My DW2a compared to Lisa Nakamura: In my first analysis of down-south.com, a music website, I talked mainly about the structural features of African American Vernacular English(AAVE) and the phonology of digital communication. To go deeper into analysis I will need to look for rhetorical features of AAVE, as done by Lisa Nakamura in Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet. My first analysis was focused on the obvious structural features, which I will need to elaborate on in my paper. I think one of the rhetorical features of AAVE, which would be appropriate to investigate is signifyin because of its role in much of the music presented on the site. Signifyin is used in nearly every song found on Down-South and can also be found in some of the posts. As seen in this post, quoting a line from a song:
written by wiz, February 22, 2009
weezy fuckin killed it nigga, weezy flyer in any weather hold on hhhh puew there goes a feather haha damnnnnnn
In this post signifyin is used to use an alternate meaning of “fly” and then refer to the literal meaning. “Weezy flyer in any weather” is not referring to the actual act of flying, but referring to superior status no matter the situation. Then, “puew there goes a feather” takes “fly” in a literal sense as if he were flying with the birds. This is just one example of how signifyin is used on the site and in music. Another rhetorical feature I would like to look at more closely is the changing in the meaning of words to their opposite. For instance, using “bad” to mean “really good”. This is used many times on Down-South in the comments.
written by DJ WREKSHOP, December 08, 2008
Boosie always wreks!!!
This post turns the word “wreck” around to be a good thing. Not meaning to literally wreck or crash, but meaning to make real good music.
Can you further explain how exactly signifyin functions in your example? You identify the example of signfyin, but provide limited analysis on how this signifyin is being carried out. Who's doing the signifyin? Who they signifyin on? (and, btw, the other example is called semantic inversion.)
ReplyDeleteAlso, you do very little with the Nakamura text. What is the relationship between her work and what you found on Down-South.com? As you can see, you've got a bit more work to do.