{"id":54859,"date":"2017-08-26T23:40:26","date_gmt":"2017-08-26T23:40:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54859"},"modified":"2017-08-27T02:19:46","modified_gmt":"2017-08-27T02:19:46","slug":"barack-obama-and-the-nommo-tradition-of-afrocentric-orality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=54859","title":{"rendered":"Barack Obama and the Nommo Tradition of Afrocentric Orality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barack Obama and the Nommo Tradition of Afrocentric Orality<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

JSTOR Daily: Where News Meets Its Scholarly Match<\/a>
\n2017-08-23<\/p>\n

Shannon Luders-Manuel<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nPresident Obama<\/a> delivers the State of the Union<\/a> in 2011
\nvia Flickr\/White House<\/a><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Black actors, entertainers, and everyday citizens often have a particular cadence to their voices that others can identify as \u201cblack,\u201d whether or not the listeners can see the individual speaking. Popular culture seems to think that black men sound wise simply by their voices alone, leading to black actors narrating myriad commercials, including Dennis Haysbert<\/a> for Allstate Insurance<\/a> and Samuel L. Jackson<\/a> for Capital One<\/a>. In an article for Guernica<\/em><\/a>, John McWhorter<\/a> breaks down this speech pattern<\/a>: \u201cIt differs from standard English\u2019s sound in the same way that other dialects<\/a> do, in certain shadings of vowels, aspects of intonation<\/a>, and also that elusive thing known as timbre<\/a>, most familiar to singers\u2014degrees of breathiness, grain, huskiness, \u2018space.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

While sound influences dialect, black oration goes back much further, to the idea of nommo<\/em><\/a>, which is rooted in West African<\/a> tradition. Through both dialect and nommo<\/em>, former\u00a0President Barack Obama<\/a> was able to inspire black and white audiences, altering his word choice and patterns accordingly…<\/p>\n

Scholarship of\u00a0nommo<\/em> is wanting. However, in the Journal of Black Studies<\/em><\/a>, Sheena C. Howard<\/a> defines\u00a0it in the following manner<\/a>: \u201cNommo<\/em>, the creative power of the word, is a delivery style that is unique to African Americans. Nommo<\/em> is manifested in characteristics of African orality<\/a>.\u201d She focuses on four characteristics of nommo<\/em>: rhythm, call and response, mythication, and repetition, and she analyzes their use in two of Obama\u2019s speeches: one at Howard University and the other at Southern New Hampshire University, both in 2007…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While sound influences dialect, black oration goes back much further, to the idea of nommo, which is rooted in West African tradition. Through both dialect and nommo, former\u00a0President Barack Obama was able to inspire black and white audiences, altering his word choice and patterns accordingly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1295,12,63,8413,1196,8,26,20],"tags":[27481,27480,27482,27483,3966],"class_list":["post-54859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-communications","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-jstor","tag-jstor-daily","tag-nommo","tag-orality","tag-shannon-luders-manuel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54859","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=54859"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54861,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54859\/revisions\/54861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}