Obama and Black English in the NY Times

[Wilson Gray]

On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 8:19 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why call it "signifying" instead of "sarcastic understatement"?
> Because the authors want to show how delightfully exotic Black English is.
> The President's English isn't very exotic, as far as I can tell, and since
> it's  fifty years since "I have a dream," his delivery isn't either, except
> by Romney standards. (Of course, I'm long past the point where I think of
> any English at all as "delightful," so pay no attention.)
>
> I'm not sure the Prez actually said, "Nah, we straight!" and not "Nah,
> we're straight!"  To my ear it could have been either. Maybe "straight" in
> this sense (not precisely "OK" but "even") really is overwhelmingly AAVE.
> But my grandfather said "Nah!" every day of his life, as do I. (Perhaps our
> vowel is too much like that in "gnat" to count.)
>
> "Some African-American critics have strongly objected to Mr. Obama=92s use =
> in
> the public sphere of phrases deemed to be part of black private
> discourses."  Like what?  Surely not "We straight"? And why object, esp.
> "strongly"? This could be the most interesting statement in the piece. I
> wish it had been elaborated.
>
> But specialists aren't the intended audience, and newspaper essays on
> language rarely satisfy; so let ten thousand flowers bloom. It was a
> diverting read.

Maybe _naw_ was intended. Though my own familiarity with this dialect
is limited, a lot more of the colored say "naw" and not "nah" - use of
the latter being distinctive of white speech (again, in my limited
degree of familiarity) experience. But,

Youneverknow.

I haven't read the article and don't intend to, for fear that I'd find
it more annoying than enlightening.

"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

Why search out more?

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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