Make it plain, preacha': African American rhetorical license, African American Vernacular English (AAVE), and a modern rendering of epideictic rhetoric

Abstract

In this project, I contend that African American rhetoric, namely African American sermonic rhetoric, constitutes a distinct, culturally specialized variety of rhetoric generated out of the distinctive circumstances of the African American Diasporic experience. I present the study of African American homiletics as a lens through which to view the intersections between culture and aural text. In order to examine the rhetorical tools peculiar to the African American religious tradition. I perform a solely rhetorical explication of many of the typical elements of Black Church sermons. To allow for this process, I have conducted archival research in order to generate transcribed Black Church sermons for the purpose of explicating the rhetorical and paralinguistic components therein. I also argue that the strategic use of AAVE within Black Church sermons serves a hermeneutical function. That is to say, the preacher's choice to deploy AAVE within Black Church sermons not only fosters solidarity between Black speakers and Black congregation, but aids in "meaning-making" on the part of the congregation as well as the process of Biblical exegesis.