In my hood: Scaling urban personae outside the urban center

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Abstract Examining regional variation across African American communities has advanced research on African American English beyond its treatment as a singular, uniform variety. While the earlier focus on inner-city, and often male, youth prioritized studying these speakers’ production of ethnolectal patterns, less attention was paid to other language practices of these speakers and their broader semiotic construction of identity. Drawing on ethnographic data and sociolinguistic interviews from African American speakers from Rochester, New York who identify as Hood Kids, I examine how the bought vowel can become a marker of a particular place-identity in Rochester. I argue that the Hood Kid is an adequation of an enregistered racialized NYC persona that reanalyzes bought while also drawing on other emblems of Black, street culture. Such variation suggests that speakers’ conceptualization of race and place ideologically scales beyond immediately local geographic boundaries. (African American Language, style, race and ethnicity, regional variation)*