ABSTRACT
Sociolinguistics has a long history of trying to establish linguistic group norms and identify socially stratified speech patterns. More recently, the focus has shifted to the idea that speakers, although always somewhat constrained by the sociocultural field, exert some degree of agency on the way they express themselves. This chapter explores language choice among white ethnic immigrants who live in New York City and affiliate with Hip Hop culture. It examines what appear to be conscious choices by these young people to style their speech in the direction of what they perceive as African American English (AAE) and Hip Hop Nation Language (HHNL) and, in one case, New York Latino English (NYLE). 1 As such, it aligns with a Gilesian conception of linguistic accommodation that involves social identification and preferences for self-identification (Giles, Coupland, and Coupland 1991). The fact that people choose to mark themselves linguistically and/or by other means as members of groups other than their own points to the role of individual agency in resisting the social pressures to conform to group norms. These various identity orientations were evident in the speech patterns exhibited by each individual in terms of morphosyntax and phonology, as well as in the ways they were identified on the basis of their speech in a blind perceptions survey of students at three East Coast American universities.
