Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1245

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

Linguistic and Ethnic Diversity in Black New York

Authors: Blake, Renee (1); Shousterman, Cara (1); Newlin-Lukowicz, Luiza (1); Kelley, Lindsay (2)
Submitted by: Shousterman, Cara Lynn (New York University, United States of America)

In this paper, we present the results of a comparative study of the English spoken by second-generation Caribbean Americans in New York City and their African American counterparts. These two groups of black ethnic New Yorkers are often identified as being racially, socially and linguistically similar, such that race assimilationist models would have Caribbean Americans becoming virtually African American by the second generation. However, sociological research challenges race assimilationist models by showing that the children of black Caribbean immigrants are adept at switching their identities between that couched within American society and that couched within the English-speaking Caribbean communities from which their parents arrived (Waters 1999). Still, little is known about how the multi-layered identities of second-generation black Caribbean Americans are manifested in language behavior.

We focus on the use three linguistic variables for two groups of second-generation Caribbean Americans and a population of African Americans in New York City. We examine the use of postvocalic /r/ in words like floor, the tensing and raising of /ɔ/ in words like talk and the realization of /oʊ/ in words like boat. These three linguistic variables are characteristic of regional and social dialects associated with New York, African Americans and/or Caribbean English Creoles. An examination of their co‑occurrence can shed light on the ways in which black New Yorkers, particularly second-generation Caribbean Americans, make use of linguistic variables in creating their social identities.

We analyze the speech of eight individuals in sociolinguistic interviews, and find subtle differences in their speech according to ethnicity. Our results indicate that Caribbean American identified blacks have higher rates of /r/-fulness than African American-identified blacks. Moreover, while both groups show the New York identified tensing and raising of /ɔ/, the length of the off-glide is different. Off-glide differences also are evident in the realization of /oʊ/, which is closer to a New York realization than a monophthongal Caribbean Creole realization. These results point to a similar linguistic repertoire for black New Yorkers, with subtleties evident at the quantitative level. But an analysis of an interview with a Caribbean American student group organized as a community of practice reveals that the linguistic repertoire of second-generation Caribbean Americans is broader than individual sociolinguistic interviews may reveal at the quantitative and qualitative levels.

The ever-increasing numbers of second-generation black Caribbean Americans in the ethnically heterogeneous metropolis of New York City presents the sociolinguist with new ideological and methodological challenges when studying complex identities and linguistic negotiations across ethnic spaces. We argue that second-generation Caribbean Americans have yet to be adequately addressed in the social and linguistic schema of the U.S. Thus, in bringing attention to this population alongside their African American counterparts, we bring to the forefront the question of where these voices fit in research on African Americans, black communities more generally, and their languages. This work contributes to our understanding of the linguistic heterogeneity of black people in the U.S. (Spears 1988), and reveals the role of ethnicity in conditioning linguistic behavior.

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

Linguistic and Ethnic Diversity in Black New York