Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T21:25:35.231Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

You know my Steez: An ethnographic and sociolinguistic study of styleshifting in a Black American speech community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2007

Cecelia Cutler
Cecelia Cutler
Affiliation:
Lehman College, Bronx, NY 10468, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Samy Alim. You know my Steez: An ethnographic and sociolinguistic study of styleshifting in a Black American speech community. Duke University Press, 2005. pp. Xi, 309. Hb $20.00.

Samy Alim's book is a balanced blend of hip hop linguistics, ethnography, and advocacy. There is an underlying intensity to his writing that challenges all researchers to become more active in applying their research to the benefit of the community. Most impressively, Alim puts his money where his mouth when it comes to linguistic advocacy. Paying lip service to the idea that African American English or Black Language is linguistically and socially legitimate is one thing; it is another to employ it in written form in a scholarly text. Yet Alim seamlessly shifts back and forth between a hip hop form of Black Language and Standard English, alerting the reader to his own stylistic range while serving to legitimize the language he uses. Furthermore, he does so in a style that is both lucid and transparent for readers less familiar with linguistic jargon.

Type
BOOK REVIEWS
Information
Language in Society , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , April 2007 , pp. 303 - 307
Copyright
© 2007 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Baugh, John (1979). Linguistic style-shifting in Black English. Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania.
Baugh, John (1983). Black street speech: Its history, structure, and survival. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Josey, Meredith (1999). “That be all right now!”: Be2 variation in an Atlantan African American community. Ph.D. Qualifying Paper, New York University.
Morgan, Marcyliena (1993). Hip-hop Hooray! The linguistic production of identity. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, DC.
Poplack, Shana, & Tagliamonte, Sali (2001). African American English in the diaspora. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
Rickford, John R., & McNair-Knox, Faye (1994). Addressee- and topic-influenced style shift: A quantitative sociolinguistic study. In D. Biber & E. Finegan (eds.), Perspectives on register, 235–276. New York: Oxford University Press.