ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights Beyoncé’s use of African American Women’s Language (AAWL) as a rhetorical methodology and praxis. I reflect, here, on Beyoncé’s linguistic evolution seen within her musical continuum and performance. In other words, the rate at which Beyoncé explicitly includes linguistic markers like codeswitching, signifying, and nonverbal sonic rhetorics—specifically “hush harbors” and laughter—becomes more and more apparent as her identity and transition into an icon becomes more solidified as part of a global pop culture context. In this manner, her use of linguistics, African American Women’s Language in particular, denotes her levels of un/comfortability regarding her identity as a Black woman within the context of America. Here, I specifically investigate her two visual albums, Beyoncé and Lemonade, to de/construct Black womanhood and put into conversations the legacy of Southern linguistic selfhood for Black women from which she builds. As we now see her evolution from a young Black woman superstar from Houston, Texas into the global figure she is today, the implementation of the Black woman’s Southern sociolinguistic features become more central to her understanding and her connection with other Black women. It is in this reading that I see Beyoncé’s lyrics as giving insight into Black women’s rhetoric, using language and discourse (like narrative strategies) as important methods of communication. Thus, I argue Beyoncé’s methodologies and narrative constructions through sound and language demonstrate her coming to consciousness and embracement of the complexities of Black womanhood. This chapter looks to explicate such sociolinguistic and rhetorical models addressed by Sonja Lanehart and Pamela Hobbs which ultimately complicate readings of Beyoncé from a perspective of language performativity.
