Blog Post 5: Black Talk and Pop Culture by Mary Dalla Costa and Joey G.

Choose ONE of the following questions to respond to. Your response should be a minimum of 100 words and no longer than 250 words. Be sure and comment on at least two of your peers' posts.


1. Savran discusses the role hip-hop artists play in modern marketing. Hip-hop generously sprinkles brand names in their songs, a trend that seems to be continuing. Look at this 1990s hip-hop video advertising cherry coke.



Find a current commerical in which a hip-hop artist advertises a product. Discuss the video as it relates to the role of marketing and advertising in the artist’s career. Make sure you provide examples to argue the thesis that hip-hop artists have (or have not) blurred the line between music and merchandise.

Is hip-hop more open to identifying itself with brands? Is hip-hop more entrepreneurial than rock or pop? “…has black talk been used openly, knowingly, and not mockingly to sell products” (Savan 195)?

2. Watch this video about the origins of African-American English. Savran says, "White people (and not just the young) draw from a black lexicon every day,
sometimes unaware of the words' origins, sometimes using them because of their
origins" (194).

Summarize the information in the video and respond to the question, "How has black vernacular shaped the slang you use in your conversations with your peers?"

Savran's essay focuses on black talk, but there are many other subgroups of American English. Regional dialects have their own special words and phrases. What special words or phrases from your regional dialect do you use in your conversations with your friends and family members?