Gen Z speak is not new, and it’s not Gen Z’s either.
Dr Christian Ilbury is a sociolinguist and lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. This October, Ilbury came to the University of Glasgow and presented his recent studies on African American Vernacular English (AAVE), queer culture, and wider implications for language. The Glasgow Guardian sat down with Ilbury the day of his presentation and discussed his research and its wider implications for language.
What sparked your interest, specifically in terms of African American vernacular?
“So, I’m interested in how language and technology interact. How is our language shaped by that technology, and how does social media lead to new forms of interacting. One of those things is how people employ varieties of English that they don’t habitually use in their everyday interactions. AAVE, or African American English, is a variety that is typically spoken by African Americans. We have been interested in how it’s used by non-African Americans for some time, given the current situation on social media. For example, the words ‘slay’ or ‘on fleek’ or ‘fierce’ – all these words have their origins in African American English, and so I think we need to understand how they’re being used, why they’re being used, and what that means for society.”
Ilbury, being a sociolinguistic, is “interested in the interrelation of society and language, how language is used in society. And in my work specifically, including digital methods to understand that interrelation.” On computer-based research, he talks of how much easier it is now to access these methods than “ten to fifteen years ago, [when] computational linguists or computer scientists needed a supercomputer or specialist tools to analyse this. But now we can scrape data with just a Chrome plug-in. I think that provides us with a unique opportunity to extract data in far more democratic ways.”
What do you think are the core features of African American English, and what do they have in common with features of so-called Gen-Z language?
“The core argument is that what has been framed as Gen Z language is actually African American English.”
They’re one and the same?
“Yes, and that the framing of it as Gen-Z language is problematic because it erases the original community who use it. African American English is tied to the community that identifies with that label, and if we then describe that as Gen-Z language, it is incorrectly attributed to the latter demographic. AAVE existed long before TikTok, and long before Gen-Z. African American English contains a lot of core features that are different than standard English.”
Ilbury describes the core elements of AAVE which differ from standard English. He talks of phonology, or “sounds” which diverge. “You might have a word such as ‘time’ which, for me, has what is called a diphthong in the vowel, separating it into two distinct sounds. However, an African American speaker might have one sound in that vowel of ‘time’, so it sounds more like ‘tam’ – that’s quite a typical pronunciation.”, and of grammar, too: “an AAVE speaker may say something like, ‘where she at’, instead of ‘where is she at’, in which the verb is absent, and so on.” But, he says, his research is mostly focused on “categories of words. Terms like ‘on fleek’ or ‘slay’ seem to have a much longer history as part of African American English than any other language, and I think we need to acknowledge that.”
What do you think are the long-term effects of using this language? Does it amount to cultural appropriation?
“I’m trying to describe the process by which AAVE is used by non-African American English speakers, and to me that does look like linguistic appropriation. Something that is African American English then being labelled Gen-Z language is a hallmark of linguistic erasure – a signifier of appropriation, where something is taken without attribution. Very few linguists have truly attempted to characterise linguistic appropriation, they tend to describe it as diffusion, whereas I’m trying to prove that, actually, there is a political dimension to this process.”
Do you think we should stop?
“I don’t think people will stop even if I wanted them to stop. And I don’t want that because it’s all language, right? I also don’t think any critics that I’m seeing want people to stop either, they just want recognition that this is African American English. Obviously, communities have shared linguistic practices since the beginning of time, and it’s highly likely that features will be borrowed into different languages. It is solely the framing of this as Gen-Z language that we are trying to suggest is problematic.”
Do you think these studies could be ignoring the intersectionality of Black and queer communities?
“I think in order to understand how language transferred from Black communities to British gay men, we have to think about intersectionality. If we go right back, a lot of this language is associated with ball culture – a largely Black and Latinx subculture that emerged in America’s urban centres partway through the 19th Century. If you’ve seen Pose, that’s ball culture. At one point in time that was a specific subculture, and then as linguists we think about how white, gay men started interacting with that culture. There is an intersectional dynamic where language starts transferring across different communities, and then it gets to the point where everybody starts using it, and it loses its Black and queer association. When I was in my early twenties, ‘slay’ was still associated with queerness, but now I don’t think many have that association. It’s just Gen-Z.”
Will cultural language lose its meaning in the future?
“I think we need to be aware of the possibility. In my view, if there is a queer language or queer style, and then straight people start using it, I think the queer community will just develop a new way of interacting. Style is distinctiveness: sounding different or interacting differently is being distinct. In terms of language specifically, being distinct is a central part of identity. Look across the world, and you’ll find variations in how we interact, how we look, how we dress, our music, and so much more. And in contemporary society, we are very aware of how meaningful these differences are. I think people reclaim their culture through language, they put emphasis on its distinctiveness, find joy in it. I think people take pride in that difference.”
The Glasgow Guardian would like to thank Dr Christian Ilbury. This interview has been edited for concision.
