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Signifyin'
Signifyin' (sometimes written "signifyin(g)") (vernacular), is a wordplay. It is a practice in African-American culture involving a verbal strategy of indirection that exploits the gap between the denotative and figurative meanings of words. A simple example would be insulting someone to show affection. Other names for signifyin' include: "Dropping lugs, joaning, sounding, capping, snapping, dissing, busting, bagging, janking, ranking, toasting, woofing, roasting, putting on, or cracking." Signifyin' directs attention to the connotative, context-bound significance of words, which is accessible only to those who share the cultural values of a given speech community. The expression comes from stories about the signifying monkey, a trickster figure said to have originated during slavery in the United States. The American literary critic Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote in ''The Signifying Monkey'' (1988) that signifyin' is "a trope, in which are subsumed several other rhetorical tropes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Signifying Monkey
The signifying monkey is a character of African-American folklore that derives from the trickster figure of Yoruba mythology, Esu Elegbara. This character was transported with Africans to the Americas under the names of Exu, Echu-Elegua, Papa Legba, and Papa Le Bas. Esu and his variants all serve as messengers who mediated between the gods and men by means of tricks. The signifying monkey is "distinctly Afro-American" but is thought to derive from Yoruban mythology, which depicts Echu-Elegua with a monkey at his side. Numerous songs and narratives concern the signifying monkey and his interactions with his friends, the lion and the elephant. In general, the stories depict the signifying monkey insulting the lion, but claiming that he is only repeating the elephant's words. The lion then confronts the elephant, who in turn physically assaults the lion. The lion later realizes that the monkey has been signifyin' and has duped the lion, and as a result the lion angrily returns t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African-American Culture
African-American culture refers to the contributions of African Americans to the culture of the United States, either as part of or distinct from mainstream American culture. The culture is both distinct and enormously influential on American and global worldwide culture as a whole. African-American culture is a blend between the native African cultures of West Africa and Central Africa and the European culture that has influenced and modified its development in the American South. Understanding its identity within the culture of the United States, that is, in the anthropological sense, conscious of its origins as largely a blend of West and Central African cultures. Although slavery greatly restricted the ability for Africans to practice their original cultural traditions, many practices, values and beliefs survived, and over time they have modified and/or blended with European cultures and other cultures such as that of Native Americans. African-American identity was es ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Louis Gates Jr
Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker, who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is a Trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. He rediscovered the earliest African-American novels, long forgotten, and has published extensively on appreciating African-American literature as part of the Western canon. In addition to producing and hosting previous series on the history and genealogy of prominent American figures, since 2012, Gates has been host of the television series '' Finding Your Roots'' on PBS. It combines the work of expert researchers in genealogy, history, and genetics historic research to tell guests about their ancestors' lives and histories. Early life and education Gates was born in Keyser, West Virginia, to Henry Louis Gates Sr. (c. 1913–20 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Signifying Monkey
''The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism'' is a work of literary criticism and theory by the American scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. first published in 1988. The book traces the folkloric origins of the African-American cultural practice of "signifying" and uses the concept of signifyin(g) to analyze the interplay between texts of prominent African-American writers, specifically Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston and Ishmael Reed. Gates' title alludes to the song "Signifyin' Monkey" by Oscar Brown, recorded in 1960. Literary signifying Signifyin(g) is closely related to double-talk and trickery of the type used by the Monkey of these narratives, but, as Gates himself admits, "It is difficult to arrive at a consensus of definitions of signifyin(g)." Bernard W. Bell defines it as an "elaborate, indirect form of goading or insult generally making use of profanity". Roger D. Abrahams writes that to signify is "to imply, goad, beg, b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epideixis
The epideictic oratory, also called ceremonial oratory, or praise-and-blame rhetoric, is one of the three branches, or "species" (eidē), of rhetoric as outlined in Aristotle's '' Rhetoric'', to be used to praise or blame during ceremonies. Origin and pronunciation The term's root has to do with display or show (''deixis''). It is a literary or rhetorical term from the Greek ἐπιδεικτικός "for show". It is generally pronounced orAnother English form, now less common, is ''epidictic'' . Characteristics This is rhetoric of ceremony, commemoration, declamation, demonstration, on the one hand, and of play, entertainment and display, including self-display. It is also the rhetoric used at festivals, the Olympic Games, Olympic games, state visits and other formal events like the opening and closing ceremonies, and celebrations of anniversaries of important events, including illustrious victories, births, deaths, and weddings. Its major subject is praise and blame, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sampling (music)
In sound and music, sampling is the reuse of a portion (or sample) of a sound recording in another recording. Samples may comprise elements such as rhythm, melody, speech, sounds or entire bars of music, and may be layered, equalized, sped up or slowed down, repitched, looped, or otherwise manipulated. They are usually integrated using hardware ( samplers) or software such as digital audio workstations. A process similar to sampling originated in the 1940s with '' musique concrète'', experimental music created by splicing and looping tape. The mid-20th century saw the introduction of keyboard instruments that played sounds recorded on tape, such as the Mellotron. The term ''sampling'' was coined in the late 1970s by the creators of the Fairlight CMI, a synthesizer with the ability to record and play back short sounds. As technology improved, cheaper standalone samplers with more memory emerged, such as the E-mu Emulator, Akai S950 and Akai MPC. Sampling is a foundation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African-American Music
African-American music is an umbrella term covering a diverse range of music and musical genres largely developed by African Americans and their culture. Their origins are in musical forms that first came to be due to the condition of slavery that characterized the lives of African Americans prior to the American Civil War. Slavery and other impositions such as the Jim Crow laws shaped the world view of African Americans. Some of the globally most popular music types today, such as rock and roll, funk, jazz, rap, blues, hip-hop, and rhythm and blues were developed from the worldview of the African Americans who created and influenced these genres. It has been said that "every genre that is born from America has black roots." White slave owners sought to completely subjugate their slaves physically, mentally, and spiritually through brutal and demeaning acts. African Americans used music to counter this dehumanization. White Americans considered African Americans separate an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smoke Some Kill
''Smoke Some Kill'' is the third album by rapper Schoolly D. The album was released in 1988 for Jive Records and was produced by Schoolly D. Release Though the album was not as successful as ''Saturday Night! – The Album'', it did manage to make it to #180 on the ''Billboard'' 200 and #50 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop album charts. "Signifying Rapper" The song "Signifying Rapper" was based upon the " signifying monkey" character of African-American folklore. A version of this story was performed by Rudy Ray Moore. Schoolly D's adaptation of the story is recited over the rhythm guitar figure from Led Zeppelin's " Kashmir". The song was featured in the film ''Bad Lieutenant,'' and inspired the title of (and is discussed in) the book '' Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present.'' "Signifying Rapper" was the target of several lawsuits following its use in the 1992 film ''Bad Lieutenant'', in multiple scenes. In 1994, Live Home Video and distributor Aries Film Releasing w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chiasmus
In rhetoric, chiasmus ( ) or, less commonly, chiasm (Latin term from Greek , "crossing", from the Greek , , "to shape like the letter Χ"), is a "reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases or clauses – but no repetition of words". A similar device, antimetabole, also involves a reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases or clauses in an A-B-B-A configuration, but unlike chiasmus, presents a repetition of words. Examples Chiasmus balances words or phrases with similar, though not identical, meanings: "Dotes" and "strongly loves" share the same meaning and bracket, as do "doubts" and "suspects". Additional examples of chiasmus: For comparison, the following is considered antimetabole, in which the reversal in structure involves the same words: Both chiasmus and antimetabole can be used to reinforce antithesis. In chiasmus, the clauses display inverted parallelism. Chiasmus was particularly popular in the literature of the ancient worl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ferdinand De Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure (; ; 26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the founders of 20th-century linguistics and one of two major founders (together with Charles Sanders Peirce) of semiotics, or ''semiology'', as Saussure called it. One of his translators, Roy Harris, summarized Saussure's contribution to linguistics and the study of "the whole range of human sciences. It is particularly marked in linguistics, philosophy, psychoanalysis, psychology, sociology and anthropology." Although they have undergone extension and critique over time, the dimensions of organization introduced by Saussure continue to inform contemporary approaches to the phenomenon of language. As Leonard Bloomfield stated after reviewing the ''Cours'': "he has given us the theoretical basis for a science of human ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
