C Cutler
Biographic Data
| ID | 5195 |
|---|---|
| NAME | C Cutler |
| GIVEN NAMES | C |
| FAMILY NAME | Cutler |
| SIGNATURE | CUTLER C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lehman College |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2292-0505 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 152 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Introduction
Fuhgeddaboudit shugah! Social meanings of the New York City dialect in the semiotic landscape
This paper examines multilectal writing in New York City as part of the larger phenomenon of multilingual, multilectal and multiscriptal writing. It focuses on the written representation of two enregistered phonological features (i.e. non-rhoticity and the raised back vowel [ɔ]) as well as colloquial expressions that index the imagined speech style of many New Yorkers. It explores how these forms are disseminated across a range of public ‘languag…
The co-construction of whiteness in an MC battle
Within hip-hop, MC (Master of Cermonies) battles are one of the most visible and potentially humiliating venues for demonstrating one’s verbal skill. Competitors face each other in front of an audience. Each has a minute to “diss” his or her opponent against a backdrop of rhythms produced by a DJ. Each participant’s performance generally consists of “freestyle” or spontaneously generated rhymes designed to belittle some aspect of the opponent’s a…
Cross-Speaker Covariation across Six Vocalic Changes in New York City English
This article examines differences in the way that innovative variants for six vocalic changes in New York City English—fronting of too, raising of price and face, and lowering of bad, thought, and dress—co-occur across speakers and explores social correlates of these patterns of covariation. It reports on an analysis of a recently developed corpus of conversational speech from 140 speakers, which suggests that patterns of covariation across speak…
Aspects of change in New York City English short-a
This article focuses on change in the “short-a system” of New York City English (NYCE). Recent results suggest that a complex set of tensing rules traditionally described for NYCE are being replaced by several simpler systems. This article reports on a study of this change using a recently developed large audio-aligned parsed speech corpus (CoNYCE). This change is similar to the simplification reported for Philadelphia by Labov et al. (2016). Unl…
Metapragmatic comments and orthographic performances of a New York accent on YouTube
This paper adopts a metapragmatic approach (Urban, 2006) to analyze responses to YouTube videos on ‘how to talk like a New Yorker’ in a corpus of YouTube comments (N = 2,649). The analysis illustrates how linguistic features associated with this way of talking are experienced and negotiated by locals and non‐locals in their metapragmatic comments and performances of the accent and how they come to be socially recognized as indexical of a certain …
White Hip-hoppers
Adolescence is a time when many young people begin experimenting with and 'trying on' different identities. This process manifests itself in the linguistic choices that they make as they try to signal alignments with particular ethnic groups, subcultures, or lifestyles. The phenomenon of European American or 'White' youth who style their speech using features of African American English (AAE) and Hip Hop Nation Language (HHNL) to project their or…
Speech style and authenticity
The question of what constitutes an authentic speaker, particularly with regard to African American Vernacular English (AAVE), has been the subject of some debate in sociolinguistics (Butters, 1984; Labov, 1980; Sweetland, 2002) and arises anew in the case of white hip-hop–affiliated youth (WHHs) who converge toward AAVE in their speech. This paper takes a quantitative approach to this question by examining how speech style alters the relationshi…
Brooklyn style
Many immigrants and expatriates of European heritage who come to the United States are surprised at being inducted into a system of racial categorization in which they are labeled as `White'. This paper examines data from informal interviews with teenage immigrants who come from a number of eastern European countries including Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, and Bulgaria and are bound by their affiliation with hip-hop culture. They live mainly in the b…
Hip-Hop Language in Sociolinguistics and Beyond
Hip-hop language (HHL) is a hot topic in academia. Sociolinguists have been interested in its relationship to African American English as well as innovations in terms of its grammar and vocabulary. A couple of questions connect research from a number of related fields on HHL and culture: What does it mean to be authentic in hip-hop culture in terms of language and other aspects of identity such as one's race, class, and connection to young urban …
You know my Steez
Samy Alim. You know my Steez: An ethnographic and sociolinguistic study of styleshifting in a Black American speech community. Duke University Press, 2005. pp. Xi, 309. Hb $20.00. Samy Alim's book is a balanced blend of hip hop linguistics, ethnography, and advocacy. There is an underlying intensity to his writing that challenges all researchers to become more active in applying their research to the benefit of the community. Most impressively, A…
My son is an alien
Marcel Danesi, My son is an alien: A cultural portrait of today's youth. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Pp. 240, Pb $22.95. Marcel Danesi's My son is an alien is a concise, informative guide for parents and teachers seeking to understand adolescent behavior. In what is largely a descriptive account of the teenage experience, the author touches on a range of topics from adolescent sex to gang involvement and drug abuse. Danesi and his resea…
Chanter en yaourt”
(2000). “Chanter en yaourt”: Pop music and language choice in France. Popular Music and Society: Vol. 24, Global Popular Music: The Politics and Aesthetics of Language Choice, pp. 117-133
Yorkville Crossing
This case study focuses on a white upper middle class New York City teenager who employed linguistic features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). It describes some of these features, discusses their origins, and explores the complex dynamics of identification with hip hop, a youth subculture involving the consumption of rap music, baggy clothes and participation in activities like break dancing, writing graffiti and rapping
Yorkville Crossing
This case study focuses on a white upper middle class New York City teenager who employed linguistic features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). It describes some of these features, discusses their origins, and explores the complex dynamics of identification with hip hop, a youth subculture involving the consumption of rap music, baggy clothes and participation in activities like break dancing, writing graffiti and rapping
Speech style and authenticity
The question of what constitutes an authentic speaker, particularly with regard to African American Vernacular English (AAVE), has been the subject of some debate in sociolinguistics (Butters, 1984; Labov, 1980; Sweetland, 2002) and arises anew in the case of white hip-hop–affiliated youth (WHHs) who converge toward AAVE in their speech. This paper takes a quantitative approach to this question by examining how speech style alters the relationshi…
Metapragmatic comments and orthographic performances of a New York accent on YouTube
This paper adopts a metapragmatic approach (Urban, 2006) to analyze responses to YouTube videos on ‘how to talk like a New Yorker’ in a corpus of YouTube comments (N = 2,649). The analysis illustrates how linguistic features associated with this way of talking are experienced and negotiated by locals and non‐locals in their metapragmatic comments and performances of the accent and how they come to be socially recognized as indexical of a certain …
Hip-Hop Language in Sociolinguistics and Beyond
Hip-hop language (HHL) is a hot topic in academia. Sociolinguists have been interested in its relationship to African American English as well as innovations in terms of its grammar and vocabulary. A couple of questions connect research from a number of related fields on HHL and culture: What does it mean to be authentic in hip-hop culture in terms of language and other aspects of identity such as one's race, class, and connection to young urban …
Chanter en yaourt”
(2000). “Chanter en yaourt”: Pop music and language choice in France. Popular Music and Society: Vol. 24, Global Popular Music: The Politics and Aesthetics of Language Choice, pp. 117-133
Aspects of change in New York City English short-a
This article focuses on change in the “short-a system” of New York City English (NYCE). Recent results suggest that a complex set of tensing rules traditionally described for NYCE are being replaced by several simpler systems. This article reports on a study of this change using a recently developed large audio-aligned parsed speech corpus (CoNYCE). This change is similar to the simplification reported for Philadelphia by Labov et al. (2016). Unl…
White Hip-hoppers
Adolescence is a time when many young people begin experimenting with and 'trying on' different identities. This process manifests itself in the linguistic choices that they make as they try to signal alignments with particular ethnic groups, subcultures, or lifestyles. The phenomenon of European American or 'White' youth who style their speech using features of African American English (AAE) and Hip Hop Nation Language (HHNL) to project their or…
Cross-Speaker Covariation across Six Vocalic Changes in New York City English
This article examines differences in the way that innovative variants for six vocalic changes in New York City English—fronting of too, raising of price and face, and lowering of bad, thought, and dress—co-occur across speakers and explores social correlates of these patterns of covariation. It reports on an analysis of a recently developed corpus of conversational speech from 140 speakers, which suggests that patterns of covariation across speak…
Yorkville Crossing
This case study focuses on a white upper middle class New York City teenager who employed linguistic features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). It describes some of these features, discusses their origins, and explores the complex dynamics of identification with hip hop, a youth subculture involving the consumption of rap music, baggy clothes and participation in activities like break dancing, writing graffiti and rapping
Chanter en yaourt”
(2000). “Chanter en yaourt”: Pop music and language choice in France. Popular Music and Society: Vol. 24, Global Popular Music: The Politics and Aesthetics of Language Choice, pp. 117-133
My son is an alien
Marcel Danesi, My son is an alien: A cultural portrait of today's youth. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Pp. 240, Pb $22.95. Marcel Danesi's My son is an alien is a concise, informative guide for parents and teachers seeking to understand adolescent behavior. In what is largely a descriptive account of the teenage experience, the author touches on a range of topics from adolescent sex to gang involvement and drug abuse. Danesi and his resea…
Hip-Hop Language in Sociolinguistics and Beyond
Hip-hop language (HHL) is a hot topic in academia. Sociolinguists have been interested in its relationship to African American English as well as innovations in terms of its grammar and vocabulary. A couple of questions connect research from a number of related fields on HHL and culture: What does it mean to be authentic in hip-hop culture in terms of language and other aspects of identity such as one's race, class, and connection to young urban …
You know my Steez
Samy Alim. You know my Steez: An ethnographic and sociolinguistic study of styleshifting in a Black American speech community. Duke University Press, 2005. pp. Xi, 309. Hb $20.00. Samy Alim's book is a balanced blend of hip hop linguistics, ethnography, and advocacy. There is an underlying intensity to his writing that challenges all researchers to become more active in applying their research to the benefit of the community. Most impressively, A…
Brooklyn style
Many immigrants and expatriates of European heritage who come to the United States are surprised at being inducted into a system of racial categorization in which they are labeled as `White'. This paper examines data from informal interviews with teenage immigrants who come from a number of eastern European countries including Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, and Bulgaria and are bound by their affiliation with hip-hop culture. They live mainly in the b…
Speech style and authenticity
The question of what constitutes an authentic speaker, particularly with regard to African American Vernacular English (AAVE), has been the subject of some debate in sociolinguistics (Butters, 1984; Labov, 1980; Sweetland, 2002) and arises anew in the case of white hip-hop–affiliated youth (WHHs) who converge toward AAVE in their speech. This paper takes a quantitative approach to this question by examining how speech style alters the relationshi…
White Hip-hoppers
Adolescence is a time when many young people begin experimenting with and 'trying on' different identities. This process manifests itself in the linguistic choices that they make as they try to signal alignments with particular ethnic groups, subcultures, or lifestyles. The phenomenon of European American or 'White' youth who style their speech using features of African American English (AAE) and Hip Hop Nation Language (HHNL) to project their or…
Metapragmatic comments and orthographic performances of a New York accent on YouTube
This paper adopts a metapragmatic approach (Urban, 2006) to analyze responses to YouTube videos on ‘how to talk like a New Yorker’ in a corpus of YouTube comments (N = 2,649). The analysis illustrates how linguistic features associated with this way of talking are experienced and negotiated by locals and non‐locals in their metapragmatic comments and performances of the accent and how they come to be socially recognized as indexical of a certain …
Aspects of change in New York City English short-a
This article focuses on change in the “short-a system” of New York City English (NYCE). Recent results suggest that a complex set of tensing rules traditionally described for NYCE are being replaced by several simpler systems. This article reports on a study of this change using a recently developed large audio-aligned parsed speech corpus (CoNYCE). This change is similar to the simplification reported for Philadelphia by Labov et al. (2016). Unl…
The co-construction of whiteness in an MC battle
Within hip-hop, MC (Master of Cermonies) battles are one of the most visible and potentially humiliating venues for demonstrating one’s verbal skill. Competitors face each other in front of an audience. Each has a minute to “diss” his or her opponent against a backdrop of rhythms produced by a DJ. Each participant’s performance generally consists of “freestyle” or spontaneously generated rhymes designed to belittle some aspect of the opponent’s a…
Cross-Speaker Covariation across Six Vocalic Changes in New York City English
This article examines differences in the way that innovative variants for six vocalic changes in New York City English—fronting of too, raising of price and face, and lowering of bad, thought, and dress—co-occur across speakers and explores social correlates of these patterns of covariation. It reports on an analysis of a recently developed corpus of conversational speech from 140 speakers, which suggests that patterns of covariation across speak…
Introduction
Fuhgeddaboudit shugah! Social meanings of the New York City dialect in the semiotic landscape
This paper examines multilectal writing in New York City as part of the larger phenomenon of multilingual, multilectal and multiscriptal writing. It focuses on the written representation of two enregistered phonological features (i.e. non-rhoticity and the raised back vowel [ɔ]) as well as colloquial expressions that index the imagined speech style of many New Yorkers. It explores how these forms are disseminated across a range of public ‘languag…
Linguistic Variation and Morphology (13 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (11 works) · Linguistics (10 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Art (6 works) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Gender Studies (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (4 works)