Does anyone else find this offensive?

Question

This may seem like a minor issue, but:
Why is it, that things being marketed to youth that are in the "Hip Hop culture" are so horribly mis-spelled?
Boyz N Da Hood, Da Block Party, and Ghetto Dawg are movie titles I see when I'm flipping through channels on television.

I think it's saying to them, "I don't think you're smart enough to know how to read very well, so I'll spell this out phoenetically."
I think it's encouraging young people to stay uneducated, and that learning how to speak and spell respectfully or correctly isn't very cool.

Doesn't this just seem like another ploy to keep a whole class of people down? Or am I taking of this the wrong way?

Answer 1

It's not just that. It's all over the place, not just in 'ghetto' talk. I can't tell you the number of online kids I've seen in games or whatnot that can't spell to save their lives, nor use a full sentence.

I actually had one kid ask me one time, 'y do u do that' after I'd written out a sentence and used punctuation.. I asked them 'Do what?'.. they said 'talk all propper like dat' .. I said.. 'Like what? Use correct english and punctuation?" they said.. 'ya' .. I said 'Because it's the correct way to use the language?" .. the answer I got was 'o' ...Just .. 'o'.

It's not just the Hip Hop culture. It's everywhere. Whites, blacks, latinos.. everywhere. I can't count the number of times I've seen kids say "skool is boring"... I think the day that someone turns in a job resume in "leet speak" is the day I'm withdrawing from the human race.

Answer 2

I don't find it offensive at all....at first I thought it was kind of cool. It's really used to be different than everyone else. If you use IM the same "purposeful" misspelling is used. Not that it shows ignorance, but to use "computer" short-speak. "wussup wit dat, gurl? y u gotta ask dat ques. like fo real......b cool, k?" type of stuff.

But what I do find offensive, is when people think certain of us really do spell and talk this way, and that we are unintelligent. Like when they want to call our English "ebonics". It's not our own language, it's just the way we speak English. Do they give Bostonians English a different title than the Texas drawl? No, it's still considered English".

People should understand that sometimes words were expressed in phonetic form when non-English people had to learn the English language. For example, you can find this type of spelling in some black writers' literature. It's not offensive if you notice how the words would look if you wrote them when any other foreigner spoke English.

Answer 3

You are taking it the wrong way.

Think about this. If you are a young, black urbanite speaking slang (or Ebonics if you want to go that far), you already live in a culture that tells you how to speak "proper" English and spell. These people go to school, they see commercials on television, they may read the paper (or other assorted things), they drive places, they go to work... they know.

Now, take these people who have their own culture in the thick of this larger culture, and there is someone marketing what they feel most comfortable with to them. They're going to go for what makes them feel good.

Marketers do it to everyone. Just ask yourself why Tollhouse Cookies always shows the commercial with the woman in the kitchen with her children baking. Or why the Thanksgiving commercials always have families together, mom and grandma in the kitchen, dad carving a turkey. These are things that make the majority of our culture warm and fuzzy and willing to buy into the idea of that product. They're familiar. Same with the slang.

I wouldn't mix marketing with ploys to subjectify a class of people. Marketers sell what works and what people buy. If it doesn't work, they try other things. Guess what works to reach teenage girls that crush all over teenage boys? Hot teenage boys on the covers of Bop and such. Guess what works to reach the youth of the "hip hop culture?" Things geared toward the exact way they currently live their lives, "G". ;)

Answer 4

No I think your question has merit, I wondered about the purpose of this as well.

Every generation has its thing I know, we were hippies and wrote peace and love and cool everywhere on our binders and loved the psychadelic lights and so on but I think this generation is reaching for another language altogether, like being called dawg is a good thing and all.

I hope that respect and morals don't fly out with the vocabulary, and it is disheartening to realize that children are graduated not knowing how to read even in this day.

Hopefully as our parents hoped we would stop using the term groovy we are hopeful that this phase will pass, like rap for instance and goth, how scary is that.

Answer 5

I do not think that the hip hop artists are doing it on purpose. If they realize it, they maybe should change their ways. In hip hop culture, it is cool to spell something wrong, not that they want geniuses to drop out of high school or anything.

Answer 6

first thing in an advertisement is to "attract" the target audience.
so - all the mis-spellings - so that they will start looking at what is it. It would not get their attention if it had been a grammatical, formal wording. Youth always look for something "off-track" or unconventional.

Answer 7

They don't spell it properly because they are trying to get a point across,not dumb down America.People that live in poverty and crime stricken areas don't have all of the advantages that some others do.If you lived in an area where people were shot, robbed and sold drugs in front of your house,would you be more concerned about proper speech or surviving?

Answer 8

Offensive, no. Sad and pathetic yes. And while we're on the subject, why are so many people typing questions and answers like they are text messages? I can't even attempt to understand what is being asked. This is our society now. Yee haw!

Answer 9

I see where you're going, and let me shift the proverbial camera a little...
No, they are not attempting to conform existing people into an semi-illiterate stereo type. They are attempting to sell a product to a demographic that already exists. It's all about making money, nothing more.

Answer 10

You have a very good point. I think it is just a way to draw attention to the groups. It does seem to point to a group of poor uneducated individuals doesn't it?