Alisha Starbird
English 110- Section U
Professor Owens
                 
                                                                   A Time and Place
                                                             
   Black talk is a form of the English language with thrown in energetic phrases with boundless variety and somewhat disorder. It is fun variation of the language, sparking with wordplays and code games. With that being considered, black talk is used heavily in commercials and ads, capturing the attention of both the young and the old.
   It all started with hip-hop. In 1989 MTV started airing black rappers, aspiring young viewers to be cool like the rappers and promoting hip-hop-ish vernacular in the market. In the marketing world, black vernacular became extremely valuable and the most efficient way to advertise. To the young viewers, the hip back man represented the next level of cool, a level that they wanted to achieve as well. Large companies such as Sprite began to feed into the new hip-hop culture and were able to advertise their product in a way that mostly white kids felt that Sprite understood that they were tired of other commercials telling them what was cool.
   Another marketing achievement began when companies started abusing the alphabet. It was a quick way to make young people believe that they are cool and hip. Advertisers would do things like add a "Z" to the end of a word or replace a single "X" rather than spelling it out as "ex." Using one letter in marketing was a way to make a company seem fun, diverse, and hip-hop-ish.
   Black talk phrases were introduced in the advertising and marketing world as well. Phrases like "whaaazzzaahhh?!" and "cool" allowed individuals such as sports-enthusiasts to express their manliness and make them seem more culturally diverse. Black talk, in advertising cases, is more than acceptable, it is encouraged. Using black talk expressions captures attention and screams "cool" or "hip." It relates to todays young culture and makes them feel understood.
   Unlike in commercials and advertisements, Black English is not deemed correct in certain environments such as education institutions. A part of being educated is understanding and being able to speak English correctly; standardized English, that is. Standardized, or proper English has specific rules, grammar, and spellings- most of which originated from political and military powers. The more affluent individuals were able to assert authority culturally by deciding what the standard language was, thus changing the culture of others. If one does not adapt and display the knowledge of proper English then they are usually looked down upon as ignorant. This makes little sense to me, understanding that 1% of the population controls 99% of the money. With this being said, most of the population is poor or in the working class, where a very small number of them are affluent. Why does the smallest population get to decide what is standard and what is viewed as ignorant? Amiri Baraka is able to answer my questions by writing that in order to change the standard, one must become and/or acquire the standard.