There's been an ongoing conversation about the usage of black slang(like "fam" and "woke") by non-black people, and I was wondering what is your opinion on it? Is it okay to use slang/vernacular from a culture that isn't yours? I'd never thought about where I get the words I use before, but now I wonder whether the slang I've subconsciously learned on Internet is cultural appropriation.
I’m sure I don’t have the answer on this, and I’d love to hear from @allthingslinguistic and @superlinguo, as they’ll have a better idea how academic linguistics weighs in on this.
One thing to keep in mind throughout the following discussion: No one owns a language.
Language is a tough nut to crack because it simply is. The natural languages on Earth weren’t created by any one person—or any group of people—and they simply evolved into different forms, with no cutoff between one language being one thing (e.g. Old English) and then something else (e.g. Modern English). If you want a very cut and dried example of appropriation and its effects, there’s a wonderful (and short) example in the movie Bring It On (the cheerleading one starring Kirsten Dunst).
For those who haven’t seen it, Kirsten Dunst plays a white cheerleader at a high school in San Diego. Eliza Dushku plays a new recruit who transfers from a school in LA. On viewing their practice Dushku calls out Kirsten, saying that all of their routines have been stolen from a black cheerleading squad at a high school she’s familiar with in Compton. Kirsten is unaware of this—as is everyone on the team—because it’s their coach that stole the routines and presented them as something new and original. Once they realize this—and meet the squad they’ve unwittingly disenfranchised—they determine to create new original routines.
This is a handy example because it’s nice and neat: The white group stole something from the black group that the white group would not have come up with on their own. Furthermore, the theft is demonstrably detrimental, as the white group is at a school famous for its cheerleading which has a lot more visibility on the national stage, so they’re a shoe-in for competitions; the black group is not. Also it’s very clear that the white group itself isn’t at fault: there was a single person at fault (the coach), and the group was unaware. Making things even better, once the group is made aware, they make the conscious decision to abandon the stolen routines, and even manage, via their status, to raise the visibility of the disenfranchised group, allowing them to compete on the national stage (and, as I recall, they win, too—the group from Compton).
Now let’s move back to language. Part of what makes language muddy and situations like the one in Bring It On simple is everything can be identified in the latter: The group from Compton created the routines; one single person was responsible for stealing the routines; it is easily demonstrable that the theft benefits the privileged group and disenfranchises the original creators. With language, it’s rarely ever clear who invented what. It’s also rarely ever clear who was responsible for a linguistic element moving from the in group to the out group. It’s also near impossible to say what the damage is when some word or phrase moves from one group to another. Only one thing is clear: Everyone is Kirsten Dunst in this scenario. Language comes and you use it. You don’t know where it came from or why: It’s just there.
Take the examples you listed above—“fam” and “woke”, or another one of my favorites, “bae”. No one can say where precisely they came from, but I can tell you this: If you know those words it is already too late. They’re out. They’ve hopped the fence. No one can control them anymore. This article cites a website that tracks the use of words in rap songs, and it claims that “bae” has been showing up in rap songs since 2005.
Let me say that again: In rap songs. Published rap songs that anyone can listen to. Unless the first rapper to use it in a song actually invented it, it seems likely that the word was already in use and had spread quite a bit. If it started out as a regionalism, it was now a colloquialism. When it gets to a popular medium like music, though, it’s likely that someone will hear it and not know that it started out as a regionalism. If you hear a word you don’t know all you know is that you don’t know it. Once you know it, though, you can use it. And unless someone specifically tells you not, you will.
Now, when can someone tell you not to use a word? That’s an interesting question. I always rely on the general tenet that one shouldn’t make fun of or disparage others. If it can be demonstrated that using a word does precisely that, intentionally or unintentionally, that’s reason enough to tell someone not to use a word (ahem, Washington football team). Furthermore, these things can be successful. Stewardess is one example (a gendered and, given the associations, a somewhat disparaging word). When I was growing up, everyone used it. Now no one does: Everyone uses flight attendant. I don’t know how it happened, but it did, and it was damn effective. Same thing happened with gyp (meaning to cheat). I used this all the time as a kid, because I learned it and used it. Everyone did. I had absolutely no idea that “gyp” was short for “gypsy”, and that the etymology was “to behave like a gypsy towards someone”. If you’d asked me then, I probably would’ve thought you spelled it jip, because institutional racism against the Roma people is so much more prevalent in Europe than it is in the United States. When someone finally told me that that’s where that word came from, I was shocked, because the notion is so remote to most Americans. But I did immediately stop using it. And I’ve noticed it’s simply not common anymore, which is a good thing. I’m in California, so I can’t speak for the rest of the US, but I don’t see it a lot online, either.
These movements can also be overt, and can often be effective. When I was in high school, “gay” as an insult was extremely common. There were groups that actively campaigned against that, though (as a basketball fan, I loved that this commercial was played regularly during games), and, YouTube comments aside, it’s been pretty effective. “Gay” as an insult is nowhere near as common as it was. In short, if it’s a societal push, you can actually banish words from the lexicon.
Back to the question that opened the previous paragraph, should we not be using “bae”? Tough to say if it’s hard to say who “we” is. That is, using “gay” as an insult is clearly disparaging to homosexuals. Using “bae” for one’s significant other, though, doesn’t really disparage anybody. That is, unless one is using the word to mock a hypothetical black user of the word, in which case the message shouldn’t be don’t use “bae”, but rather, uh, don’t mock anyone for the way they speak. When it comes to teasing people for comedy, they’d better be on even footing with you (so it’s just as likely that they could be teasing you), and you shouldn’t ever mock something someone has absolutely no control over, such as the circumstances of their birth, the color of their skin, or the way they speak their own language.
This should, in my opinion, take precedence over trying to puzzle out who came up with which word, and whether or not one is sufficiently a part of a given group to use it. Especially in casual usage, it’s not clear what advantages a non-black English speaker is gaining by using a word like “bae” that a black English speaker is missing out on. Being a rapper paid to use language is one thing; being a person with a Tumblr is another.
Also it’s important to separate vocabulary from grammar. AAE isn’t just a set of vocabulary: It’s a distinct and consistent way of speaking the English language. One can use a noun or two without coming anywhere close to trying to use AAE.
Also when it comes to vocabulary it’s important to have a bit of perspective. Words like “fam” and “woke” and “bae” are quite new in the general public consciousness. They may be here to stay; they may not. Other words from AAE and elsewhere have come and gone, and others have come and stayed, but no one is complaining about those that have stayed. For example, both “old school” and “back in the day” are from black English—and fairly recently, too—but they are absolutely a part of English now. You can’t even say “back in the old days” or “way back when” anymore without it sounding folksy. I knew “back in the day” had moved into common parlance when I met my wife @thisallegra who used it all the time, but who apparently had no idea it came from black English (I, of course, remembered it from the song, which is the first place I heard it, since I listened almost exclusively to rap between 1991 and 1994). If she was just using it without any idea that it should be tagged as a regionalism, it was already on its way to becoming standard English.
I do have a theory as to why it stuck around, though, and this’ll take me to “bae”. “Back in the old days” has always suggested old-timeyness. You could say it, and it conveyed the same meaning, but it carried a sense of…not disparagement, but non-seriousness with it. That is, if you say “back in the old days”, you can expect whoever you’re talking to to take what you’re saying with a grain of salt. There’s actually no such judgment with “back in the day”. If anything, it suggests reverence. I don’t recall any such expression that existed before that (or nothing as compact), meaning that the expression filled a gap: It was useful. That’s why it made the jump.
And that brings us to bae. The most common way to refer to one’s significant other is “boyfriend” or “girlfriend”. These are gendered terms. Of late, we’ve been pushing to find non-gendered terms for roles and words that, previously, have been gendered. What doe sone do for “boyfriend” or “girlfriend”? What’s English got? Significant other? Too clunky. Boyfriend or girlfriend? I’ve seen it (e.g. “Do you have a boyfriend or girlfriend?”), but it’s both clunky and exclusive (it refers to someone that is either male or female and that’s it). S.O.? I’ve seen it, but it’s not common. Baby? Still reads as female, most of the time (one of the many words that isn’t gendered but still has de facto gender coding). So what else is there? Using someone like honey? Too specific.
Think about it. This was a pretty serious gap in English. We just didn’t have a good word to refer to a significant other without referring to their gender. Pretty lame. English speakers the world over have had ample opportunity to come up with something to fill this gap. No one did. Until bae.
Is it any wonder that people everywhere are using “bae” now? It seriously codes as completely gender-irrelevant. It’s pretty useful that way (e.g. I’ve seen that meme where it says “when you’re waiting for bae to text you back”, and it can pair with any image, regardless of gender. It’s great!). And my read on it (feel free to comment) is that there is absolutely no default gender for “bae”. It’s not a term that mainly refers to men that can be used for women, or vice-versa. You can use it to refer to any person who identifies as any gender. Far from worrying about whether or not we should use it on account of cultural appropriation, we should find the person(s) who invented it and give them a damn medal. Since it’s language, though, we’ll likely never know.
So, long answer to a short question, this is about where I land on the issue. Ask yourself: Am I actively disparaging or mocking someone by using a particular word? If not, does the word ultimately derive from a slur or insult? If not, am I capitalizing on someone else’s work and benefitting from it? If not, am I misrepresenting myself and the way I ordinarily speak? If the answer to all those questions is “no”, you should be good. That’s my 2¢. I look forward to hearing what others in or adjacent to linguistics have to say.
