1
In this essay, I examine the visual representation of black speech in literature, and argue
that because black identity has and needs a voice, black voice needs a “visual voice” in print. I
begin by discussing why a black voice has existed in society, primarily in terms of history and
identity. I then provide a brief description of black voice, as it has been defined by a string of
laureate black authors. Note that this section is in no way intended to serve as a comprehensive
discourse on the definition of black voice, and rather is meant to provide a brief explanation of
black voice, as I reference the terms “black voice,” “black English,” “black vernacular” and
“black speech” throughout the course of this paper. The third section introduces the crux of my
argument, describing the visual representation of black voice in literature and how the visual
depiction of the black voice is essential to creating a black voice and understanding the
narrative. I proceed to argue that black voice cannot effectively be conveyed in print unless the
aural aspects of the voice are visually transcribed. The fourth section then discusses white and
black authors’ use of black voice historically, and the implications of representing black speech
in literature. The fifth and final section focuses on the transcribed speech of Martin Luther King,
Jr.’s, and this section highlights dissonance in how readers perceive voice and how the voice is
actually transcribed. The final page contains my conclusion.
Happy reading!
2
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE:
Black Identity and the Construction of Voice
“For the transmission of culture…a peculiar way of thinking, feeling and
behaving…and for its maintenance, there is no safeguard more reliable than
language.” - TS Eliot1
In a society where highlighting those who are different or those who are “other” has
historically been the norm, it is easy to overlook the fact that humans are organically equal based
on the uniformity of our creation. Independent of race, class and gender, the overall anatomical
structure of the human body could create a society of a single race. Momentarily negating the
viability of such an idealistic perspective, the crux of the statement remains true: fundamentally,
the foundation of the human anatomy recognizes no boundaries or racial divides. Yet the Homo
sapien somehow manages to manipulate basic anatomical compositions that should highlight the
homogeneity of the human race and instead uses them to accentuate its differences. Consider the
physical dynamic of humans‟ ability to speak and produce sound. The same muscles, organs and
cognitive lobes function in each human to make speaking possible – to give humans voice. Yet
the fact that all humans physically produce a similar voice is rendered irrelevant, as man
understands himself as an individual and his voice as distinct. Even with a “common language,”
it is believed that two individuals “cannot be saying the same things, as each [has] very different
realities to articulate.”2 Rather than explicitly facilitating communication with one another, voice
emerged as a critical avenue for expressive freedom and the vocalization of the individual
experience. As a result, voice became integral in establishing divisions between individuals.
Because each individual has unique wants and needs that can only be met if they are
made known, voice has historically existed as an avenue for discrimination and a vehicle driven
1
John Russell Rickford and Russell John Rickford, Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English. (New York: John Wiley & Sons,
Inc., 2000) 225.
2
James Baldwin, If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is? (New York Times 29 July 1979).
3
by self-interest. In order to be effective, a voice must be heard. Traditionally, the primary method
for ensuring that certain voices were not only heard, but also heeded, required the silencing of
others. Discrepancies in life experiences, historical precedence, and seemingly fossilized racial
stigmas were effective in determining and perpetuating the idea that certain voices were superior
to others. By positioning voice as a sign of privilege, a dominant majority created an inaudible
minority, as a person‟s status and power in society determined the potential volume of their
voice. Having a voice became synonymous with the ability to exercise agency and assert oneself
as an individual member of society. Consequently, because black Americans were the silenced
minority – and it is impossible to hear a voice that does not exist – “Black people...had to
represent themselves as 'speaking subjects' before they could even begin to destroy their status as
objects, as commodities, within Western culture.”3
The process by which black Americans became “speaking subjects” began as a
repossession of language and evolved into the creation of a distinct voice. Despite the fact that
their voices were muted in the presence of white ears, black Americans needed a voice, distinct
from a language that carried associations of oppression, slavery and a history of silencing. In the
face of deleterious prejudice and delayed access to upward mobility, black individuals rendered
the intangible, tangible, as they commandeered their subjugator‟s words and imbued the
language with voices that were exclusively their own. African-American slaves‟ repossessed
ostensibly innocuous words in order to construct their own argot by injecting relevant meaning
into already established syllables, encouraging the use of speech and language in a chameleonlike fashion. Even though the words themselves were arguably “common” in the sense that both
black and white Americans were speaking English, the voice that emerged was able to capture
3
Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.) 129.
4
the “different realities” between the contemporary black and white American. The cultivation
and livelihood of this voice, whose meaning was indecipherable to those not considered
members of the “in” group, “prove[d] an effectual element of resistance” as black Americans
were able to communicate in their own terms. Embodying the belief that the “perceptions of our
language are integrated with our perception of ourselves,” 4 black Americans thrived as “dialect
engineers,” making use of a manipulated patois to help control and meaningfully convey
circumstances they might not otherwise have been able to.5 Though the minority has since
shifted from existing as a silent body to an enabled segment of society that commands a vocal
presence, the “long standing historical tendency to appropriate English for themselves and their
purposes”6 persists. Put another way, the language that one might have explicitly categorized as a
fading colloquial speech pattern continues to evolve and flourish, while the assumption that
words are “fair game” has yet to ebb, as members of the black community habitually rewrite and
redefine words to create a language that functions as a manifestation of the self.
Language and speech remain crucial identifiers for the black community, and reinforce
the notion that the “unity of speech is essential to the unity of a people.”7 The value of having a
distinctly “black voice” stems from its ability to solidify a sense of community and effectively
articulate common experiences, as “words not only describe – they reflect and construct cultural
experience.”8 Though the use of a black voice has been considered “ethnic” relative to what
society has deemed as the normative or “standard” English, black Americans are not dissuaded
4
William Matthews, as quoted in Berndt Ostendorf, Black Literature in White America. (Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1982) 23.
James Baldwin, If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is? (New York Times 29 July 1979).
6
Geneva Smitherman, Talkin and Testifyin. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977) 58.
7
Michael North, The Dialect of Modernism: Race, Language and Twentieth-Century Literature. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994) 17.
8
Marcyliena Morgan, Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture. (United Kingdom: Cambridge University
Press, 2002) 3.
5
5
from taking pride in “celebrat[ing] that which does not enslave” them.9 Deviating from the
arguably one dimensional and sometimes ineffectual nature of “standard” speech, black voice
breathes life and soul into words, allowing the idiolect to serve as an opportunity for selfdefinition for those who draw upon a repertoire of black idioms, colloquialisms and revel in the
nuances of verbal engineering. Authors such as Zora Neal Hurston call upon the presence of a
black voice as “a method of communicating black meanings to black audiences, a kind of
community-reinforcing and collective cultural celebration.”10 Black voice enables the speaker to
parlay the nuances of black American culture, relay and share experiences in a meaningful and
commonly understood way, and as the authors of Spoken Soul playfully suggest, “[get] down
with other blacks.”11
The versatile and oftentimes esoteric nature of black voice continues to be a relevant and
necessary facet of black culture. Even with the growing disparity in what may have once been a
considered the standard “black experience” in America, black speech, though constantly
evolving, is still rooted in a historical and unified experience. Stereotyped as a homogenous
group typified by low income, inaccessibility to the upwardly mobile and plagued by a spurious
belief that skin color directly correlated to mental prowess, black Americans‟ peregrination
throughout the course of American history has been marked by progressive movements that have
ingratiated their status in society. While some black Americans have directly benefited from the
trials and tribulations of their forefathers, others are still facing institutionalized forms of
discrimination. Yet the relatively recent socioeconomic discrepancy among black Americans is
mitigated within their respective community through the continued presence of a unifying black
9
Berndt Ostendorf, Black Literature in White America. (Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1982) 128.
Lisa Cohen Minnick, Dialect and Dichotomy: Literary Representations of African American Speech. (Tuscaloosa: The
University of Alabama Press, 2004) 131.
11
John Russell and Russell John Rickford, Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2000)
205.
10
6
voice. Author Marcyliena Morgan accurately posits this common voice as an impetus that can
effectively bridge the gap between middle and lower class blacks in contemporary society as it
promotes a sense of solidarity;12 its continued use by black Americans – independent of social
status – is a testament to the significance of black voice.
However, the idea that language is a unifier highlights the paradox of speech as both
communal and exclusive, as exemplified by an in-group/out-group dynamic. James Baldwin
captures the essence of the black voice‟s ability to “connect one with, or divorce one from”13
society - who or what “society” is varies, as blacks are notorious for linguistically traversing both
sides of an imaginary color line. On one hand, assuming what Adele Givens describes as the
“fake bitch”14 voice, represents alignment with the “normative” or white society. On the other
hand, choosing to speak freely through black speech disconnects one‟s voice the “standard”
conventions of speech and consequently dissociates one from the influences of “standard”
society. Whichever voice is used can determine whether or not the speaker is assumed as part of
the “in” group - i.e., someone who is “down” in terms of their allegiance to the black community
– or the “out” group, where exclusive use of “general English becomes a symbol that indexes a
speaker‟s desire to distance him or herself from African American culture.”15
Regardless of how individual black Americans choose to use language in order to
construct and reflect certain aspects of their identity, an ethnic or “black” voice has continued to
evolve since its inception and has played an integral role in the construction of black identity in
society. The multifaceted nature of black speech has allowed it to remain relevant as it is
12
Marcyliena Morgan, Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture. (United Kingdom: Cambridge University
Press, 2002). 71.
13
James Baldwin, If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is? (New York Times 29 July 1979).
14
, Sonja L Lanehart. Sista Speak! Black Women Kinfolk Talk about Language and Literacy. (Austin: University of Texas Press,
2002) 59.
15
Marcyliena Morgan, Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture. (United Kingdom: Cambridge University
Press, 2002). 61.
7
commonly employed to “entertain” or “illume”16 while historicizing a “tradition of saying things
beautifully even if they are ugly things” and facilitating the preservation of a “distinctive history,
worldview, and culture.”17 The presence and influence of black voice remains prevalent in
modern culture, manifesting itself in literature, music, the arts and everyday speech. So how does
one begin to define “black voice”?
16
17
Joyce Pettis, African American Poets: Lives, Works, Sources. (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2002) 34.
John Russell, and Russell John Rickford, Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,
2000) 15, 205.
8
BLACK VOICE:
“How Shall the Negro Be Portrayed?”18
“The word in language is half someone else's. It becomes’ one’s own’ only when the speaker
populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it
to his own semantic and expressive intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the
word...exists in other people’s mouths, in other people’s contexts, serving other people’s
intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one’s own.” - Mikhail
Bakhtin19
Before moving forward, I will briefly explain how I define language and voice as they
relate to my use of the terms: “black voice,” “black speech,” “black English” and “black
vernacular” within the scope of this essay. Voice and language in this context are closely related,
as the two work side by side to convey themes in literature. Language is what we say and voice
is how it is said. Language consists of the terminology, conventions and rhetorical devices that
provide the framework for speech. Voice, on the other hand, is dependent on and shaped by
language. While language can be visibly altered, voice bridges the gap between the visual and
aural. Voice is how words and phrases sound – how language rolls off the tongue when marked
by inflection and rhythm. In essence, voice gives the language life, resurrecting the words off of
the page. It gives sight a sound and thrives on the visual representations of speech. Voice
determines how language relates to a reader by affecting the tone and mood as it captures the
nuances of speech and constructs the personality of a character or text. In sum, language states
ideas and in effect, shows something. Voice says something. I use the terms “black voice” and
“black speech” interchangeably throughout this text, to denote a combination of voice and
language. I use “black English” or “black vernacular” explicitly to denote to the actual words, or
dialect.
18
W.E.B. Dubois, as quoted in Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1988.) 179.
19
Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.) 1.
9
In The Signifying Monkey, author Henry Louis Gates Jr. quotes “water can be poured into
glasses or cups or canisters, but it remains water just the same...the so-called black experience
cannot be thought of as a fluid content to be poured into received and static containers.”20 Just as
this quotation avers the “black experience” is not uniformly consistent among black individuals,
conceptualizing “black voice” requires the understanding that the term tends to evade a single,
concrete definition.21 Black voice is not monolithic, as it takes on a life of its own in the mouth
of the speaker, subject to the idiosyncratic nature of the individual voice. Put another way, albeit
defined by general characteristics, black voice is multifaceted, both in its visual and aural
manifestation, as its use promulgates “defining [the self] in language”22 in an effort to
“decolonize the mind.”23
From a less technical and rhetorically analytical perspective, black voice can be
characterized in terms of community and perspective. Community is significant insofar as it
outlines the demographic that employs a black voice and identifies situations where black voice
most commonly appears. At the most basic level, the voice is defined as “black” based on its
origins – “since slavery, the black person has encoded private yet communal cultural rituals” in
speech.24 The term has persisted primarily because black Americans have continued to invoke
these particular speech patterns within the church, the domestic sphere, artistically in music and
poetry, and in everyday conversation. However, the community of individuals who use black
speech transcends those who are simply born African-American. While Geneva Smitherman
suggests, “historically black speech has been demanded of those who wish to retain close
20
Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.) 218.
For some, simply being black sufficiently describes a black voice; others find black voice denotes a repository of vernacular,
slang and innovative ways to transcribe speech
22
Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.) 67.
23
bell hooks, Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness, as quoted in: Sandra Harding. The Feminist Standpoint
Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies. (Routledge, New York and London). 157.
24
Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.) xix.
21
10
affinities with the black community,”25 arguably, others use black speech because it signifies a
perspective on life. James Baldwin defines black speech as a language that came “into existence
by means of brutal necessity”26 – a visceral response that gave the struggle of the black body in
America, a voice. The individual uses a black voice to express that which cannot otherwise be
told in the “oppressor‟s language.” Bell hooks articulates the plight of this individual by
recognizing,
“we are wedded in language, have our being in words. Language is also a place of
struggle. Dare I speak to oppressed and oppressor in the same voice? Dare I speak
to you in a language that will move beyond the boundaries of domination - a
language that will not bind you, fence you in, or hold you?...The oppressed
struggle in language to recover ourselves, to reconcile, to reunite, to renew.
27
Individuals who are either arbitrarily assigned or self-proclaimed members of a marginalized
group seek a voice that is uninhibited in speech and expression. Black voice empowers the
individual as an innovator of the self; it is a voice that is unashamed and unafraid, liberated in its
reconstruction of language. This coupled with the fact that no single entity is authorized to, or
entrusted with monitoring the language has further forged a sense of community as individuals
share this personally contrived speech.
Notorious aficionado of black speech and African-American expression, Zora Neal
Hurston provides more solid footing in terms of a concretely defining black voice, primarily
through a retrospective framework that outlines exactly what the title of her work suggests:
“Characteristics of Negro Expression.” Hurston‟s text is neither a primary source on how black
25
Geneva Smitherman, Talkin and Testifyin. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977) 12.
James Baldwin, If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is? (New York Times 29 July 1979)
27
bell hooks, Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness, as quoted in: Sandra Harding. The Feminist Standpoint
Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies. (Routledge, New York and London) 153.
26
11
voice is defined, nor is the discourse explicitly focused on matters pertaining to black verbal
expression, yet her points are sound and visible in many black-authored texts. 28 That is to say,
although Hurston‟s list of characteristics is exhaustive, it is not exclusive to oral or written
expression, as it explores the multifaceted nature of expression more broadly, ranging from
angularity in art, to dancing and originality. Nonetheless, in sifting through all of her prescribed
facets of expression, we find attributes that do manifest in voice, as Hurston identifies an
amalgamation of traits that descry voice as distinctively “black.”
The Harlem Renaissance author cites drama and adornment as cornerstones to black
voice and expression. She posits drama as inextricably linked to the “Negro;” a characteristic
that “permeates his entire self,” escaping the black body through vocal emissions. Stemming
from an inherent desire to “act” everything out, the black voice serves as an imitation of life,
producing “words [that] are action words.” The language becomes a rendering of print in picture,
as the black tongue strings together lines of “rich metaphor and simile.” These qualities
foreground adornment as an essential element of black speech. Hurston alleges the black voice‟s
will to adorn language “arises out of the same impulse as the wearing of jewelry,” further
insisting that while the “[Negro‟s] idea of ornament does not attempt to meet conventional
standards…it satisfies the soul of the creator.” Consequently, because the soul is ostensibly
satiated through linguistic embellishment, “the American Negro…has made over a great part of
the tongue to his liking.” Further, subjects who actively “adorn” their language wish to
distinguish themselves through the presentation of their voice. Innovating words to accessorize
black identity trademarks the black voice as constantly evolving and highlights originality as
another relevant characteristic of black speech. Through originality the rhythm, definition, and
28
For a comprehensive description of black voice as defined by Hurston, refer to “Part 2: Signifying” in Gena Caponi‟s
Signifyin(g), Sanctifying, and Slam Dunkin’ (293-370). The Signifying Monkey, by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., also provides explicit
description of Signifyin(g) and black speech.
12
oration of speech is subjective to the individual voice. Finally, Hurston identifies dialect as an
innate characteristic of black voice; an element of speech that occurs whether the mouth is
“educated or not.” Articulation becomes a byproduct of black Americans‟ “lip form,” as she
posits dialect as naturally becoming to voices produced by the “full soft lip,” rather than a “taut
lip.”29
Overall, while black voice is oftentimes described as deviant from “standard” or
“normative” speech, authors like Hurston, Gates and Baldwin unabashedly unveil how elements
of black voice coalesce into an “Africanized form of English that reflects…[a] cultural
heritage.”30 Ultimately, despite lacking a formal definition, black voice is characteristically
tailored to suit the speaker‟s vocal expression of the soul.
29
Gena Dagel Caponi, Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin’, & Slam Dunking. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999) 294 – 308.
Note: the original text was printed in Nancy Cunard‟s Negro: An Anthology.
30
Geneva Smitherman, Talkin and Testifyin. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977) 2.
13
SEEING SOUNDS:
Reading Between the Lines of a “Broken” Tongue
“Is it broken? ...Oh… Well, does it work?”
“To the soulless ear, the vast majority of these sounds are dismissed as incorrect usage of the
English language…To those so blessed as to have had bestowed upon them at birth the lifetime
gift of soul, these are the most communicative and meaningful sounds ever to fall upon human
ears...” – Claude Brown31
Because black identity has a voice, this voice must also be present in literature. Recall
the history of silencing vis-à-vis the condition of black voice and the extent to which black
bodies were rendered invisible and nonexistent in society. In order for blacks voices to initially
emerge and be heard, they needed to exist and even more so, be legitimized. As Henry Louis
Gates, Jr. intimates in The Signifying Monkey, the primary vehicle for legitimacy relied on the
transcription of voice, as “black people [became] speaking subjects only by inscribing their
voices in the written word.”32 However, how written words influence and affect a reader‟s
understanding of a narrative text must be considered in terms of the inscription of these voices.
Objectively authoring a dialogue among characters and arbitrarily assigning one as “black”
would not only be an inaccurate transcription of voice but largely ineffective insofar as
producing an “illusion of oral narration”33 to promote the legitimacy of black speech. Thus, it is
crucial that “the written representation of this voice is a rewriting of the speaking voice.”34
In terms of the physical text on a page, this “speaking voice” materializes in a number of
ways. For instance, an author might use symbols to highlight speech patterns or manipulate the
visual rendering of words. A text like Marcyliena Morgan‟s text explores the former approach,
and raises the question of which strategy is most effective in recreating a black voice. The author
31
As quoted in John Russell, and Russell John Rickford, Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English. (New York: John Wiley &
Sons, Inc., 2000) 99.
32
Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.) 130.
33
Ibid, 181.
34
Ibid ,131.
14
depicts black voice primarily by establishing a code that relies on specific symbols to indicate
the nuances of black speech. For example, “a period within parentheses indicates a one-second
pause,” “colons indicate that the sound just before the colon has been lengthened,” and a bracket
symbol indicates “all overlapping utterances, including those which start simultaneously are
marked with a single left bracket.”35 As symbols replace facets of speech such as “stammering”
or pauses, as opposed to repeating letters or visually inserting a gap in the text, Morgan‟s
transcription of voice quickly becomes excessively formulaic. The speech appears less like an
actual transcription of dialogue and more like theatrical stage directions. Because Morgan‟s code
dictates how a voice should sound, as opposed to visually conveying the character‟s speech, she
complicates the reader‟s ability to create a character‟s voice. The author has to establish a
didactic discourse explaining the image and sound of the character‟s voice before the reader
tackles the dialogue. This is not entirely ineffective, however it does not allow the dialogue to
speak for itself and runs the risk of dubbing characters‟ voices as toneless or homogenous in the
mind of the reader. While the code is successful in its literal transcription of pauses, inflection
and emphasis in speech, the actual voice that translates off of the page is lifeless.
Thus, an effective visual transcription of black speech is fundamental to conveying a
black voice in literature. It is oftentimes easy to imagine characters' identity based on their
narrative description or simply as a result of humans‟ subconscious habit to assign a voice to
characters when reading dialogue, even if the voice is simply our own. However, if asked to
imagine the sound of any black character speaking, it might be difficult - what are they saying?
What is their personality like? What is the inflection and tone of their voice? Devoid of the
author‟s identity and any descriptions that establish a character‟s voice, detection of a black
35
Marcyliena Morgan, Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture. (United Kingdom: Cambridge University
Press, 2002). xiii.
15
voice is primarily abetted through a visual medium. While authors can include some of the
aforementioned trademarks of “Negro” speech, such as repetition or double-descriptives36 to help
summon or replicate a black voice, the voice of the character is more easily conjured if the reader
is able to see what the character‟s voice looks like. Is it written in a “standard” fashion? Or is it
riddled with apostrophes, rearranged spelling patterns and perhaps some letters that have been
butchered so only the reader's imagination is left to fill in the blanks where letters once were?
The recreation of the black voice in literature is heavily reliant upon visual phenomena, wherein
the spelling, arrangement and appearance of the text construct a visual and aural rendering of a
character‟s identity for the reader.
The visual rendering of a word that is typically spoken in black speech creates an actual
voice. Repetition, inflection, accent, and drawl can all be visually captured and portrayed in ink.
The act of writing and reading words in dialect validates the constructed vernacular as the reader
must stumble over and form the same syllables into intelligible speech and establish a personal
understanding of the character‟s discourse. By manipulating the arrangement of the letters,
removing or adding certain consonants and vowels, and using apostrophes to denote the absence
of letters within a word, the author essentially forces the reader to read, say and listen to the
sound of the word differently than if it had been written as the reader may have been accustomed
to seeing it. Often times the suggested recourse to alleviate the arduousness of reading black
English, which for many readers may seem unnatural, is to simply read out loud. This action
changes the dynamic of reading literature, as interpreting the text is no longer simply contextual,
but suddenly contingent upon visual and aural comprehension.
36
Hurston defines “double-descriptives” in terms of adorning language; an example would be: „high-tall‟ or „chop-axe.‟
16
The presence of the black voice in literature imbues the text with a sense of the oral
history surrounding black speech. The belief that black Americans are “masters of oral
gymnastics” in tandem with their proclivity for holding “verbal skills expressed orally…in high
esteem”37 is one that translates onto the pages of literature containing black voice. Because black
speech relies so heavily on sound, and those “meaningful sounds move people,”38 authors who
use black English in their narratives capitalize on “representing the sound of language through
spelling, suggesting and emphasizing a word‟s pronunciation through its visualization.”39 Black
voice tends to carry a distinctive sound, and while that sound varies, it is oftentimes described in
terms of jazz, or perceived as lively, emphatic, loud, expressive and rhythmic. For this reason,
the black voice cannot lie flat on a page; rather it must be excavated from its two-dimensional
prison and transferred to the mouth of the reader in order to create a sound. Yet, just because
there is dialect or what might appear to be black speech within a text does not mean the speaker
is black; note Southern white characters in literature whose speech is riddled with dialect is also
depicted visually. Thus, in order to inflate sound into the words, black voice can be recognized
by the spelling of certain words, word choice, and other rhetorical and narrative cues, as listed by
Hurston.
Both poetic behemoths Paul Dunbar and Langston Hughes used text to reawaken their
ancestors‟ fading voices by eulogizing the tattered speech that was associated with illiteracy and
poor education. Yet unlike Paul Laurence Dunbar, Hughes was able to successfully write in both
“standard” and black English.40 His decision to write in both voices blurs the distinction between
whether or not the author uses one voice for narration and the other as a black voice. Though
37
Geneva Smitherman, Talkin and Testifyin. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977) 76.
Ibid, 142.
39
Joyce Pettis, African American Poets: Lives, Works, Sources. (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2002) 295.
40
This is likely as a result of their different lifetimes, Dunbar died in 1906, and was writing at the end 19th century, whereas
Hughes was writing poetry at the rise of the 20th century.
38
17
both Mother to Son and The Negro Mother indicate the black character is speaking to another
black figure, one poem is written in black English and the other is not. By observing the
distinction between the language and style of the two poems, it is worth considering why the
visual illustration of the black voice matters and under what circumstances an author will chose
to write in one voice versus the other. In this instance, though both poems involve a black
mother, the desired image of the mother is distinct to each poem. In Mother to Son the tone is
personal and the mother‟s black voice is transcribed. The visual portrayal of black speech
directly recalls the voice of an individual mother, recreating the image of one who is speaking
directly to her son. Conversely, even in its title, The Negro Mother carries a less individual, or
personal, tone as the poem tethers the experiences of the Negro mothers together into one voice,
establishing a standard message based on common experience. The poem speaks more broadly to
the black community, where the content of the message is perhaps more significant than visually
representing a black voice. To speak as an individual, the visual representation of black speech
can function effectively throughout the dialogue of a text, but it seems that an author might resist
blanketing the entire black population as a body that speaks in a monolithic voice.
The distinct text on the page can be used to show the reader there is a black character and
facilitates the creation of a particular narrative voice. Even if words retain the same meaning and
perhaps pronunciation, visually representing the manipulated transcription of voice affects the
reading of the text. Disregarding the significance of sound, the spelling of words like “‟cdn‟t and
waz‟…don‟t convey pronunciations different from „couldn‟t‟ and „was‟” and retain the original
definition of the word. Still the visual rendition is significant in that it “contribute[s] to the
impression of vernacular usage.”41 For the black figure, Hurston argues “his interpretation of the
41
John Russell, and Russell John Rickford, Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,
2000) 23.
18
English language is in terms of pictures…So we can say the white man thinks in a written
language, and the Negro thinks in hieroglyphics.”42 This is not to suggest a discrepancy in
cognitive ability, but rather highlights a distinction in preference – arguably, the black character
(or even the black author) finds it easier to illustrate an idea, or voice through “eye dialect,”43
rather than providing a circumlocutory description. Prefacing a dialogue with a disclaimer that
indicates the normative speech should be interpreted “in a black voice” or in terms of
“vernacular” or slang is ineffectual in reproducing a black voice. Rather, the term
“hieroglyphics” in conjunction to the visual representation of black speech is fitting; though the
words are still words, they essentially function as pictures, creating an image of a mouth,
character and potentially the narrative‟s setting.
Geneva Smitherman argues “speech rhythms and tonal inflections” of black speech are
“impossible to capture” through the medium of print,44 yet consider the visual representation of
the language in literature. The rhythm of a black voice can be created based on the placement of
words on a page. This, in tandem with spelling, punctuation and the natural flow of the narrative
prose not only capture speech rhythm but also inflection. Rhythm is essential to the idea of call
and response, which can be recreated in print. Ralph Ellison visually demonstrates this facet of
black speech in the opening pages of Invisible Man, simply by manipulating the position of text
on the page. Ellison is able to vary the rhythm of the dialogue by intentionally arranging each
sentence and also varying where each voice perceptively begins. The author largely neglects
using a period in order to avoid a visually abrupt cessation in the voices, and instead opts for
ellipses to indicate a seamless cadence, such that where one voice trails off another chimes in;
42
Gena Dagel Caponi, Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin’, & Slam Dunking. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999) 294.
The Rickfords define “eye dialect” as phonetic writing; e.g.,“uh” for “a” or “um” for “it”
44
Geneva Smitherman. Talkin and Testifyin. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977.) 134.
43
19
one voice begins by calling “…and the sun…” and another joins in shortly thereafter with the
response “The sun, Lawd…” The abbreviated length of the sentences furthers the appearance of
continuity among the numerous voices. The included excerpt highlights how each snippet of
dialogue is arranged on the page in such way that suggests the rhythmic flow of the voices:
“In the beginning…”
“At the very start,” they cried.
“…there was blackness…”
“Preach it…”
“…and the sun…”
“The sun, Lawd…”
“…was bloody red…”
“Red…”
“Now black is…” the preacher shouted.
“Bloody…”
“I said black is…”
“Preach it, brother…”
“…an’ black ain’t…”
“Black will git you...”
“Yes it will…”
“…an’ black won’t…”
“Naw, it won’t!”
“It do…”
“It do, Lawd…”
“…an it don’t.”
“Halleluiah…”45
Sonia Sanchez‟s writing is uninhibited by the perceived “limitations of print”46 as the visual
representation of black voice in her poetry allows the reader to see sounds. Consider the poems
within her book, We A BaddDDD People. The blank pages literally become a canvas where the
poet pastes her voice. In countless poems, Sanchez visually breaks apart words and allows the
fragments to spill across the page, not only creating a visual effect that is jarring but also
transcribing the cadence of the speaker‟s voice. Aside from using vocabulary that is
characteristic of black English, Sanchez depicts the black voice by visually tampering with the
45
46
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. (New York: Vintage Books, 1995.) 9.
Geneva Smitherman, Talkin and Testifyin. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977.) 135.
20
number of vowels and consonants she chooses to include (e.g., “u, blk, wite, SCREEEEEEAM”)
and incorporating the use of symbols to replace words (e.g., “&” instead of “and”). The
repetition of vowels (like OOOOOOO) conjures a visual image of the mouth forming around the
letter or word and at the very least, the reader can tell that the voice is LOUD. More than just
phonetically altering the appearance of a word, Sanchez arranges the words almost haphazardly
along the page; the visual gaps between words in the text create aural pauses in the subject‟s
voice for the reader. Because Sanchez is such an animated writer insofar as the actual
transcription of her words onto a page, stripping her text of the visual manipulations (i.e.,
autocorrecting the entire text) would reduce her very vocal text to a silent one. A piece like
a/coltrane/poem, which distorts the spelling of words, mashes words together and varies the
capitalization of terms to indicate greater emphasis – would become an entirely different poem if
deprived of its visual elements. The reader is not only deprived of the author‟s true voice but also
a comprehensive understanding of the work, as the ability “reflect or acknowledge [a] black
presence”47 is heavily reliant on the optical dynamic of the text.
Furthermore, visually representing dialogue allows the reader to note where in the text
there is a shift between two distinct voices. While a majority of Sanchez‟s poems invoke black
speech, she uses similar speech conventions within one specific poem to conjure both a white
and black voice on the same page. A more careful reading of on watching a world series game,
suggests it is in fact a black figure speaking through the voice of a white figure, prior to
resuming his respective voice. The presence of both voices is not immediately apparent, as the
shift from a white to black voice is initially seamless, and the reader is not explicitly notified of
the shift. Arguably, unless the poem were orated, the transition from one voice to the other is
really only observed visually, based on the discrepancies in spelling, albeit neither voice is
47
Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.) 136.
21
written with proper spelling or in “standard” English. While Sanchez relies on the reader‟s
understanding of what a black or white individual might say, she truly capitalizes on the reader‟s
ability to discern how those words would actually appear when written, and further how the
visual appearance of the word is indicative (or not) of a black voice. Specifically, by temporarily
discarding the content of the poem, the difference in the spelling of one word is sufficient in
creating a visual (and consequently aural) distinction between the white and black voice. Yet
even if the reader was not privy to the nuances of “characteristically” black or white speech, the
difference in the appearance of the words adequately denotes the presence of another voice.
Sanchez frequently makes use of the „n-word,‟ which is written as “nigguh” for the black voice –
in this poem, the stark contrast between the latter, “familiar” spelling and the sudden
transcription of the word as “nigger” visually registers as a different voice in the text. Without
the visual discrepancy noted by this single term, it is impossible to adequately convey the
intrusion of an “other” voice in the reading.
Visual discrepancies between the narration of a text and its dialogue allow the reader to
discern a character‟s identity. As previously mentioned, simply gazing at the dialogue can create
a visual divide (assuming the white character is speaking in standard English.) In Playing in the
Dark, Toni Morrison sputters her disdain at the fact the white figure is the normative character in
American literature. The reader‟s ability to glean whether or not a character is white is based on
the fact that “no one says so.” Conversely, a black character is either explicitly described or the
dialogue from the black character is distinct from his white counterparts – if not nonexistent, as
Morrison highlights in her citations of the text To Have and Have Not.48 An ocular complex that
visually descries the ethnic from the non-ethnic voice further adds to the visual polarity between
48
Toni Morrison. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. (New York: Vintage Books, 1990) 72.
22
characters of different races, conjuring an imagined contrast in skin color.
In response to her disdain, Toni Morrison‟s short narrative, Recitatif, functions as the
antithesis of a race-determining visual aid. Despite Morrison initially asserting the presence of a
black character, Recitatif’s lack of differentiation between Twyla and Roberta‟s voice
exemplifies a text that attempts to convey an absence of a “black” or “white” voice, though the
plot can be interpreted through a colored lens. Displacing the significance of the dialogue, the
narration of the text becomes essential to establishing the image and identity of a particular
character, and the reader loses the ability to correctly assign the racially opposite characters with
distinct voices.
Morrison deprives the reader of a distinguishably “black” or “white” voice, and instead
muddles the reader‟s visual cues by repeatedly allowing both protagonists to utter the exact same
phrase and visually paralleling the identically toneless voice. Morrison does this intentionally,
almost teasing the reader to guess which character falls under which particular racial category
and not only judge who might stereotypically say something but more importantly, how they
might say it and what that would look like. It would only seem natural that because racial
differences are visually detectable, these discrepancies would somehow manifest themselves in
the text, even in something as subjective and intangible as voice. Yet side-by-side, a number of
the phrases appear as duplicates. Morrison‟s deliberate use of the standard English abjures the
possibility of uncovering the racial identities by divesting the dialogue of any visual inflection,
aside from the occasional exclamation point. But, recalling Baldwin‟s assertions, while two
individuals might be saying the same words, they can never truly be saying the same thing.
Morrison intentionally presents themes that are significant within the context of racial identity,
such as hair, understanding of pop-culture and desegregation, but each issue is presented as
23
colorless. The reader must conceptualize the issues within their own racial understanding, or they
are left to relate to the women‟s problems at face value, rather than aligning with a particular side
of the story. Though the reader may be aware of the racialized meanings within the dialogue, the
inability to attribute the speech to either character diminishes the significance of our historical
understanding of race as a means to fully understand each character‟s psyche. At the end of the
text, the reader is left uncertain about who is black or white, and instead left to ponder why that
point may even matter in reference to interpreting the text. Had Morrison included visual
indicators by means of differentiating the dialogue between the two protagonists, the reader
might have pinned certain traits to the characters, simply based on preconceived notions
regarding race. Without a visual aid, it can become difficult to illustrate critical details of each
voice in such a way that could produce an accurate oration of the text.
Not unlike Morrison, both poetic behemoths Paul Dunbar and Langston Hughes used text
to reawaken their ancestors‟ fading voices by eulogizing the tattered speech that was associated
with illiteracy and poor education. Yet unlike Paul Laurence Dunbar, Hughes was able to
successfully write in both “standard” and black English.49 His decision to write in both voices
blurs the distinction between whether or not the author uses one voice for narration and the other
as a black voice. Though both Mother to Son and The Negro Mother indicate the black character
is speaking to another black figure, one poem is written in black English and the other is not.
Again, by observing the distinction between the language and style of the two poems, it is worth
considering why the visual illustration of the black voice matters and under what circumstances
an author will chose to write in one voice versus the other. In this instance, though both poems
involve a black mother, the desired image of the mother is distinct to each poem. In Mother to
49
This is likely as a result of their different lifetimes, Dunbar died in 1906, and was writing at the end 19th century, whereas
Hughes was writing poetry at the rise of the 20th century.
24
Son the tone is personal and the mother‟s black voice is transcribed. The visual portrayal of black
speech directly recalls the voice of an individual mother, recreating the image of one who is
speaking directly to her son. Conversely, even in its title, The Negro Mother carries a less
individual, or personal, tone as the poem tethers the experiences of the Negro mothers together
into one voice, establishing a standard message based on common experience. The poem speaks
more broadly to the black community, where the content of the message is perhaps more
significant than visually representing a black voice. To speak as an individual, the visual
representation of black speech can function effectively throughout the dialogue of a text, but it
seems that an author might resist blanketing the entire black population as a body that speaks in a
monolithic voice.
In spite of its potential contributions, transcription of black speech in literature has also
been detrimental to the perception of black Americans. On one hand, its depiction acknowledges
the existence of a black voice and can further highlight a relationship between the text and the
reader. However the transcription of black English in literature has been used to valorize the
language as indicative of how the black community as a whole speaks. Stereotypes surrounding
black speech emerged in order to generalize the black community. In our society speech is
indicative of a person‟s intelligence. The sometimes visually “broken” appearance of black
speech can position it as irreversibly “other.”50 Moreover, unfamiliar depictions of written words
can encourage a “negative affective response”51 and the reader may ascribe the black characters
(or the author) inaccurate associations based on the visual depiction of the speech.
50
51
Toni Morrison. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. (New York: Vintage Books, 1990.) 52.
Lisa Cohen Minnick, Dialect and Dichotomy: Literary Representations of African American Speech. (Tuscaloosa: The
University of Alabama Press, 2004) 73.
25
KUJICHAGULIA:
I am my own voice.
Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): To define ourselves, name ourselves, create
for ourselves and speak for ourselves, instead of being defined, named, created
for and spoken for by others.52
“Indeed the tales lose much of their flavor in standard English” –Daryl Cumber Dance
The synthesis of a visual voice in the text allows the author to establish a rapport directly
with the reader. Building this rapport is not exclusive to literary dialogue, and can be forged
through the narrative style. Both Geneva Smitherman and even the Rickford‟s occasionally
smatter their text with colloquialisms and abruptly shift mid-sentence to incorporate black
English. Whether this functions as a didactic tool or simply injects the author‟s “real” voice into
the text, relating and solidifying a sense of communal understanding from a black author to a
black reader is significant. Though the text may be read among the masses, the sporadic infusion
of black voice throughout a text can allow an author to communicate the subtleties of the
narrative to a hand-selected audience; only those that embody the “in-group” will fully
comprehend such niceties or the cultural significance of particular words and phrases. Though
the text is available to all and all readers can physically see the nuances of the text, not all have
the access to the intricacies of black English, and even fewer may understand how to take the
visual and convert it into the actual sound of the word presented. In texts where there is neither
dialogue nor a character to project as the black body, the intricacies of eye-dialect potentially
afford the reader a limited glimpse of the author's identity, or voice. Rickford suggests the
author‟s ability to share words with a reader posit the narrative as a secret between the two. If we
are to believe Gates‟ contention that “only the Negro author portray[s] the Negro best,” then
skeptical readers who perhaps use a black voice, can be assured that because “literature of any
52
This is one of the Seven Principles of Kwanzaa.
26
people [has] an indigenous quality” its linguistic idiosyncrasies would reveal an inauthentic
craftsman.53
While black identity calls for a voice and the outlined characteristics of this voice exist,
not all narratives that cast a black figure, have a black voice. Black speech in a text that has been
produced by a foreign tongue and unfamiliar hand is “not really black at all”54 – at least not
“black” as it is understood from the previous section‟s description. The text is successful only in
producing an optical illusion – remnants of burnt cork noticeably smear the dialogue – masking a
voice of “fear and incomprehension.”55 To depict a black voice that will be acknowledged as
such, an author must understand the sounds, meanings, uses and any other identifying aspect of
black voice, as it is very easy to inadvertently (or advertently) “stereotype a character through the
representation of the character‟s speech.”56 Thus, in order to do create the voice effectively and
convincingly, a black voice can either transcribe itself, or the foreign tongue must imagine giving
life to another‟s voice while capturing its phonetic rhythms before depicting the contrived
racialized dialogue. This harvesting tongue rarely bears fruit, as Michael North contends,
“the very sounds of the nonstandard elude the standard representations. Of course
this means as well that black language can hardly be portrayed by a white poet at
all; such a poet can't really „hear‟ the other language and so cannot render it with
any accuracy.”
53
Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.) 175.
Michael North, The Dialect of Modernism: Race, Language and Twentieth-Century Literature. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994.) 11.
55
Ibid, 11.
56
Lisa Cohen Minnick, Dialect and Dichotomy: Literary Representations of African American Speech. (Tuscaloosa: The
University of Alabama Press, 2004.) 63.
54
27
Thought it is unclear who has the “right” or “entitlement” to invoke black speech, an
author‟s motives primarily drive the controversies surrounding “racial ventriloquism.” 57
The historically regressive transcription of black speech at the hands of white authors has
practically divorced them from the ability to use black voice in texts without experiencing severe
scrutiny and negative backlash. T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound were two of the more astute figures in
American literature that became involved in a racial playground that promulgated using black
English for amusement. Toying with the language as their plaything, while simultaneously
mutilating an aspect of culture significant to black Americans, the duo breathed life into their
game of dress-up with a “private distorted version of the dialect.”58 Their nicknamed personas
communicated with one another through their poorly imagined rendition of black speech,
boyishly reveling in what they believed was rebellious behavior. While the two correctly
perceived distortion of language as a means of resistance or political commentary, they
undermined the significance of the black voice. The men used the language not as themselves,
but under offensive pseudonyms that only further tarred black speech beneath feathers of
buffoonery and minstrelsy – visually distorting black voice as a language that should not and
could not be taken seriously.
Rewriting black characters‟ speech in visually reprehensible ways attempted to silence
the strength of black voices. Previously, the black body was vulnerable, forgotten, erased and
discarded. But unlike the body, voice proffered a more viable means of agency for members of
the black community. Voice can exist independent of the body from which it originated, carrying
messages from ear to ear. Recognizing that black people needed to “speak for themselves...in
57
Michael North, The Dialect of Modernism: Race, Language and Twentieth-Century Literature. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994.) Preface.
58
Ibid, 77.
28
order to assert and maintain their rank as men among men,”59 white authors fastened on to the recreation of the black voice. Incapable of concealing the black body, these authors instead
endeavored to control the construction of black identity vis-à-vis language. Though black bodies
were essentially allowed to occupy physical space in text, their voices appeared as violently
beaten and broken words in literature. North argues, the visual presence of black voice in
“white” literature “had less to do with realism in characterization” than with a desire to
transcribe and publish black Americans as “hapless, childlike and eager for paternalistic
protection.”60 Capitalizing on these subversive texts to highlight the inferiority between blacks
and whites, black voices were positioned as tarnishing and physically damaging to the
“beautiful” standard English. Visually juxtaposing the contrived black speech versus “standard”
speech in various texts facilitated the estrangement of blacks from whites, rendering them as
both alien and unintelligible, a gruesome “projection of the not-me.”61 By depriving black people
of the thing they “love so much – the saying of words, holding them on the tongue,
experimenting with them, playing with them” – authors with disingenuous motives were able to
incite “the worst of all possible things that could happen” to the black community: losing their
voice.62 The wagging of blackened tongues in malicious mouths prevailed until it was ultimately
up to black individuals to “counter the racist endeavor to write down the Negro as something less
than a man,”63 and reclaim the right to their voice.
Momentarily disregarding the offensive behavior of these authors one could argue that
the depiction of black voice in these texts was inevitable, as it needs to be reflected in literature.
59
Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.) 173.
Michael North, The Dialect of Modernism: Race, Language and Twentieth-Century Literature. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994.) 22.
61
Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. (New York: Vintage Books, 1990.) 39.
62
Morrison, as quoted in John Russell, and Russell John Rickford, Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English. (New York: John
Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2000) 5.
63
Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.) 173.
60
29
If the intention was to dehumanize and humiliate the black figure in the text, white authors could
have explicitly employed a slew of derogatory terms to announce the presence and “inferiority”
of a black character, even stripping the character of the ability to speak. Yet the author chose to
give the character voice, and further transcribe the voice (albeit a grossly inaccurate
transcription). While the visual aspect was often exploited in an effort to misconstrue the
contemporary black character, at the crux of this action could have been the authors‟ realization
that black voice was distinct from other speech. To transcribe a black character‟s speech without
an effort to imbue the words with sounds of a feigned black voice, failed the purpose of the white
narrative. The desired outcome was for “general English [to] become a symbol” that created
distance from African American culture.”64 Bell hooks narrated the motive of the oppressive
voice that “co-opted” the marginalized group‟s narrative in an effort to obliterate the language of
the oppressed:
“No need to hear your voice when I can talk about you better than you can speak
about yourself…Only tell me about your pain. I want to know your story. And
then I will tell it back to you in a new way. Tell it back to you in such a way that
it has become mine, my own. Re-writing you, I write myself anew. I am still
author, authority. I am still the colonizer, the speaking subject, and you are now at
the center of my talk.”65
64
Marcyliena Morgan, Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture. (United Kingdom: Cambridge University
Press, 2002.) 61.
65
bell hooks, Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness, as quoted in: Sandra Harding, The Feminist Standpoint
Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies. (Routledge: New York and London, 2004.) 158.
30
Authoring the black voice allowed the oppressor to “create the thoughts of the subordinate by
providing it speech.”66 Not only would the black individual become an object, he was also
deprived of independent and self-governing thought.
The conviction that “language is also a place of struggle” defines the repossession of the
black voice by black authors. Though the speech was eventually removed from colonizing hands
and flourished in black narratives, many black authors initially mastered standard English in
order to eschew the negative stigmas associated with black vernacular and be taken seriously as
authors. Given the tumultuous history of black identity and its relationship with language and
voice, the concern that an “Other” would “annihilate” black rhetoric by means of silencing, was
a substantiated fear. Black authors had to grapple with the benefits of using black speech and
allowing its visual presence to flourish in their texts. James Weldon Johnson and Paul Laurence
Dunbar become household names in terms of this discussion, as the use of black speech was
considered “impossible for a serious black poet of the 1920s because it [was] based upon the
minstrel traditions of Negro life.”67 Yet allowing the visual presence of black voices in literature
to flounder would diminish the significance of black speech, in terms of the intention behind the
nascent black voice.68 At the very least, denouncing any value in black speech empowered
oppressive tongues and meant existing within what hooks defines as the “concrete space” of the
margins. Literary pioneers like Zora Neal Hurston and Toni Morrison tore black voices from the
66
Michael North, The Dialect of Modernism: Race, Language and Twentieth-Century Literature. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994.) 11
67
Ibid. 10.
68
This is not to say that black authors should not write in “standard” English and instead only write in a “black” voice, as in fact,
“standard” English is black, based on the influences of black expression and vocabulary on what is deemed as “proper” or
normative speech.
31
mandibles of immoral imposters and revived the “recollections of broken tongues” to restore
pride to the black community and strengthen a multifaceted black voice.69
Transcribing and visually representing black voice was (and still is) an empowering
action for black authors and readers. In terms of black literature, the most beloved authors
(Angelou, Hurston, Hughes, Morrison, Walker, Wright, etc.) all shed the idea that they “must
write like white men” 70 and instead consciously represented black speech within their texts.
Authors like Hurston used black speech pervasively throughout narratives to restore pride,
celebrate heritage and resist those who exploited and abused the African-American tongue. The
language present in these texts gives voice to the marginalized and silenced. The characters‟
speech represents authenticity and understanding of the black voice, and suggests the authors‟
indifference to the potential ramifications of using black speech.
The visual depiction of black voice represented a “violent” visual counter-attack for black
authors. Transcribing black dialogue signified more than simply verbalizing something in a
different voice. The bodies once physically and violently silenced, or falsely accused of
destroying words now bent and molded words into mirrors that reflected black voices. Black
voices in literature resisted conventional forms if the visual representation resulted in a better
picture of the voice – even if the word was the same, with the same pronunciation.71 Black
writers actively sought to “revise texts… „authentically,‟ with a black difference, a compelling
sense of difference based on the black vernacular.”72 Translating black stories in accessible and
relevant diction anchored the emphasis on “authenticity”73 of black speech. Toni Morrison
69
bell hooks, Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness, as quoted in: Sandra Harding, The Feminist Standpoint
Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies. (Routledge: New York and London, 2004.) 157.
70
Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.) 115, 183.
71
Examples: was/wuz, cause/cuz/caus, you/u, etc.
72
Ibid, xxii.
73
I do not suggest “authenticity” here as an advocate for any particular racial group‟s monopolized use of black speech, but
rather encourage authenticity as a commitment to a comprehensive understanding and impartial transcription of black voice.
32
explained her use of black voice as a product of her desire to “deliver something real,”74 because
she admittedly assumed if
“…the author was not black, the appearance of Africanist characters or narrative
or idiom in a work could never be about anything other than the "normal,"
unracialized, illusory white world that provided the fictional backdrop.”75
Her literature captures black voice and represents it visually in a way that is vivid and realistic.
Yet Morrison was not averse to manipulating the appearance of black speech in her narratives,
challenging the reader to descry the presence of a black voice. This action, as evinced in the
previously discussed text, Rectitatif, conveys the necessity of black voice in literature insofar as
understanding black identity, and further highlights how its absence also affects the text.
74
Lovalerie King and Linda F. Selzer, New Essays on the African American Novel: From Hurston and Ellison to Morrison and
Whitehead. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.) 95.
75
Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. (New York: Vintage Books, 1990.) 16.
33
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND THE KING’S SPEECH
Arguably the black voice cannot be accurately depicted if it is not envisioned exactly as
the character would speak and ultimately how the author intended. In his text, Michael North
cited language as “something that one must remain loyal to.”76 In line with the belief that
language is based on a perception of the self, it would only seem natural that individuals would
strive to “unite a grammar of expression with a grammar of life” and speak in a language that is
reflective of themselves.77 It is not uncommon for people to speak in the same voice that defines
how they think, and unless constrained by a socially normative formality (e.g., when speaking to
a superior or writing an analytical essay). Individuals also write how they speak, especially if
they are transcribing their speech, (e.g., for example in a message to a friend or in a journal). Yet
in response to North‟s contention, what defines loyalty to language? While it may be as simple
as speaking and writing in a common language, it seems to be a betrayal if a person‟s voice
appears to be “disloyal” to their respective language. In this, the notion that a person can “talk
black” or “sound white” becomes relevant with the preservation of exact speech as a definitive
indicator of identity for racial communities. Put another way, the way a person speaks, or their
voice, should match a written, or visual representation of their speech.
Whether or not an accurate voice, and more specifically an “authentic” voice, is present
in literature affects the reader‟s interpretation of the text.78 Ideally, a character‟s voice is
accurately reflected somehow within the content of a narrative text. Yet an author‟s diction
might betray the image that a reader conjures of a particular character, if the reader finds the
76
Michael North, The Dialect of Modernism: Race, Language and Twentieth-Century Literature. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994) 14.
77
Femi Ojo-ade, Of Dreams Deferred, Dead of Alive: African Perspectives on African - American Writers. (Westport,
Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1996) 171.
78
The distinction here between “accurate” and “authentic” is namely accurate voice suggests a complete transcription of a
dialogue where each word is transcribed. “Authentic” is distinct in that not only does the transcription capture each word, it also
endeavors to convey the spoken voice behind the words, whether that be the rhythm, inflection, use of apocope, etcetra.
34
visual manifestation of the voice in conflict with how they believe the character should speak.
Consider texts like William Styron‟s The Confessions of Nat Turner; the text is written from the
perspective of the slave rebel, yet the protagonist‟s polished and formal speech might conflict
with what a reader may have imagined Turner‟s voice and thoughts to sound like. Similarly,
Langston Hughes‟ poem, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, offers a compelling title – the simple
statement easily could have been interpreted as a contemporary paradox (recall that “Negroes”
were not encouraged to speak), yet Hughes intentionally gives “the Negro” voice. While the poet
frequently used dialect in his poetry, he opted to use standard English in the particular poem
where the Negro, or the author himself, speaks. Without prior knowledge that the subject of the
poem is Hughes, a modern reader might interpret the title as an indicator of the type of speech
that should be expected within the poem. Styron and Hughes highlight the previously mentioned
risks of using black speech, as readers may become expectant of the visually distinct language in
literature or may perceive black characters as only capable of speaking in a non-standard form of
English.
The abovementioned examples further question whether or not words have to be written
as they are spoken in order to accurately convey a black character‟s voice. If a character is
explicitly described as black, should the reader assume the character‟s dialogue is distinct from
the rest of the narrative? By no means is this argument suggesting that all black dialogue must be
written in a visually distinct prose. However, because society has established “standard” English
as the normative, with the “normative” suggesting white society, there seems to be a disconnect
between an author defining a character as black and then giving them a voice that is
contradictory to what the reader imagined, based on these social norms. The root of the problem
stems from a transfixion with “authenticity” and how believable the narrative is. Referring back
35
to Morrison‟s short piece, Recitatif, the introduction of one of the speakers as black ostensibly
suggests that the dialogue would contain variant speech patterns. Because it does not, the reader
needs constant narrative reminders that there are two separate races present in the text, otherwise
the reader would subconsciously conceptualize white characters. When the reader has no tools to
draw the distinction between the black voice and white voice, and arguably is left questioning
whether or not there is a black protagonist at all.
Qualms about King
Martin Luther King, Jr. was and still is one of the most powerful voices in American
history, and particularly within the African American community. Dr. King‟s ability to command
attention from both black and white audiences coupled with his compelling oratorical style has
left all those who have heard the King‟s speech in awe of his voice. Yet the most lauded
characteristic of the nonviolent ambassador has become lost in transcription, and even further,
has been deployed as the main arsenal against an aspect of black voice – the use of black speech.
Undeniably, King‟s speech was marked by the rhetorical style of black voice. The
“pauses, inflections, cadences and other devices of the black rhetorical and preaching tradition”
produced the “jewels of Spoken Soul [that] fell from Dr. King‟s lips.” The Reverend did not
deny his black voice and regularly recoded the infamous white voices of Kant, Jefferson and
Thoreau in his own voice and arguably a black voice – injecting the phrases from worn and
wearied white lips with the eager palpitations of a black voice vying for freedom and equality.
Yet his speech, or his “talent” as Charles Johnson defines it, distinguished him from the very
community he so ardently fought for. That is to say, King‟s voice made him “one of them” and
not; though his syntax was characteristic of black voice, King‟s speech was perceived by others
36
as distinct from that of a general black voice. In Dreamer, Johnson articulates King‟s
understanding of this as,
“the irony of his situation never escaped him: excellence brought praise - so often
from whites - but also the danger of his becoming a pariah among Negroes if he
didn‟t somehow soften the separateness, the chasm his talent created between
himself and others.”79
King‟s ability to effectively communicate and even verbally spar with the “oppressor” derailed
King as the voice of the black community and instead realigned him as the voice for the black
community.. Known for his ability to articulately command speech and bend language to his
will, the overarching ideology contends it would be “blasphemy to suggest that the martyr even
dabbled in down-home talk.” 80 In this, King managed to grasp the attention of the oppressive
body and whisper their own words into ears that were once deaf to a black cry.
While one could argue King‟s “black voice” should have deterred white audiences,
consider the difference between a figure like King versus Paul Laurence Dunbar. Dunbar‟s use
of standard English was rarely taken seriously and likely was a result of his regular use of black
vernacular, which perhaps made it difficult to reconcile which voice, or persona, was
authentically his. Because the prevailing thought suggested black Americans spoke in dialect, it
may have naturally been assumed that his true voice was the broken, tattered replica of
“standard” English. Conversely, though King uses “black” rhetorical style, the visual condition
of his words appeared intact, arguably making his voice acceptable among various audiences.
Put another way, because King eschewed dialect or black vernacular, the printed version of his
speeches did not appear in opposition to normative speech, i.e., society. Moreover, the instances
79
Charles Johnson, Dreamer. (New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1998.) 48.
John Russell Rickford and Russell John Rickford, Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English. (New York: John Wiley & Sons,
Inc., 2000.) 46.
80
37
where King invokes even a shard of black dialect are few and far between, and are positioned as
a recollection and duplication of another‟s voice, furthering the perception that King was an
advocate for standard English. His well-known level of education supported this, as his ability to
obtain a PhD inevitably would have been abetted by what Adrienne Rich defines as language
that is void of black inflection and “carries the scent of oppression” yet is the key to “attend
graduate school” and “write a dissertation.”81 In general, King may have had a tendency to
rephrase black dialect into a lukewarm modification, as evinced when King rephrases Sister
Pollard‟s grammatically incorrect black voice, “My feets is tired” into “our feet are tired.”
Aurally, the latter may have been uttered in a “black voice” but the visual representation bears no
trace of this. 82
An analysis of the visual politics surrounding Dr. King‟s speech uphold Marcyliena
Morgan‟s insistence that the subtleties of black voice, such as tone, inflection and rhythm, cannot
accurately be depicted through the medium of print. As a point of clarification, this is not to say
that the Reverend‟s speech cannot be transcribed in a way that fully captures his voice but rather
the written forms do not capture his voice, i.e., a black voice. Martin Luther King Jr.‟s voice was
and still is undeniably distinct – one that for many Americans, regardless of race, is effortlessly
conjured and not easily forgotten. Yet ponder for a moment the written representation of King‟s
speeches. While some could argue that the differences between King‟s spoken voice and the
transcribed form of his speeches are nonexistent given the accuracy and entirety of the printed
version, the fact that another author was responsible for reproducing his voice generates glaring
discrepancies in the text. Attempting to reconcile these inconsistencies becomes tricky
specifically because King himself did not transcribe his speeches, yet I remain convinced that the
81
bell hooks, Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness, as quoted in: Sandra Harding, The Feminist Standpoint
Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies. (Routledge: New York and London, 2004.) 154
82
Also, note that the quotation marks in Washington‟s text appear only around Sister Pollard‟s quote.
38
transcription is not comprehensive, as it does not accurately convey the voice of the Civil Rights
leader. Arguably the printed version of King‟s speeches would be more emotionally captivating
if they were transcribed in such a way that at least acknowledged his “delight in euphony” and
“the sweet sound of words and rhythms.”83
In the hands of another author, the nuances of King‟s speech seem to slip through the
transcriber‟s fingertips. A text like James Washington‟s A Testament of Hope, that claims to
present the “essential writings and speeches” of King, in fact misses the most essential part of the
Reverend‟s writings – his voice. There appears to be little to no effort to recreate the tenor,
timbre, and vocal rhythm that distinguish King‟s speeches. While a reader who is familiar with
the sound of King‟s speeches might be able to read the standard English and still envision King‟s
voice, in general the hundreds of words that leapt off of King‟s tongue seem to fall flat on the
pages as they fill the enormous volumes that relay his speeches. A dissenting opinion might
imagine reading King‟s speeches from the perspective of an individual who has no knowledge of
Dr. King – envision a reader that is unfamiliar with his life, his race, and most importantly, has
never heard the voice of the Civil Rights leader. Independent of the content of the speech, if this
naïve reader had only a transcription of King‟s speeches, they would be ill equipped to observe
the powerful black voice, based on the scarcity of visual traits that would indicate his distinctive
speech patterns. While the Reverend frequently wove some of the rhetorical characteristics of
black voice into his speeches (repetition, vocal inflection, even call-and-response to an extent,
etc.) the only visual manifestation of this voice in his speeches is the repetition and to some
extent, adorned language (as evinced in his excessive use of examples to highlight a single
point).
83
John Russell Rickford and Russell John Rickford, Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English. (New York: John Wiley & Sons,
Inc., 2000.) 40.
39
In A Testament of Hope, the editor of King‟s speeches handcrafts a text that presents an
immaculate voice – only visually reproducing a single instance where King undeniably
abbreviated the word „because‟ as „‟cause‟ in the spoken version of his speech, Our God is
Marching On!.84 Dwelling on this speech for a moment, traces of black English pop up
throughout this particular oration. Yet, likely due to the transcriber‟s motives, in the transcription
of the speech the black English is corralled between quotation marks. In other speeches where
King uses the collective term „we‟ to indicate a communal voice (including his own) wherein he
explicitly says, “we say…” the actual transcription of whatever the collective is saying is not
distinguished by the use of quotation marks. In two different speeches, King‟s voice booms, “We
will be able to say we built gargantuan bridges…,” “And we’ve got to say to the nation: we
know it’s coming out,” “At times we say they were busy going to church…”85 In each quotation,
whatever “we” happens to be saying appears as a voice that is inclusive of King‟s, as there is no
indication that King might be quoting someone else. To belabor this point, even when King gives
the collective “we” something explicit to say, e.g., “we know it’s coming out” – the printed
rendering uses a colon, not quotation marks, indicating that King too, would say this. However,
In Our God Is Marching On!, it initially appears as if King is again using an inclusive “we.” But,
when the words are printed on the page the reader is visually cued otherwise. In the section, “WE
ARE HERE,” King begins:
“They told us we wouldn‟t get here. And there were those who said that we would
get here only over their dead bodies, but all the world today knows that we are
84
James H. Washington, A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York:
HarperCollins Publishers, 1986.) 230.
85
Ibid, 275, 281, 284.
40
here and that we are standing before the forces of power in the state of Alabama
saying, „We ain‟t goin‟ let nobody turn us around.‟”86
Here, the collective voice deviates from “proper” English, and instead seems to invoke a
black vernacular. It is clear that the editor did not believe that King would ever quote his
own voice in the “jingling and juggling of a broken tongue”87 thus, the use of quotation
marks quarantine the speech that is visually disruptive and dissonant with the rest of
King‟s contrived voice, and posit it as King repeating the voice of an “other.” This calls
into question the veracity of the printed speeches insofar as their depiction of King‟s
voice, given that anyone entrusted with the responsibility of rendering the speeches into
print may not have copied his speech exactly as it was said.
Washington is not alone in his effort to produce a seamless image of King through his
speech, as perceptions surrounding the visual representation of King‟s voice have also
functioned as a catalyst against the use of black English. “Atlanta‟s Black Professionals” coopted the title of King‟s infamous I Have A Dream speech and cruelly maimed the title into a
shameful “I Has a Dream.”88 The visually arresting slogan was plastered onto an image of King
with his back turned, suggesting King‟s disapproval of black English and encouraging society to
take a stance against the use of “ebonics.” The foundation for the posters originates from the
belief that King would never condescend to speak in black vernacular, and this notion is only
furthered by the paucity of transcriptions that visually depict King‟s speech as anything less than
flawless. Transcribing the aural into a visually accurate depiction of his voice would have been
the same as carving the controversial speech in stone; it would have posed the risk of
86
James H. Washington, A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York:
HarperCollins Publishers, 1986.), 227.
87
Alaine Locke, as quoted in John Russell Rickford and Russell John Rickford, Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English. (New
York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2000.) 33.
88
The Rickfords tactfully point out that the structure “I has” is an “Ebonics blunder” that in fact, occurs “0 percent of the time that is never” when used by those who actually speak in black English.” Ibid, 201.
41
historicizing King as inarticulate and moreover, an advocate of black English. As previously
stated, there are many negative stigmas associated with black speech that would have inevitably
crippled King‟s ability to exist as a unifying voice for both black and white individuals. In the
case of the I Has a Dream poster, visually representing black English draws upon a socially
primed conscience, framing the opprobrious poster as a didactic tool – silently challenging the
viewer to address the age-old question, “what‟s wrong with this picture?” Regardless of whether
or not the message is legitimate in terms of the conventions of black speech, those who pride
themselves on using “proper” English wince at the obtrusive error, and the point is crystal clear –
the use of, and even worse, the transcription of black English is disgraceful and reduces the
efforts of those who worked to strengthen the voice of the black community in order to gain
equality among blacks and whites.
Charles Johnson‟s alter ego, Chaym Smith, effectively highlights the paradox in the
visual representation of King‟s voice. The paradox I suggest is that while King doused his
speeches in his soulful, compelling, and rhetorically “black” voice, the transcription of his
speech in print is incapable of translating the impressive magnitude of the activist‟s voice.
Chaym, who is cast as King‟s doppelganger in almost all appearances except in terms of King‟s
speech, and whose job is to mimic the Reverend, flaunts his mastery of multiple voices. Johnson
avers language as the only “chasm” that distinguishes King from other blacks, a point that is
evinced most clearly by his relationship with Chaym. While Chaym seamlessly shifts between
black vernacular and emulating King‟s voice, it is implied that King cannot do the same – though
Chaym‟s purpose is to impersonate King, it is never suggested that King could impersonate
Chaym. Arguably, this fact could imply ease with which King‟s voice can be emulated, as it
appears in print.
42
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. argues, “the presence of the human voice in the text is only
implied by its absence.”89 This contention holds true as the lack of overall presence of King‟s
voice is exacerbated primarily through Johnson‟s depiction of Chaym‟s voice. The reader digests
the visual cues that indicate the emotions in Chaym‟s voice (such as when he gets stabbed, Oh
Lawd this hurts!) and highlight his shift from standard English to black vernacular.90 However, it
becomes glaringly obvious that though King‟s spoken voice is undeniably distinct, his written
voice is not distinguished in the text. Chaym‟s voice appears indiscernibly from King‟s
whenever Smith is not speaking in his own voice, and it is difficult to tell if the speaker is King
or Chaym, as Matthew evinces when he is confused about who is speaking just before Chaym
gets stabbed (arguably we only realize it‟s Chaym because he cries out in a black voice).
Yet, when the author consciously chooses to visually direct Chaym as distinct from the
other characters, he invokes a visual depiction of his black voice, and Chaym‟s voice visually
appears more complex insinuating the unspoken differences between the characters. Dreamer
seems to suggest the distinction between the black voice that is visually represented in literature,
and the black voice that is incapable of being captured in print. Though an oration of the text
could convey the nuances of the voice, the transcription of the latter risks becoming a toneless,
homogenous voice. The likelihood of this risk is supported by the fact that those who align with
King speak an equally monolithic manner, in a voice that is only differentiated from the narrative
prose by quotation marks. Neither Amy nor Matthew‟s speech seems to necessitate an aural
presence in the text, similar to King‟s. Those who may not strongly align with the Civil Rights
leader speak in a voice that visually indicates an unity at least in their resistance to blindly follow
89
90
Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.) 167.
Charles Johnson, Dreamer. (New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1998.) 147.
43
King; Chaym, Brother someone, the woman at the diner and the man who eventually stabs
Chaym, because arguably Chaym‟s speech convinces him that he is King.
Johnson uses Chaym‟s voice to evince the versatility and complexities of black voice.
Though Chaym‟s character has a visually represented black voice, he quickly refutes any
suspicion this may suggest he is mentally inferior, as he flexes his intellectual prowess
throughout the text, primarily through his ability to imitate multiple languages, a characteristic of
black expression/voice. He does not simply use black vernacular, he also uses “standard”
English, quotes foreign languages and uses colloquial terms – the visual dynamic of Chaym‟s
speech on any given page suggest the daedal and unique amalgamation of languages and
terminology that influence black speech patterns. Furthermore after initially befuddling Matthew
with a foreign term, Chaym magnanimously decides that he can part with a word he “picked up”
elsewhere, in an effort to augment Matthew‟s linguistically one-dimensional vocabulary.
Chaym‟s use of a black voice (“I‟ma give it to you”) during this exchange conveys the
benevolence of black speech in its influence of “standard” English.91
The visual representation would have been infinitesimally damaging. King was
positioning himself as equal to his white counterparts on all fronts, especially as far as his
education, intellect and reasoning abilities were concerned. King was able to transform words
that “[came] from inside” voices like Chaym‟s, into a “clearer and bigger and cleaner” language
that captured “stuff” they‟d “felt” but “not things [they‟d] ever said.”92 Using an antiquated form
of speech that conjured images of slavery and illiteracy would have sent King spiraling
downwards on his ascendance of the white staircase of society.
91
92
Charles Johnson, Dreamer. (New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1998.) 183.
Ibid, 142.
44
Conclusions.
Toni Morrison once said literature that is “not only „universal‟ but also „race free‟ risks
lobotomizing that literature, and diminishes both the art and the artist.”93 The hand that puts a
pen to paper renders the body in words; the author becomes an artist and the blank pages unfold
before him like a never-ending canvas. Language is a place of struggle.
Throughout the course of this text, I have discussed the significance of representing black voice
in literature. Literature and writing can be used to share, historicize, and essentially immortalize
experiences, thoughts, and ideas. By not only transcribing thoughts, but also the way those
thoughts are expressed, the written word becomes a source of empowerment for the speaker. To
inscribe the nuances of language in a way that creates a voice is a sign of the struggle. But
capturing how a person speaks reinforces why they speak. Language is a place of struggle.
Black identity has needed and still needs a visual voice in literature. Black voice pays homage to
the past while constructing an understanding of where the black voice will exist in the future.
Historically, through its repossession and transcription, the black voice has been legitimized as
one worth listening to. The voice of black authors continues to be resurrected on the tongues of
those who still find meaning in a language that is liberating. The visual representation of black
speech in literature is a way for the black individual to say, “We are here!” Language is a place
of struggle.
Recalling his struggle for the ability to vocalize these three words, the black voice continues to
live and evolve on the tongues that were once silenced. It occurs daily, in variant forms, as black
identity still needs a voice. It is no coincidence that the jazz of this era hums through the beats of
93
Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. (New York: Vintage Books, 1990.) 12.
45
hip-hop, as black youth emerge as the masters of the literary tongue. Language is a place of
struggle, but the ability to produce something that is unique and that reflects the identity and soul
how we see it and how we want to say it, has made it worth the struggle.94
94
The italicized “Language is a place of struggle” pays homage to the style of bell hooks, Choosing the Margin as a Space of
Radical Openness, as quoted in: Sandra Harding, The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political
Controversies. (Routledge: New York and London, 2004.)
46
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