Aris Clemons, PhD
Assistant Professor of Hispanic Linguistics
University of Tennessee Knoxville
Date & Time
Tuesday, December 2
3 p.m.
Location
Gambrell 429
Abstract
This talk introduces liberatory linguistics, a framework that challenges the colonial foundations of linguistic study while centering race, power, and community. Grounded in raciolinguistics, decolonial thought, and community-engaged methodologies, Clemons’ forthcoming book US Black Vernacular Spanishes examines how Blackness, Latinidad, and belonging are negotiated through linguistic practice across geographic, media, educational, and everyday contexts. She argues that Black U.S. Spanish varieties emerge through engagement with locally situated communities of practice.
The talk focuses on one chapter mapping Blaxican linguistic belonging through the carne asada cookout metaphor—a symbolic space where Black and Mexican cultural logics converge. Through critical discourse and aural/textual analysis of four songs by Blueface, YG, Banda MS/Snoop Dogg/Becky G, and D-Smoke, Clemons shows how artists mobilize linguistic features, sonic cues, and visual semiotics to negotiate Blaxican community membership. These cases demonstrate how translanguaging, racialized listening, and cultural intimacy determine metaphorical cookout inclusion and offer a novel dialect mapping approach that transcends bounded language and racial categories.