Articulate while Black : Barack Obama, language, and race in the U.S.

Resource Information

The work Articulate while Black : Barack Obama, language, and race in the U.S. represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in The Ferguson Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Articulate while Black : Barack Obama, language, and race in the U.S.

Title remainder

Barack Obama, language, and race in the U.S.

Statement of responsibility

H. Samy Alim & Geneva Smitherman ; foreword by Michael Eric Dyson

Creator

• trueAlim, H. Samy

Contributor

• Smitherman, Geneva, 1940-

Subject

• African Americans -- Languages
• Black English
• Black English -- United States
• English language -- Social aspects
• trueEnglish language -- Social aspects -- United States
• Ethnizität
• Language and education
• trueLanguage and education -- United States
• Language and languages
• Obama, Barack
• Obama, Barack -- Language
• Obama, Barack -- Oratory
• Obama, Barack, 1961-
• Oratory
• Race awareness
• trueRace awareness -- United States
• Rassendiskriminierung
• Rhetorik
• Schwarze
• Sociolinguistics
• Sociolinguistics -- United States
• Soziolinguistik
• Sprache
• USA
• United States
• African Americans -- Languages

Language

eng

Summary

"Barack Obama is widely considered one of the most powerful and charismatic speakers of our age. Without missing a beat, he often moves between Washington insider talk and culturally Black ways of speaking--as shown in a famous YouTube clip, where Obama declined the change offered to him by a Black cashier in a Washington, D.C. restaurant with the phrase, "Nah, we straight." In Articulate While Black, two renowned scholars of Black Language address language and racial politics in the U.S. through an insightful examination of President Barack Obama's language use--and America's response to it. In this eloquently written and powerfully argued book, H. Samy Alim and Geneva Smitherman provide new insights about President Obama and the relationship between language and race in contemporary society. Throughout, they analyze several racially loaded, cultural-linguistic controversies involving the President--from his use of Black Language and his "articulateness" to his "Race Speech," the so-called "fist-bump," and his relationship to Hip Hop Culture. Using their analysis of Barack Obama as a point of departure, Alim and Smitherman reveal how major debates about language, race, and educational inequality erupt into moments of racial crisis in America. In challenging American ideas about language, race, education, and power, they help take the national dialogue on race to the next level. In much the same way that Cornel West revealed nearly two decades ago that "race matters," Alim and Smitherman in this groundbreaking book show how deeply "language matters" to the national conversation on race--and in our daily lives."--Publisher's website

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

306.440973

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

PE3102.N42

LC item number

A43 2012

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography