IAR-Taking Black Technology Use Seriously...

What is invention?
-research AAVE
-cite and research scholarship from sociolinguists and scholars ( Smitherman, Holmes, Powell, Rickford, Rose, etc)
-research the "underground" in African American Culture
-research how AAVE is used on the Internet

What is being invented?
-cyberspace dismisses race and culture as irrelevant
-websites serve as cultural underground for African Americans
-African Americans need to be better represented online
-there exists certain features of AAVE online

What is being arranged?
-history of AAVE to the "underground"
-"underground" to the digital divide
-digital divide to problems of access and use
-problems to online feedback
-online feedback to African American discursive feature online
-features online to rhetoric

What is arrangement?
-discussion to discussion
-example to example
-example to application

What is being revised?
-technology needs to allow all people equal representation online
-African Americans should have the right to their own language
-the digital divide still exists
-the "underground" still exists

What is revision?
-examples of AAVE on websites (Black Planet)
-cites well-known sociolinguists
-resources to support arguments

DW2b

Race is a topic of wide debate around the globe. It can be viewed and discussed in many different venues, one of which is the Internet. The Internet provides a place where people can learn new ideas and communicate with one another. However, recently many debate that it may be more difficult for some to do so than others. One author in particular, Adam Banks makes know his opinion regarding the dismissal of "race and culture as irrelevant online". In his publication, Taking Back Technology Use Seriously: African American Discursive Traditions in the Digital Underground, Banks states:

Because these spaces (Internet sites) exist outside of the official gaze of
schools, workplaces, and governments, those who become part of them truly do
have the right to their own language. The presence of such spaces
online would mean three things: first, it would be a repudiation of much
early cyberspace theory that insisted race is and should be irrelevant
online, that it would be made irrelevant by the fluidity inherent in
online subjectivities. Second, it would confirm the importance of
discursive and rhetorical features that Smitherman links to African oral
traditions for the written discourse of African Americans...Third, it would
show Black people taking ownership of digital spaces and technologies and
point to the importance of taking Black users into account in technology user
studies.

Banks stresses the importance of incorporating all races and languages, most specifically AAVE, into the Internet. It is importance to include variety on the internet becuase it allows people to freely express themselves how they see fit. Just as it was promised that the Internet would be racially unbiased, so it should be. This idea can be directly exhibited through an exerpt from the pop culture website, www.blakarazzi.com:

So I got a text message from my friend this morning at 5:00 am. She is married to a cop she said her husband got a domestic violence call Chris brown beating up on Rhianna I text her back yeah right. She said Rhianna said it was not the first time….I don’t buy it…who knows..Cops are standing outside of the Staples center waiting to arrest Brown in case he arrives, but both Brown and Rihanna cancelled their appearances at the GRAMMY's.Shitz about to go DOWN!!!

The exerpt above shows style shifting and specfic phonological features of AAVE present on the website. The passage above supports Bank's idea that language is important of the internet. Banks believed that it is important for people to "have the right to their own language" and in turn use it.

DW2a

The website I analyzed was http://www.blakarazzi.com/. The site included news about politics, sports, music, television, and many other topics. One article, entitled Chris and Rhianna: So Happy Together?, discussed the rumor that Chris Brown "wooped up on Rhianna".

"So I got a text message from my friend this morning at 5:00 am. She is married to a cop she said her husband got a domestic violence call Chris brown beating up on Rhianna I text her back yeah right. She said Rhianna said it was not the first time….I don’t buy it…who knows..
Cops are standing outside of the Staples center waiting to arrest Brown in case he arrives, but both Brown and Rihanna cancelled their appearances at the GRAMMY's.
Shitz about to go DOWN!!!"

The article, written by Kat Nelson, gives two examples of AAVE. The first example in the article is the presence of code switching or style switching. Nelson begins the article with an actual conversation then she states what actually happened. Nelson also uses slang in the article when she says, "shitz about to go down".