The Ethics of Language Appropriation

Anyone else love the story of Alice in Wonderland as a child? I remember the story, the books and the movies too. These days, as adults, we tend to fall into various rabbit holes related to celebrities, current events, theories and conspiracies. One such rabbit hole is Gen Z or TikTok slang.

People’s attitude towards the language used by the 20 somethings differs. It is viewed as alien by some older people but as a sign of belonging and unity among younger people. But isn’t that the way it has always been? “The current generation is rude and disrespectful and will lead to the end of the world,” lamented a Roman senator in 15 BC. Language is very important to different age groups, especially the language and slang of their youth.

As for me, I was not particularly for or against slang, but something interesting happened when I shared a comic video by a Facebook content creator, Stevie Emerson.

I shared it on my wall and later in a marketing group on Facebook. However, when I watched the same video on YouTube and was looking through the comments, one of them caught my eye. The majority of comments either praised the actors in the skit or confessed they had no idea what the actors were saying. This particular comment, however, pointed out that the Gen Z slang was actually African American Vernacular English or AAVE.

Interested in this claim, I did some sleuthing (read Googling) and discovered that African Americans have, for some time, raised objections to the fact that AAVE has been adopted by TikTok or Gen Z without any attribution.

These rebuttals have appeared on Black Twitter and in articles in several online publications. Since the eighties, rap and black culture have influenced young people through music, movies and language. Growing up, we used words like homie, word, diss and respect. Words and concepts from the hippie and other cultures have made their way into popular usage over the years, but the difference here is the people using the words had no idea they originated with African Americans. In fact, they believed this was new slang originated by young people from other cultures. Black people have rightly called this the cruellest form of cultural appropriation and ironically, in an era where Gen Z and the cancel culture brigade frown upon cultural appropriation, they have wilfully or unintentionally ignored their own actions. This is one of the points made by Kyla Lacey in her piece on The Hub: “A short dive down a TikTok rabbit hole left me angry and confused. Somehow the dialect with which my grandmothers (who died before most Gen-Z’ers were even able to form sentences) used is now considered Gen-Z speak or TikTok speak, and this simply is not true.”

Part of this anger relates to a phenomenon known as code switching, a term I heard years ago when listening to BBC World Radio. It is basically used to describe how we switch the language or the style of language we use depending on our social setting. Code switching is a way of fitting in, integrating, or even closing ranks. Take the case of two British Indians at work. Their white boss does not understand Hindi, so when they want to discuss something in front of him without him knowing, they speak in Hindi. A similar case of code switching is the G language that teenage girls used when I was young. Our cricketers are lambasted for speaking in English, but perhaps they feel the need to do it to fit in with other global stars.

As Lacey explains, growing up, she and other African Americans were required to hide their cultural heritage and AAVE was the first thing they suppressed. As she puts it so eloquently, nowadays AAVE is not good enough for the boardroom but good enough for the commercial. To sum it up, AAVE is like an heirloom and a language that, according to her, was mocked and ridiculed.

It therefore seems ridiculous for Gen Z to gate-keep something they did not create by hitting out at brands or older people who use ‘their terms’. It also seems ethically wrong for brands to use a language without a proper appreciation of its heritage and origin. In an era where brands are criticised as being the new colonisers, usurping the language of formerly enslaved people is not going to win them any fans or praise.

So what is the impact on young people and brands in Pakistan? Young people may not care about the origins of the words they use, but brands need to operate within ethical frameworks. Brands that really love our great nation (make Pakistan great again) need to start appreciating our own regional languages and not just limit themselves to the Urdu script and typography.Akhir kaar hum kissi se kum nahin hai.

Tyrone Tellis is Senior Manager, Corporate Sales and PR, Bogo.tyrone.tellis@gmail.com