Pathos Positioned Research Paper: Language Identified with Race and Minority
“I Don’t Speak White”
Written by Kendra Alexander

Your language is your identity; the way you speak depends on your environment and the people surrounding you. Race and ethnicity are not huge factors in the way one expresses themselves. While some associate certain slang verbiage with the African American race, each ethnicity and race have their own “slang” or abbreviations they use. The way we communicate within our social groups connects us to one another. Edward Sapir, in Language: an Introduction to the Study of Speech, stated “Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations.”
Every culture creates their own language, they find a way to clarify themselves amongst each group, whom is to say one language is better than the other. Negative connotations can be placed on the way one speaks due to their background, or ethnicity. If a minority person speaks “well”, along with these negative race connotations, the person is then seen as acting as though they are the “superior” race. Language can connect us, but it can also segregate our defined cultures. Language and behavior tend to be associated with race, class, and popularity. The connotations of language and race create the “acting white” phenomenon showing that basic stereotypes still exist unrealized or unnoticed, and not only affect social aspects of a person’s life but their overall health.

What is Considered “Acting White”?
“Acting White” is defined by situations where some minority adolescents ridicule their minority peers for engaging in behaviors perceived to be characteristic of whites. Why are their behaviors associated by one’s race? For example, when psychologist Angela Neal-Barnett in 1999 asked some focus-group students to identify