If you’ve spent even a day
casually browsing the Internet, you’re probably aware of the stereotypes of a 'typical white girl'. She goes to Starbucks, she wears Uggs, she dyes her hair
blonde and straightens it... it’s a similar concept across Anglophone spheres.
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| Not pictured: the Pumpkin Spice Latte. |
There are, of course, language
features associated with the stereotypical white girl too. And in this paper, Tyanna Slobe, a linguistic anthropologist, wanted
to investigate how three different online performances utilised these resources
to create their mock white girl characters. This relies on a concept known as
indexicality – when certain groups use a particular feature more often, it can
become associated with that group. For example, the use of the word like is often indexed with young
people, as they have led the trend for it being used as a discourse marker.
Slobe also situated her work in
the context of two different ideological perspectives. One is that of how
mocking certain linguistic resources can perpetuate stigma against them: the
language associated with white girls is often used to dismiss them as vacuous
or unintelligent, and exploiting those resources can perpetuate that
stereotype. On the other hand, they can be knowingly exploited in order to
critique hegemonic identities in society. In the case of the stereotypical
white girl, the identity can be satirised in order to point out the glaring
omission of women of colour in cultural notions of femininity, and the
problematic opinions that white women often hold.
Slobe looked at three different
performances. One is a genre she describes as Saviour, a form of performance to encourage superficial notions of
gender equality. One comes from the popular Sh*t white girls say Youtube series, looking specifically at
two videos that discuss what white girls say to black and Latina girls. The
third is from the social media platform Vine’s series Teenage
girl problems, where the white girl character is performed in a way that mocks
her stereotypical concerns.
Two of these performances
contribute to further stigmatisation of the character. One example that Slobe
gives of the Saviour genre is an
interview with Lake Bell, who adopts creaky voice – where the vocal cords are
compressed so that less air passes through them and they vibrate less
frequently – to discuss what she calls a “sexy baby virus”. Through performing
this voice and indexing it in such a way, she means to imply that young white
girls performing these stereotypically feminine vocal traits are responsible
for the sexism they encounter in the work place, and the attitudes towards such
language. Similarly, in the Teenage girl
problems Vine, his performance of the white girl uses exaggerated gestures,
eye rolling, and creaky voice to contrast the slow and carefully articulated
male character, whilst performing trivial and irrational concerns. By indexing
the communicative cues with the concerns, the Vine star portrays an ideological
stance that ultimately stigmatises girlhood.
On the other hand, the Sh*t white girls say videos use the
persona in a critical way. Franchesca Ramsay, the creator of Sh*t white girls say to black girls,
also uses creaky voice to highlight parts of the white girl’s dialogue, but
particularly to draw attention to the character’s racism, such as when she describes
hair texture that feels like a “Brillo pad”. Similarly, she uses the right? tag question associated with
white girl speech to highlight the affirmation the character wants for a racist
statement. By specifically parodying the racist elements of the character, these
resources satirise the white girl’s behaviour as an embodiment of naïve racism.
Ultimately, there are a number of
ideological stances that the white girl character can be used for. So next time
you see a meme featuring the character, you could think to yourself about what
stance is being adopted, and what ideologies are being perpetuated or
criticised as a result.
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Slobe,
Tanyanna (2018). Style, stance, and social meaning in mock white girl. Language in Society 47(4): 541-567.
doi:10.1017/S004740451800060X
