{"id":37467,"date":"2014-09-24T19:54:36","date_gmt":"2014-09-24T19:54:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=37467"},"modified":"2014-09-24T19:56:18","modified_gmt":"2014-09-24T19:56:18","slug":"articulate-while-black-barack-obama-language-and-race-in-the-u-s-h-samy-alim-and-geneva-smitherman-oxford-university-press-new-york-2012-224-pp-isbn-9780199812967-99-00-hardcover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=37467","title":{"rendered":"Articulate While Black. Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U.S.: H. Samy Alim and Geneva Smitherman, Oxford University Press, New York, 2012, 224 pp., ISBN: 9780199812967, $ 99.00 (hardcover)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Articulate While Black. Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U.S.: H. Samy Alim and Geneva Smitherman, Oxford University Press, New York, 2012, 224 pp., ISBN: 9780199812967, $ 99.00 (hardcover)<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Journal of Pragmatics<\/a>
\nVolume 71, September 2014<\/a>
\npages 148-150
\nDOI: 10.1016\/j.pragma.2014.08.010<\/a><\/p>\n

Marta Degani<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor
\nDepartment of Foreign Languages and Literatures
\nUniversity of Verona, Verona, Italy<\/em><\/p>\n

Alim<\/a> and Smitherman\u2019s<\/a> Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U.S.<\/em><\/a> is an engaging new\u00a0book that sheds light on the intricacies of race relations in present-day America while highlighting how intertwined the\u00a0politics of race and that of language are. The scale, however, is tipped in favor of language to show \u201chow \u2018language\u00a0matters\u2019 to the national conversation on race\u201d (p. 4). Obama\u2019s<\/a> rhetoric is at the core of the investigation, and it is analyzed\u00a0with great accuracy and a keen ability for uncovering peculiarities of its \u201cBlackness\u201d. In particular, the book emphasizes\u00a0Obama\u2019s ability to successfully communicate with different types of audiences and establish rapport with them. On a\u00a0larger scale, it also shows how Obama\u2019s shifting communicative styles and strategies in using both verbal and non-verbal\u00a0communication have had an impact on the politics of language and race in the US. Overall, the analyses of Obama\u2019s\u00a0different usages of political language offer a good example of how audience-centered style-shifting can be skillfully used\u00a0as a pragmatic tool to convince the audience of one\u2019s political persona. From a pragma-sociolinguistic perspective,\u00a0Obama\u2019s ability to adjust his speech and gestures to his different audiences falls in line with the postulates of\u00a0Communication Accommodation Theory<\/a> (Giles et al.<\/em>, 1991).<\/p>\n

What is also remarkable about the book is that the authors mirror Obama\u2019s strategy of style-shifting to engage a large\u00a0readership and communicate an authentic message. In the book, they alternate academic prose with a style of writing that\u00a0mirrors African American English<\/a> (AAE). The nature of this successful linguistic alternation is already evident in the table\u00a0of contents, which includes chapter titles such as \u201c\u2018Nah, We Straight\u201d: Black Language and America\u2019s First Black\u00a0President\u2019 or \u2018Making a Way Outta No Way: the \u201cRace Speech\u201d and Obama\u2019s Rhetorical Remix\u2019. Apart from the table of\u00a0contents, the reader will also find instances of \u201cnon-standard\u201d English (e.g. \u201cto be sure, hittin that small sweet spot ain\u2019t\u00a0easy\u201d p. 23) scattered throughout the main text.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the book, in chapter 1, the authors briefly introduce their work and its aim. As they suggest, the\u00a0novelty of their approach consists in looking at race from the perspective of language, a practice they call \u201clanguaging\u00a0race\u201d. This concept is applied to Obama\u2019s use of language and the authors claim that it was crucial for his victory. In this\u00a0chapter, Alim and Smitherman present interesting findings from their sociolinguistic research on Obama\u2019s Black language\u00a0use and its perception. Data from conversations with young people (mostly aged between 18 and 24) reveal how Obama\u00a0is unanimously considered an excellent and gifted communicator. Most significantly, findings show that Black\u00a0respondents are more sensitive than White respondents to Obama\u2019s ability in style-shifting, which is characterized by the\u00a0use of different lexical variants (e.g. nah<\/em> and no<\/em>), shifting pronunciations (e.g. wit mah Bahble<\/em> for with my Bible<\/em>) and\u00a0variance in grammatical constructions (opting at times for zero copula construction) to connect to a multiracial audience.\u00a0Obama is also praised for his ability to master the Black cultural mode of discourse known as \u201csignifying\u201d. Obama\u2019s\u00a0recourse to a \u201cBaptist preacher style\u201d is yet another feature that chiefly strikes Black American participants in the survey.\u00a0The Black preacher style is detected in the cadence, rhythm, pausing, use of repetition, metaphors and storytelling that\u00a0characterize some of Obama\u2019s speeches. The President is also charged with using a deep Black communicative style of\u00a0\u201ccall and response\u201d that breaks down barriers between addresser and addressee when engaging with a predominantly\u00a0Black audience. His capacity to shift from White \u201cstandard\u201d English to Black modes of communication is presented by\u00a0Alim and Smitherman as the key for understanding his success. This linguistic flexibility is seen by the authors not only as\u00a0a reflection of his multicultural and multilingual upbringing but also as a conscious rhetorical strategy.<\/p>\n

Chapter 2 starts out with a metalinguistic analysis. The focus is on semantically loaded use of language. The authors\u00a0refer to \u201cexceptionalizing\u201d racist discourses and provide the example of White politicians who employ terms like\u00a0\u201carticulate\u201d to describe Obama\u2019s eloquence. According to the authors, exceptionalizing discourse means that what on a\u00a0surface level might appear as a praise is indeed a racist judgment based on the covert assumption that non-White people\u00a0are unintelligent and illiterate. The label \u201carticulate\u201d makes Obama \u2018exceptional\u2019 in the sense that he sticks out qua<\/em> Black…<\/p>\n

Read or purchase the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Articulate While Black. Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U.S.: H. Samy Alim and Geneva Smitherman, Oxford University Press, New York, 2012, 224 pp., ISBN: 9780199812967, $ 99.00 (hardcover) Journal of Pragmatics Volume 71, September 2014 pages 148-150 DOI: 10.1016\/j.pragma.2014.08.010 Marta Degani, Assistant Professor Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures University of Verona, Verona, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,5,8,26,20],"tags":[9513,11230,17952,17953],"class_list":["post-37467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-book-reviews","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-geneva-smitherman","tag-h-samy-alim","tag-journal-of-pragmatics","tag-marta-degani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}