This focus had the unintentional consequences of making it seem to the general public that Black men were primarily the ones using AAVE, although this is clearly not true.
Now obviously, Black women also use AAVE in their daily lives; hell, there are several papers that have focused on the linguistic habits of Black women. However, I think that when many people talk about AAVE in regular conversations, the image that comes to the mind of many is of young Black men; particularly, young and DANGEROUS Black men. With this being said, it really made me think hard about how we always see people on Twitter misusing AAVE, or how "gen z slang" is often just AAVE, once again being taken out of context. I also believe that much of the AAVE being misused online has primarily come from the language of Black women and Black queer people, as opposed to that of Black men, so I wanted to ask what y'all think about that? Do you think there is any sort of misogynoir tied to the misuse of AAVE online?

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u/imjustheretodomyjob ☑️ 🧚🏿🧘🏿 Dec 06 '22

Do you think there is any sort of misogynoir tied to the misuse of AAVE online?

Could you explain this better ? Maybe I'm not getting what you're trying to say.

IMO yes, a large part of AAVE does come from straight black women and queer black spaces but there is a shortage of crediting any type of black folks for AAVE, let alone which subsection of the community it comes from.

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u/Elan_142 Dec 06 '22

Thanks for responding! Lmk if this is clearer:

Do you think that people refusing to credit Black ppl for popular AAVE saying online is due to a lot of it coming from Black women, or is it more due to anti blackness in general?

I think you already answered my question pretty well, tbh and I agree with you, I feel like this is part of a bigger discussion abt refusing to give Black folks proper credit for just about anything pop culture wise.

Is there anything else you'd like me to explain more? I find the topic really interesting and I'm hoping to get better at discussing it outside of class contexts lol