2026/03/03 by Christian Ilbury, Rianna Walcott · 1 voice
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #African american #Appropriation #Context (archaeology) #Digital Communication and Language #Indexicality #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Multilingual Education and Policy #Register (sociolinguistics) #Variety (cybernetics) #Vernacular
paper · doi:10.1111/josl.70024
openalex publication_date 2026/03/03 · openalex created_date 2026/03/09 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
ABSTRACT Sociolinguistic research has long documented the appropriation of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) across media including film, music and advertising. In this article, we add to this body of work by exploring the digital recontextualisation of a subset of AAVE features as ‘TikTok/internet language’. To do this, we analyse metalinguistic discourses of linguistic appropriation in a corpus of 178 TikTok videos. We identify two main competing discourses: On the one hand, a concern regarding the indexical erasure of AAVE as a variety of English spoken by Black Americans; and on the other, claims of a new register of ‘internet language’. Concluding, we argue that, in the participatory context of social media, the circulation of the label ‘TikTok language’ poses an issue for the raciolinguistic enregisterment as a ‘Black variety’ of English.