Social construction

This brief discussion of the religious and mythical historical contexts of the Greek-based metis and the African-based nommo now leads to an examination of the rhetorical devices themselves. This examination can provide some contemporary contextual usage as dictated by Western norms, but it can also shed light on ways that cultures that do not evince a static or enforced Western worldview engage in differing interpretations. I contend that the different interpretations of these rhetorical devices—and use of other language communicative events—are essential to understanding and appreciating the discordant differences in the Black communication style. The recognition and acceptance of the discordant differences of the Black communication style is the first step toward envisioning them as non-discordant and natural to African Americans.

Detienne and Vernant (1974/1991) discuss metis as “a type of intelligence and of thought, a way of knowing; it implies a complex but very coherent body of mental attitudes and intellectual behaviour which combine flair, wisdom, forethought, subtlety of mind, deception, resourcefulness, vigilance, opportunism, various skills, and experience acquired over the years. It is applied to situations which are transient, shifting, disconcerting and ambiguous, situations which do not lend themselves to precise measurement, exact calculation or rigorous logic” (3-4). I argue that metis can be construed as encompassing the three constructs of the Black communication style noted by Corsini and Fogliasso of social interaction norms, truth creating processes, and signifying. Thus, the links between metis and nommo can be seen in flair (styling), resourcefulness (improvisation), forethought (call and response), wisdom (mythoforms), and subtlety of mind (repetition or rhythm). The use of these two rhetorical devices by marginalized audiences should not be assumed to be restricted to the interpretation of GAE users. As Cintron (1997) notes later, Latino “wordplays contai[n]… a kind of biting resistance to Anglo ways and authority” (93). Thus, while definitions of the rhetorical devices are defined and delineated, I argue that resistance to co-optation of these devices as used by the Black discourse community often means a continual shifting of meaning. Thus the use of metis and nommo as could be attributed to the Webster’s dictionary definition is eschewed in favor of celebrating the natural talent, spontaneity, and communication “accidents” of the Black communication style. I contend that the Black discourse community transforms meanings and use of the rhetorical devices based upon the narrative being explained and the specific life experiences under consideration. This mutability adds to the difficulty in standardizing the Black communication style and also reflects the continuing resistance to “Anglo ways and authority” as suggested by Cintron above. While the rhetorical devices of metis and nommo are historically situated in language use contexts that must be examined for their apparent meaning and usage, language code-switching is an example of the on-going dynamic change in language use. However, just as it is difficult to restrict the interpretation of metis and nommo, the use of code-switching in the Black communication style does not necessarily follow defined parameters.

            Code-switching (also referred to as ‘style switching’) when used as a rhetorical device provides an opportunity for individuals to use two or more languages in a discursive event (Labov, 1972: 217; Gardner-Chloros, 1997; Nelson, 1996, 1997; see Smitherman, 1977, 1998, 2000, Anzaldúa, 1999, and Barron, 2003 for specific textual examples). The choice of terminology can show how the individual negotiates the use of community membership/cohesiveness, by applying different contextual meanings to the same phrases or terms (Labov, 1998; Wyatt, 2001). Code-switching is an important rhetorical device in masking individuals as insiders or outsiders to the discursive community (Baugh, 1992; Nelson, 1996). An examination of code-switching reveals the attentive use of terminology but with the purpose of deflecting or hiding actual communicative intention or used as a means of showing support and connectivity (Smitherman, 1998). Through the language use of code-switching, individuals can call attention to their actual meaning, reflecting whether they are considered an insider or outsider to the speech community. The purpose of identifying code-switching as a rhetorical device is that it provides marginalized voices the choice to “mouth with myriad subtleties” (Dunbar, l.5) their agreement or disagreement with the dominant discourse. Nelson (1997) argues that code-switching “affirms the user’s marginal group affiliation at the same time that it represents the speaker’s or writer’s resistance to exclusion from the arenas of power and prestige, represented by the high-prestige discourses or linguistic codes” (124). As such, code-switching may simply offer one layer of occluded communication, while at the same time engendering a play on words that allows marginalized voices a means to hide or mask messages. I argue here that the encoded messages can be decoded by any recipient who possesses the appropriate cultural communicative key.

         The use of metis and nommo by unrepresented (and often marginalized) audiences provides them a means to engage the communicative situation, for example “through strategic attempts to negotiate meaning, identity, and power” (Parker, 2003, p. 278). Metis and nommo as rhetorical devices can be used as resistance to discourses that mark raced individuals as outsiders. The use and manipulation of words through metis/nommo by the individual contributes to an empowering process. Parker suggests that empowerment is a means “by which oppressed persons gain some control over their lives by taking part with others in the development of activities and structures that allow people increased involvement in matters that affect them directly” (262). The choice of words or the double-meanings applied to words can afford an opportunity for individuals to gain control of the communicative situation. This double-meaning, or code-switching, is used as a rhetorical device that marks individuals as insiders or outsiders to a discursive event.

            As an example of individuals marked as insiders or outsiders to a discursive event, Cintron (1997) introduces us to an area of Chicago, where the community and the people seek to reclaim rhetorical control of their lives, even if only by “officialdom and paperwork” (51). The subliminal messages are profound in this text of power and control. As an ethnographer, Cintron, just like others in that discipline (Clifford and Marcus, 1986; Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw, 1995; Agar, 1996; Motzafi-Haller, 1997; Hakken, 1999; MacNealy, 1999) seeks to make sense of the tools of his trade. Cintron finds those tools loaded with assumptions of dominance and control “organized by our assumptions concerning people and society,”(12) and he seeks to complicate the configuration. Along the way he notes that the “public sphere... [becomes] a site in which the struggle to be heard is matched by the struggle to silence others” (27). This silencing is evinced in generalizing a group of people, effectively dismissing “a plethora of contentious voices and a whole range of distinctive characteristics” (28). In this instance rhetoric not only neutralizes other voices, it simply dismisses them as unconscious voices unable to “leave a record of themselves” (33). The stance of civilized culture to map, grid, and control the untamed wilderness extends to humans and animals who were unable to or chose not to do the controlling themselves. Thus, “other concepts remained voiceless to a formalizing system that was deaf to everything except itself” (37). But Cintron does not give us a picture of a people who are willing to submissively accept the controlling forces of their lives. Instead, we are invited to share their discourse and discover a people who are members of the unconscious community, who survive and fight for existence within a seemingly conscious society that wishes to silence and ignore them.

Cintron suggests that while the people of Angel’s Town may be on the fringes of the conscious social order, their rhetorical tropes suggest otherwise. He states that “[a]ll of these wordplays contai[n]… a kind of biting resistance to Anglo ways and authority” (93). His discussion of the graffiti used by Angel’s Town gangs reveals that the word and symbolic tropes that are used to define relationships are content-driven. The use of symbols, colors, or terminology is not arbitrary—the gangs appropriate the mainstream artifacts and conform them to newer meanings. In this manner the gangs are able to take the language used and ply their trade on top, layering thoughts and meanings into a complex, “secret, esoteric, subterranean world” (167). The language use is not necessarily grammatically correct, but the graffiti makes its point by using the standard writing conventions of “left to right and... standard spelling” (169). It is the pun on words and the visual representations of love and dislike in the graffiti that provide the content of meaning. The attempts by the local city government to remove this subterranean language use from gangs is seen in the enactment of park rules “ban[ning] gang activity at all of its family recreation areas” (190). Whereas the city has attempted to disown and not acknowledge a different way of communicating, the interpretation can also be seen as a means to project that gangs and their families are not viewed as viable or valued members of the community. These “discourses of measurement” (199) evince the mutating uses of language. The appropriation and misappropriation of meanings and words are seen as part of the need to claim a territory or control a space and directly impacts on its content-meaning, just as the use of rhetorical devices do.