“Ali: What is the vibe with drugs in Ireland? It might be stereotyping or whatever man
but I is heard that the Irish is always up for the crack.
Sue: No, no. Crack in Ireland means having a good time .
Ali: A’ight, for real but crack is a bad drug there is a high but also a low.”
(you can check out the video by clicking here)
When I decided to use an Ali G quote as an epigraph to my ‘Introduction to sociolinguistics’ (this article is a contribution to a new ENS-based website called ‘La clé des langues‘ (‘The gate to languages’), which aims at providing high school teachers with new and innovative material – ), I didn’t quite know what I was getting myself into.
I’d refused to take part in the whole Borat-buzz, after a heated discussion between a genuine Kazakhstan lover and a Sacha Baron Cohen fan turned sour at a dinner party. But the whole Ali G persona was more appealing to me, mostly because the man went as far as asking Noam Chomsky to evaluate his own new language… You have to respect the endeavour…
Truth is, all I really wanted was a change from my usual Synge quotation (I worked on his representation of Irish English for my Master’s thesis), possibly something that would convince high-school students that sociolinguistics was worth enquiring into. Somehow putting Ali G right next to a Robert Burns poem sounded like an interesting choice.
But then in the course of writing the article, I was faced with two (related) problems…
1) How may I talk about social stratification without lingering on the usual Labov example for too long (as groundbreaking as his work actually is, sometimes change can be good)?
2) How can I honestly quote a Scottish poet and an English comedian without analysing their words? And where on earth did Ali G’s English come from?
It was quite straightforward – answering my second question would probably provide me with a good solution to my first problem… As healthy curiosity is always rewarded one way or another, a quick internet search led me to the right person. Mark Sebba, from the university of Lancaster, has done some amazing work with pidgins and British creoles, and recently (in 2003) published an article entitled: “Will the real impersonator please stand up? Language and identity in the Ali G websites” (In Christian Mair, ed., Interactional sociolinguistics and cultural studies. Thematic issue of Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 28(2): 279-304. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag). He provides a very interesting analysis of the comedian’s language, but delves deeper into the question of “acts of identity” as he also dissects the language of his website, aka the language of his fan-base.
Indeed, there are indeed many different levels of interpretation of what may sound like ‘mock-Ebonics’ to the untrained ear (and to mine, I have to confess…).This peculiar brand of English finds its origins in Jamaïcan Creole. When Black English identities (and second generations of immigrants realised they were perceived as West Indian and working class in Britain) were born, there emerged what is now called London Jamaïcan English, which is “a blend of non-standard Southern British English with grammatical, phonological and lexical features from Jamaïcan Creole” (Sebba, 2003). Somehow, ethnicity had blended with class distinction into one variety of English (there I had a fun alternative to Labov!). But Ali G isn’t actually impersonating a true speaker of London Jamaïcan English, and this is where things get interesting. And somewhat tricky.
Ali G manages to represent (quite cleverly, we’ll have to admit) all the young Londoners who have adopted LJE without any ethnic reason – as one post on the Ali G website says, all the kids under 15 in London speak like him. Age now beats ethnicity and class distinction. Or is it that while the latters are agents of division, the former manages to bring speakers together despite other differences? Somehow it is this new act of identity that make Ali G’s origins so blurry – his speech is not identifying with an ethnical group, or a social class, but with a whole age group.
Last but not least, Sebba’s analysis shows how most users on the Ali G website write in Ali G speech – there is no written rule that asks them to do so. They just do: “me iz frum da yookay but me iz in da states an me wonna woch sum ali g. Me gotsa problum mefinks. Bring yoo hairy batty over to dis side ov de worter” (Sebba, 2003). Thanks to our new technologies, we have gone from ethnical group, to class distinction, to age group/generation, to internet community. All this as we were listening to a Cambridge grad impersonating a black hip-hop journalist/gang leader.
Finally I had answers to my questions, and a powerful example to show high-school students what was so great about sociolinguistics. Which is, as it appears, also you-tube-friendly. Who would have thought. Now all I have to do is finish the article – booyakasha to all of you!
Many thanks again to Mark Sebba, for his interesting work, and for kindly sending me a PDF version of his fascinating article.
