The Use of African American English in Swiss Youth Language

Gwynne Mapes and Sarah Jossi, University of Bern

Scholars in recent years have been reflecting on the ways communication transcends individual languages and encompasses a complex mixing/mashing of semiotic codes and resources; these “transglossic” practices are hybrid and dynamic, and are connected to the fashioning of various “glocal” identities (e.g. Robertson 1995; Alim et al. 2009; Dovchin et al. 2018). The intersection of hip hop culture and youth/digital discourse represents a particularly ripe site for analysis of these processes (e.g. Cutler and Røyneland 2018). As a case in point, in this presentation we focus on the use of the African American English (AAE) lexeme w(h)ack in digital communication between Swiss university students. Our dataset, which comprises 192 WhatsApp messages, demonstrates the various ways participants engage in creative language crossing and language play. Indeed, we find that as these youth incorporate w(h)ack into their Swiss German digital discourse, they effectively perform nonchalance and “coolness” (cf. Kiesling 2004) – as such, this AAE lexeme is a resource for constructing desirable ingroup identities rooted in multilinguistic skill and sociocultural knowledge. In examining how a traditionally marginalized variety of English (e.g. Alim and Smitherman 2012) can be status-producing for Swiss youth, this presentation ultimately comments on the sociopolitical dimensions of transglossic activity and the ideological complexity of language mixing in more privileged contexts.

The full presentation can be accessed here.