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Internet Memes, Youth Culture, and Code-Switching :How the Appropriation of African

American Vernacular English on TikTok Perpetuates Racist Stereotypes

Abby Denman

Gonzaga University

Introduction

The rise in racial equality-oriented movements like #BlackLivesMatter within the past

ten years has created a demand for society to reevaluate its racist structures. One such aspect of

this push for equality is the discussion on the appropriation of African American Vernacular

English (AAVE) by non-Black people, particularly within social media platforms. Throughout

various content-sharing platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and now most recently

TikTok, non-Black creators have continuously profited off the theft of AAVE. This is a

particularly insidious act of subtle racism for a variety of reasons. Historically AAVE was

considered a devolved form of Standard English, and subsequently it’s speakers have been

stereotyped as unintelligent or lazy. (Murray 144) Native speakers of AAVE are punished for

their speech in their daily lives, but the non-Black people that appropriate it don’t face the same

social consequences. I will analyze TikTok videos by non-Black creators on their usage of AAVE

as a form of participation in “youth culture” and how this (mis)use subliminally perpetuates

racist stereotypes associated with AAVE. I will also look at the most liked comments on how

these creator’s audiences react to the creator’s use of AAVE. This study seeks to answer the

question: “How does the appropriation of AAVE by non-Black content creators on TikTok

perpetuate racist stereotypes against the Black community?” How does this usage shape “youth
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culture”, and how does “youth culture” continue to disenfranchise the Black community? I am

interested in analyzing the context and usage of AAVE by popular non-Black TikTok creators

that contribute to racist stereotypes of stupidity, laziness, or poorness that are associated with

AAVE and its native speakers. As an avid TikTok user and as a supporter for racial equality, I am

interested in the ongoing discussion on the use of AAVE on the platform and the discussion of

how non-Black people like myself can better support Black creators.This study is significant in

analyzing how the adoption of AAVE on social media into “youth/internet culture” by non-Black

people continues to disenfranchise Black AAVE speakers and content creators. This study

contributes to larger discourses about the use of AAVE as a serious dialect and the subtextual

racism and double standards that are held against native AAVE speakers that use AAVE outside

of social media. This study also contributes to the discussions about economic oppression, as an

outcome of AAVE becoming “trendy” is often the (mis)use of these “trendy” words for profit

without credit to the Black creators and origins of the words.

Literature Review

African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) origins and stereotypes

African-American Vernacular English, or AAVE, is a dialect of English spoken primarily

by Black Americans. AAVE used to officially be thought of as a devolved form of “Standard

English,” the dialect spoken mostly by White Americans, and as a result the dialect has a lot of

stereotypes surrounding it. Denise Murray writes in her article “Ebonics: A Case Study in

Language, Power, and Pedagogy” that: often those who do not want to hear Ebonics used in

schools refer to it as slang and to its speakers as lazy or sloppy”. (Murray 144) AAVE
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(previously known as Ebonics) is not a devolved form of English, however. Murray states:

“linguists who have studied it have demonstrated that it is rule governed, with its own

phonology, lexicon, and grammar, and dialects.” (Murray 144) Despite this scholarly recognition,

the stereotypes surrounding AAVE and those who speak it persist.

A study published in the Online Journal of Education Research found that European

American students expressed a belief that AAVE is an inferior dialect of English, and that this

bias is prevalent in White educators as well. (Champion et al. 81)The study states that despite the

copious research that proves AAVE is a unique, rule-oriented dialect and that AAVE speakers are

not academically, linguistically, or cognitively incompetant, the education AAVE speakers

receive does not reflect their capabilities. African American students are twice as likely to be

labeled “mentally retarded” than their White peers due to this linguistic bias. (Champion et al.

81) The study found that White educators have held higher educational standards for Black

children that spoke using Standard English than their AAVE-speaking peers. These White

teachers perceived that children that spoke using Standard English were more intelligent than

students that spoke using AAVE, and subsequently assigned more challenging reading to the

Standard English speakers. (Champion et al. 83) The study also found that this bias is

internalized within the Black community, as Black adults reported stronger preferences to work

with Standard English speakers or code-switching speakers over AAVE-speakers. (Champion et

al. 83) The study concludes with a message urging AAVE training for educators to be

implemented in order to combat the incorrect assumptions of AAVE-speakers being less

intelligent than their peers that so not speak using AAVE.

Appropriation of AAVE
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Matthew Zebrowski discusses the methods in which AAVE are appropriated and the

racist stereotypes these appropriations reinforce in his essay “Linguistic Markets and Symbolic

Power in Television Commercials Using AAVE”. Zebrowski analyzes AAVE appropriation using

TV commercials as examples. In these examples, AAVE terms are used inappropriately by

White creators and actors with the intention of being trendy and humorous, however Zebrowski

analyzes why this intent is backhanded. He cites Jane Hill, an anthropologist and linguist, who

argued that the use of “Mock Spanish” was a method to proliferate racial hegemony. “Mock

Spanish” is described as the (primarily White) use of the Spanish language in cherry-picked

ways to communicate, like saying “hasta mañana”, which relies on the stereotype of the “lazy”

Spanish speaker. (Zebrowski 31) Zebrowski summarizes her work, saying: “Mock Spanish is a

method of normalizing Whiteness and denigrating Spanish as marked, different, and perfectly

acceptable to misuse, and draws on and reinforces negative stereotypes of Spanish speakers”.

(Zebrowski 31) He argues that this can apply to AAVE as well, saying:

“Whites use terms that are neutral or positive in AAVE in ways that are negative or

humorous. Their use of AAVE forms is intended to be innocently humorous, but it

requires access to negative and racist stereotypes of African Americans to be funny; as

such, it proliferates these stereotypes, elevating Whiteness and treating is as smugly

superior while simultaneously presenting reductive and racist notions of AAVE speakers

as not only acceptable, but light-hearted and humorous as well.” (Zebrowski 33)

Zebrowski uses the rest of his essay to describe the economic effects of this appropriation,

stating that the use of mock dialects for capitalist gains not only economically disenfranchises

the Black community, it perpetuates racist stereotypes and alienates Blackness as the “other”.
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Social Media and AAVE

In her Graduate thesis for the City University of New York, Hanna Smokoski analyzes

the effects of what she calls “Mock Ebonics'' on social media. Smokoski argues that the use of

AAVE online by nonspeakers is done with the intent to either “annex certain positive qualities

associated with Black or hip hop culture” or to reproduce and reinforce negative stereotypes of

native AAVE speakers. (Smokoski iv) This can be done intentionally and unintentionally, as the

appropriation of AAVE into “youth culture” has made it increasingly more difficult for

nonspeakers to trace the origins of the terms being used. (Smokoski 2) Smokoski analyzes this

appropriation through the lenses of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. This “Mock

Ebonics'' as Smokoski describes, is not limited to the platforms she’s explored, however the

effect is prevalent among these platforms. Smokoski states that “AAVE stylizations (by

non-Black users) are intended to be humorous because of the comic mismatch between the

speaker’s ethinic, educational, socioeconomic, and cultural background and the perceived lack of

education”. (Smokoski 2) The humor is derived from the disparity between two stereotypes: 1)

that AAVE is a devolved form of Standard English and 2) the assumption that the (most often

White) nonspeaker normally uses Standard English. Smokoski notes that when outgroup

speakers use AAVE in their speech they are not the recipients of the critiques that are commonly

given to native speakers of AAVE. The outgroup speaker is not penalized for the speech in the

way a native speaker would be. Outgroup speakers, White or otherwise, often use AAVE in their

speech in places where they want to counterpose White mainstream hegemonic ideas. (Smokoski

5)
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The consequences of the appropriation of Black culture into the mainstream “youth

culture” were seen in the appropriation and (mis)use of the word “fleek” in 2014. Malika

Imhotep discusses the #onfleek phenomenon in the book #Identity:Hashtagging Race, Gender,

Sexuality, and Nation. The word “fleek” was created and popularized by Kayla Newman

(@peaches_monroee), a Black seventeen-year-old Vine user, but was appropriated primarily on

Twitter. (Imhotep 39) Imhotep explores the “Black Femme” persona that is adopted throughout

the media through her analysis of the mainstream appropriation from “Black Twitter”. Imhotep

writes: “When distinctly Black cultural products enter the mainstream, often the Black author,

and their authorial moment, gets effaced and erased, while the product (the word/phrase/idiom,

the dance, the sartorial or musical style, etc.) appears to be un-authored and author-less.”

(Imhotep 43) In the example of #onfleek, Kayla Newman was often uncredited for the creation

of the word, while companies (mis)used the word in their advertisements and directly profited off

of her word. Imhotep elaborates on the capitalist exploitation of Black culture, including AAVE,

saying: “the absorption of Black vernacular culture in the United States often unevenly appends

material profit to socio-cultural values”. (Imhotep 45) Through her exploration of the “Black

Twitter” community and its subsequent virtual colonization, Imhotep concludes that the

conversion of AAVE and aspects of Black culture into the mainstream popular culture continues

racist disenfranchisement. Not only are Black creators having their culture and vernacular

appropriated, the content being appropriated often is used in ways to continue to disempower and

silence the Black community, whether it be from authorial erasure, loss of capital, or the

continual misuse of the content by non-Black people. (Imhotep 48) Imhotep explores this

phenomenon through the lens of Twitter, but states that this occurs throughout all media.
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Anne Fabricius also explores this phenomenon through a different example,

#aintnobodygottimeforthat. In 2012 a news clip from KFOR-TV Oklahoma City of a woman,

Kimberley ‘Sweet Brown’ Wilkins, reacting to an apartment fire in her building went viral on

YouTube. In the video Wilkins explains how she ran for her life to escape the fire in part because

she has bronchitis, then says “ain’t nobody got time for that”. The phrase “ain’t nobody got time

for that” spread through social media, particularly through Twitter, where it became an infamous

internet meme used by non-Black people. (Fabricius 85) People online used the phrase

humorously despite its negative origins because of Wilkins’s use of AAVE. Like with the

#onfleek example, companies also used the phrase without crediting Wilkins and profited off it.

Fabricius summarized a series of publications by Jane Hill, an anthropologist and linguist, on the

tendency of White mainstream media to appropriate other languages. In Fabricius’s summary,

she explains that White public spaces carry with them the assumption of dialectical order, and

when that order is contrasted with outsider speech that speech is bleached and reframed.

(Fabricius 87) In the example of #aintnobodygottimeforthat, the hashtag altered Wilkins’s speech

to drop aspects of AAVE (the pronunciation was actually “ain’t nobody got time fo dat”).

Fabricius says: “After the initial positioning of this instance of speech as non-standard,

non-mainstream and stigmatized, it has become normalized into mainstream discourse through

orthographic bleachings (ultimately, all the way to an acronym) that remove evidence of

non-standard phonology.” (Fabricius 95)

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Methodology

Research Questions

RQ1:How does the use/appropriation of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) words

online by non-Black TikTok creators perpetuate racist stereotypes against the Black community?

RQ2: How does the misuse of AAVE by company social media platforms affect the meaning of

the appropriated words within the larger public sphere?

RQ3: How does the adoption of AAVE words into “youth culture” harm the Black community?

Collection Method

In my research, I intend to analyze how the use of AAVE by nonspeakers on TikTok negatively

reinforces existing stereotypes against native speakers of AAVE using onsite observation. To do

this I plan on looking at hashtags of popular AAVE words and analyzing the top thrity videos

under that hashtag. For simplicity I will look at only three hashtags, #periodt, #chile, and #slay. I

chose these three words because they are the most popular AAVE words that I’ve personally seen

across the app. I will investigate the top thirty videos under each hashtag and investigate the use

of AAVE in each video. I will choose only ten videos under each hashtag to record. This is to

account for some of the videos under the hashtag to potentially be unrelated to the hashtag, as it

is common within the app to use popular hashtags that are unrelated to the video content to

promote viewer access to the video. I will record from the ten videos: 1) how many views the

video had, and 2) how many likes the video had, and 3) whether or not the word was used

appropriately. I will then look at the top ten comments under each video and analyze if the

responses were: in relation to the AAVE usage: 1) positive, 2) negative, or 3) unrelated to the

creator’s use of AAVE.

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Analytical Method

I will use a fieldnote, and use a thick description (because my research heavily depends on

context) to analyze the use of AAVE and determine if the creator’s use was inappropriate.

Qualifications for inappropriate word usage will be: 1) if the speaker is not Black, 2) if the

speaker does not typically speak using AAVE, 3) if the audience’s understanding of the word

usage is dependant on the audience knowing harmful stereotypes against the Black community,

and 4) if the speaker’s use of the word was technically/grammatically incorrect. To analyze the

speaker’s typical speaking patterns I will view a few of their other videos to see if they typically

speak using AAVE. The system I will use to analyze the comments will be as follows:

1) The comment is determined as “positive” regarding the word usage if:

a) The comment repeats the word, ie quoting the video

b) If the comment directly says that they liked the use of the word

c) If the comment has positive emojis in relation to the word

2) The comment is determined as “negative” if:

a) The comment calls out the word usage for being inappropriate

b) The comment has negative emojis in relation to the word

c) If the comment questions why the user said the word

Comments that are deemed “unrelated” to the use of AAVE will not be further investigated.

Justification:

This method of analysis is best for my research due to the highly contextual nature of the topic.

The subtextual nature of the topic makes other forms of onsite analysis difficult to quantify. This
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research is beneficial to analyze how AAVE is appropriated and how the meaning of AAVE

words change as a result of this appropriation. Analyzing the nature of comment response will

also allow for correlations to be made on the usage of AAVE. If most of the comments are

positive or unrelated to the video,the usage of AAVE may not have registered in viewers, or may

not register as problematic. One problem regarding my research will stem from the subtextual

nature of the topic. Correlations can be drawn from my research, however counter-arguments

about the evolution of speech can always be made because of how subtextual appropriation is. I

also feel that it’s important for me to say that I hold a couple of biases and identities that might

interfere with my research. I am a White, middle class, liberal-leaning college student. My White

privilege and subsequent unfamiliarity with AAVE makes it more difficult for me to understand

when AAVE is used appropriately. I also am an active TikTok user, and I can’t confirm if the top

videos that I am seeing are the same across the app, as the app’s algorithm is highly tailored to

the viewer.
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Bibliography

Champion, Dr. Tempii B., et al. “Future Educators’ Perceptions of African American

Vernacular English (AAVE).” Online Journal of Education Research, vol. 1, no. 5,

2012, pp. 80-89,

https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/43170285/Future_Educators_Perceptions_of_

African20160228-7116-1o65p87.pdf?1456691078=&response-content-disposition=inl

ine%3B+filename%3DFuture_Educators_Perceptions_of_African.pdf&Expires=16

10340940&Signature=HsfPSacX8. Accessed 10 Jan. 2021.

Fabricius, Anne H. “#aintnobodygottimeforthat: Cultural Appropriation, Stylization and

the Social Life of Hashtag Interjectionality.” Scandinavian Studies in Language, vol.

10, no. 1, 2019, pp. 85-97. Scandinavian Studies in Language,

https://doi.org/10.7146/sss.v10i1.114672. Accessed 10 Jan. 2021.

Imhotep, Malika. “#OnFleek: Authorship, Interpellation, and the Black Femme Prowess of

Black Twitter.” #Identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation, edited by

Abigail De Kosnik and Keith P. Feldman, University of Michigan Press, 2019, pp.

39-56. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvndv9md.6. Accessed 10 Jan. 2021.

Murray, Denise. “Ebonics: A Case Study in Language, Power, and Pedagogy.” TESOL

Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 1, 1998, pp. 144-146. JSTOR,

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3587912. Accessed 10 Jan. 2021.

Smokoski, Hanna L., "Voicing the Other: Mock AAVE on Social Media" (2016). CUNY

Academic Works.

https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/708
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Zebrowski, Matthew G. “Linguistic Markets and Symbolic Power in Television

Commercials Using AAVE.” Texas Linguistic Forum, vol. Proceedings of the

Seventeenth Annual Symposium About Language and Society – Austin, no. 53,

2009, pp. 29-38,

http://salsa.ling.utexas.edu/proceedings/2009/04_TLS53_Zebrowski.pdf. Accessed 10

Jan 2021.