a joke about two pere ubuists

[Abdiel OAbdiel]

--- Dave Monroe <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Er, yes, we have no bananas?  At any rate ...
> 
> --- Abdiel OAbdiel <abdieloabdiel at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > 
> > L2 speakers (i.e., L1 Spanish, L2 English) use
> > double negatives all the time. And the
> explaination
> > for this can not be supplied by the prescriptive
> > rules of grammar of either the L2s (Spanish, or
> > Portuguese or Black talk) of the L1 (English).
> 
> Interesting.  A fascination of mine.  Thanks ...


At the verry top of page 173 in the SL collection
(TSI) Mr. McAfee is telling the boyz about a party and
he says, 

"she's not putting NObody on, man." 

African American Language (AAL)  is a product of free
American slave labor, having evolved from the
17th-century pidgin English that was a lingua franca
in the liguistically diverse enslavement communities
throughout Britan's North American colonies that
became the USA. The pidgen blended European American
English (EAL) with patterns from West African
languages resulting in a language that functioned as a
linguistic bond of cultural solidarity and race
solidarity (white and black having been introduced in
the 17th-century) and as a language of resistance.
Although the lexicon of AAl can be easily recognized
and identified as EAL, it is the meanings of words,
the linguistic rules, the rhetorical and semantic
strategies, the ways in which the EAL words are strung
together (often with with nuanced meanings) to form a
set of discursive practices that distinguishes AAL
from EAL. 


"Don't nobody pay no attention to a nigga that ain't
crazy." *Ceremonies in Dark Old Men* (a late 1960s
Play)

Although EAL stigmatizes the use of the double
negative AAL multiplies its use (multiple negation is
a characteristic feature of AAL grammar). The word
"nigger" is a racialized  epithet in EAL, but AAL
embraces its use, encoding a variety of meanings.
Notice the spelling in the sentence from the play is
"nigga." A crazy nigga is a black person who resists
racial supremacist domination and calls attention to
his/her rebellion by acting in ways that offend those
that have proscribed black freedom of expression and
inscribed a role for balcks in America. 

I ain't got nobody that I can depend on. No, no, no,
no....

I no have no way to get home, Terry. 

Poor kay you no have no way to get home, meeahmore. 

Because you don't left me the metro card on the table.


I be there en a few minutes, baby, OK? 

OK, my love. 

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