INTRACOMMUNITY USAGE OF "NIGGA" IN SPOKEN AFRICAN AMERICAN LANGUAGE: A CORPUS STUDY

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how nigga is used between speakers of African American Language (AAL). Nigga has few detailed analyses that examine its intracommunity usage, especially regarding non-negative uses of the word. It is the center of much controversy within African American communities, particularly due to the generational divide on its racist potency, and horrific historical ties. Therefore, I ask whether in-group speakers use nigga in different contexts to convey meanings that are also neutral or positive in sentiment, and whether factors such as gender and age affect these sentiments. This thesis is a partial replication of Smith (2019), and I utilize spoken data from the Corpus of Regional African American Language in my quantitative analysis. I find that AAL speakers use nigga across all sentiments, and in a variety of syntactic environments. Additionally, men seem to say nigga more often than women in spoken conversation, and younger individuals are more likely to use the term over older individuals. Through this thesis, I shed light on the invisible linguistic boundaries that complicate AAL speakers' feelings on nigga. Cultural experiences and social pressures of being African American inform many speakers' opinions regarding nigga, and care should be taken to discuss these complexities.