African American Communication

Examining the Complexities of Lived Experiences

Ronald L. Jackson II, Amber L. Johnson, Michael L. Hecht, Sidney A. Ribeau

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351103220
• Edizione: 3
• Argomento: Langues et linguistique
• Categoria: Études sur la communication

Now in its third edition, this text examines how African Americans personally and culturally define themselves and how that definition informs their communication habits, practices, and norms.

This edition includes new chapters that highlight discussions of gender and sexuality, intersectional differences, contemporary social movements, and digital and mediated communication.

The book is ideally suited for advanced students and scholars in intercultural communication, interpersonal communication, communication theory, African American/Black studies, gender studies, and family studies.

1 Introduction

What is African American Communication?¹ Perhaps the answer to this question is best illustrated by sociolinguist Richard Wright, who routinely asks his class the following rhetorical question: “If communication can be defined as the universe of forms, processes, and structures that govern how we relate to the world, then aren’t there forms, processes, and structures that are particular to African Americans?” Indeed, there is a universe that facilitates how African Americans relate to the world, and it is refereed by African American cultural personhood.

All it takes is one trip abroad to figure out that not all cultures communicate the same way. Despite having access to a specific language that is structured according to phonetics, grammar, and syntax, communities still vary in how they communicate their cultural particularity. African Americans are no different. The core symbols, cultural codes, language, and communication styles, and generally how African Americans do “culture” (assuming culture is a verb) is distinctive and worthy of study and analysis. This book, the first edition of which was published in 1993, is unique in that it is the only book to comprehensively present over 40 years of research on African American communication and language. This ambitious undertaking systematically examines the theories, literature, and nuances of African American communication research by looking at not only communication styles, but also relationship development, gender studies, digital communities and citizenship, and cutting edge paradigms used to research African American communication.

Any book concerning African American communication must begin first by examining the African American cultural values, norms, mores, and beliefs that inform communicative behaviors. Essentially, African American communication is grounded in African American cultural identities. “Identities” is pluralized to accent variance in African American experiences, while recognizing that there is a shared set of realities among African American interactants. Without that most important reference point, this book becomes diluted.

African American identities, like those of other marginalized groups, are not static. They are often negotiated while in interaction with others—other African Americans as well as other cultural inter-actants (Daniel & Smitherman, 1990; Harris, 2000; Hudson & Hines-Hudson, 1999; Pennington, 1993, 2000). Our goal in this book is to articulate how African Americans define themselves and their membership in their cultural group and how they perceive intracultural, intercultural, intraethnic, and interethnic communication. As you will notice throughout the book, we are careful to limit the use of the word ethnic as a way to describe African American identities and communicative behaviors, because the lexicographical, historical, and contemporary usage of the term often signifies and names negative difference from White people (Jackson & Garner, 1998) with few exceptions (Jeffres, 2000). In working to portray the voices of African Americans as we have heard them, experienced them in our research and our everyday lives, and read about them in the work of others, we must be sensitive not to “otherize” these voices. In other words, we have consciously chosen not to treat African American identities as aberrations of whiteness. In this move toward full valuation of African American identities, no claims are made to speak for individual members of the group or the group as a whole. Additionally, we pursue our goal by interpreting this rich cultural and cosmological system in a way that allows us to understand major patterns of thought and conduct as well as explicate the problematic elements of competent communication and cultural identity negotiation. We describe what is distinct about African American communication and then explain the emerging patterns of norms across situations. In doing so, we emphasize cultural identity and perceptions of communication, explaining which identities emerge, what they mean, and how they are enacted and negotiated.

Communication and culture are inseparable. Communication derives meaning from culture, and culture must be communicated to exist. Thus, the term cultural communication is a useful redundancy because all communication exists in a cultural context and all culture is communicated.

Culture and ethnicity play major roles in everyday life, especially in a culturally diverse nation such as the United States (Jackson, 1999a; Jeffres, 2000). Jeffres’ (2000) longitudinal study of a panel of at least 13 White ethnic groups reveals that from 1976 to 1992 participants in his survey strengthened their ethnic-group identification via exposure to ethnic mass media such as newspapers and television. He concluded, “social categories do predict ethnic ties and mainstream media use, but not ethnic media use. Ethnic ties in turn are strongly related to ethnic media use” (pp. 520–521). In other words, ethnic and cultural groups want to see themselves reflected in the media, which may not seem difficult to accomplish on the surface because so many diverse cultural groups cohabitate in the United States. Previous conversations in the 1990s sought to shift from diversity to multiculturalism, but now the foci are on equity, inclusion, and diversity. Without equity the other two issues are much less meaningful.

We define culture as code, conversation, and community (Philipsen, 1987), which categorically subsumes aspects of ethnicity mentioned later on. Code denotes a system of rules and meanings. Conversation describes culture as a verb and way of interacting while community denotes membership. These components are discussed in greater depth later in this chapter where they are applied to our approach to understanding African American communication and culture.

Our definition of culture also presumes a shared geographic land reference location. That is, the Irish can go back to Ireland, the Italians to Italy, the Nigerians to Nigeria, and so on. Thus, our concept of culture connotes the social or communicative system shared by a group with similar heritage. These groups are constituted by membership in a system with common patterns of interaction and perception and a historically transmitted system of symbols, meanings, and norms (Collier, 1992; Geertz, 1973, 1983; Schneider, 1976). Thus, cultures are characterized by a shared orientation to the past, present, and even future group identity (Anderson & Jones, 2016; Jackson, 1999a).

Culture can be said to be an individual, social, and societal construct. On the individual level, culture is a characteristic of a personal worldview that is at least partially shared in common with other group members. Here, membership is defined as a sense of belonging to a social group and adopting its perspective on the world. The focus is on how the individual relates to the group. On the social level, culture is enacted and maintained in conversation among group members (Giles & Johnson, 1987; Martin, Moore, Hecht, & Larkey 2001). Thus, culture is a patterned, social network with shared history, traditions, and more. Finally, on a societal level, culture is a structural variable that characterizes large groups of people as an entity and includes its practices, power dynamics, rituals, and institutions.

Ethnic groups are difficult to define because there are no essential characteristics that are common to all distinguished groups (De Vos, 1982). Jackson and Garner (1998) explained why defining ethnicity is such a complex task:

Most dictionaries depict ethnicity as a possible characterization of any group that is not White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. However, several publications contend that there is a White ethnic population consisting of Irish, Polish, Italian, German, and Mediterranean peoples. The etymology of the word ethnic traces to the Greek ethnikos meaning a foreign group or nationality within a society. Also, the Latin ethnicus, not only meant foreigner, but also heathen. Ethnic group references are most often tied to groups considered to be non-White, foreign, and heathen,

(p. 31)

Jackson and Garner recommended usage of Hraba’s definition of ethnicity as “self-conscious collectivities of people, who on the basis of a common origin or a separate subculture, maintain a distinction between themselves and outsiders” (p. 51). Many scholars and nonscholars use the term co-culture rather than subculture to define the set of citizen groups who cohabitate within cultures such as women, people of color, queer people, trans and non-binary people, etc. (Orbe, 1998). Regardless of the term, the co-culture that Hraba mentions is somewhat ambiguous, as it is often cited to mean religion, language, nationality, or culinary interests.

Taking these definitions into account, we define ethnicity as shared ancestral heritage. An ethnic group is a self-perceived community of people who hold a common set of traditions not shared by those with whom they are in contact (De Vos, 1982). Ethnic groups have origins that are external to or precede existing nation-states and are constituted through a shared sense of tradition, people-hood, heritage, orientation to the past, religion, language, ancestry, social-psychologies (e.g., values), economics, and aesthetics (Banks, 1987; Collier, 1989; De Vos, 1982; De Vos & Romanucci-Ross, 1982a, 1982b; Horowitz, 1975; Isajiw, 1974; Kim, 1986; Obidinsky, 1978).

Finally, ethnicity and culture may be differentiated from race, which is assumed to have a biological basis (Gould, 1981; Michaels, 1982). However, scholars contend that race is a social construction, not a biological one (Gould, 1981), and understood to be a culturally and historically specific way of thinking about, categorizing, and treating human beings (Caliendo & McIlwain, 2011), which results in and justifies racism. Thus, the three terms are not meant to be mutually exclusive. A group can have elements of all three, as the South African ruling class and government attempted to create by defining full membership in their society racially (Caucasian), ethnically (Africans) and culturally (apartheid). Ethnic communities maybe racial as well (e.g., American Indians), but they need not be so defined (e.g., Jews). One might consider culture to be a combination of the characteristics listed for both culture and ethnicity and limit ethnicity to cultural groups that share a common racial characteristic. However, we use the tripartite definitional system and study African Americans as culture that revolves, at least in part, around race.

Despite the importance of culture, ethnicity, and race there is still room for more research about the diversity within and between cultures and what makes intercultural contact effective or ineffective. Most studies of intercultural communication prior to 2000 were binary, invoking comparisons between European Americans and one other group with the European American group as the assumed norm or point of comparison (Nakayama & Penaloza, 1994). At the time even less was known about how members of nonmainstream or disempowered groups perceive these interactions. Despite the fact that most extant research across disciplines is Eurocentric, particularly Anglocentric, in theory, method, and focus (Asante, 1987; Jackson, 2000a; Olivas, 1989; Van Dijk, 1987), there has been a rise in critical theory research that has filled a tremendous void in this regard. There are also critical culture scholars like Mark Orbe, Brenda J. Allen, Carlos Morrison, Dreama Moon, Andy Spieldenner, Rona Halualani, Kent Ono, Eric Watts, Isabel Molina-Guzman, Radha Hegde, Mark Hopson, Myra Washington, Amber Johnson, Sheena Howard, Catherine Squires, Gina Castle Bell, and others who have published work between 2000 and 2019 that have propelled the literature forward toward more progressive thinking. Prior to them Eurocentric studies were derived from European American theories, centered in European American culture, and the results were assumed to be culture-general rather than culture-specific findings.

This book attempts to give voice to another view and experience of communication, that of African Americans. These voices expand the range of experiences and can inform multiple disciplines in order to diversify extant levels of theory and practice. Perhaps this alternative worldview will broaden us and facilitate new and richer theories and explanations. Pragmatically, to feel included in a body of knowledge, members of a group must have their voices and perspectives heard, and this extends to the humanistic and social science literature. As Jackson (2000a) noted, “The absence of any written mainstream valuation of African American theories and historical relevancies presents a significant commentary and dilemma within the communication discipline” (p. 29).

A study of African Americans brings into focus the cultural aspects of communication and provides a counterpoint to the notion that “American” means Eurocentrism. There are multiple ancestral legacies in North America including, but not limited to, Native Americans and African Americans. African Americans have fought for justice and equality as promised by our constitution and as heralded in our national anthems and “Pledge of Allegiance.” We need only be reminded of our kindergarten teachers asking us to stand with our right hands over our hearts while reciting, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.” The fight to achieve that dream, the promise and utopia of a single, undivided nation constitutes much of the struggle of African Americans in the United States.

Historically, politically, and socially, African Americans occupy a unique position within U.S. society. African American history includes cultural cornerstones from religion, slavery, and segregation, to the migration North, the civil rights, and the Black Feminist and Black Power movements. African American political pasts involve voter disenfranchisement, school segregation, school to prison pipeline, prison industrial complex, red lining, and separation from formal channels of power (Dangerfield, 2001; Lemann, 1991). African American economic life can be characterized as disadvantaged and inequitable compared to European Americans (Dewart, 1989; Mincy, 1989). African American culture is also socially distinctive, including linguistic carry-overs from continental Africa, as well as unique nonverbal and verbal styles and patterns of interaction (Hecht, Jackson, Lindsley, Strauss, & Johnson, 2001; Hecht, Ribeau, & Alberts, 1989; Jackson, 1999a; Kochman, 1981; Scott, 2000a; Scott 2017; Smitherman, 2000). Structural, cultural, ancestral, and social distinctions define the composite African American cultural experience and lead us to argue that African Americans constitute a cultural group. We use the term composite to signify our recognition and understanding that there is not a singular African American experience, but rather a variegated set of experiences that shape African American cultural identities and communicative behaviors. We have borrowed this usage from Asante and Abarry (1996), who employed the adjective composite before the word African to mean Black people throughout the diaspora.

The remainder of this chapter describes the context for the book. First, we describe the composite African American experience in the United States. This section is not intended as a complete or exhaustive description of the social, political, historical, cultural, and economic conditions, but only a cursory glance. Within this brief overview, we attempt to capture the essence of the composite African American experience by highlighting findings in each of these areas. Second, we attempt to articulate the basic assumptions that guide our research. These assumptions provide a starting point and help the reader understand the choices we have made. Finally, we provide an overview of the remaining chapters that describe African American cultural identity, identity negotiation and communication competencies, relationship networks (i.e., gendered, family, workplace, dating, and friendship), and digital and mediated communication.

SURVEYING THE ANCESTRAL HERITAGE OF AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURE

In this section, we provide an overview of the composite African American experience in the United States. African American communication must be placed within an African ancestral-cultural backdrop in order to understand its grounding. Because no communication system exists in isolation we point to the historical, political, economic, and social milieu in the United States as a way of describing the context for an indigenous African American communication system. First, we briefly describe the Herskovits-Frazier debate concerning the origins of African American culture. Next, we describe some of the main historical events that have shaped the culture, explaining the Afrocentric approach. Then, we examine the composite African American experience in contemporary U.S. culture. Finally, we examine social structures and institutions that influence African American life.

Origins of African American Culture

Perhaps one of the most persistent and important questions is, where did African American culture begin? Holloway (1990) described this as being the central question in the debate between Melville Herskovits (1941) and E. Franklin Frazier (1963). Holloway explained that Africanisms are the cultural continuities or carryovers from Africa that are preserved by African Americans in the United States. The debaters represented two very differ...