Signifying in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Harriet Jacobs' Use of African American English

Abstract

Research on Harriet Jacobs' slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl exploded after 1981, when Professor Jean Fagin Yellin discovered textual evidence for refuting then-current claims that Lydia Maria Child was the author of this engrossing story. Child was indeed the book's editor, but Yellin discovered letters from Jacobs among the papers of abolitionist Amy Post that proved that the ex-slave was the author of her own narrative. Though the research this discovery engendered has been quite extensive, especially regarding the narrative's close adherence to the conventions of a sentimental novel, very few scholars have attempted to deal with a feature relatively unique to Jacobs" narrative: the use of African American English (AAE) in representing the speech of a number of her characters. Nor has any scholar exclusively focused on the authenticity of her representation of AAE. This paper, a first step in such an effort, demonstrates that Jacobs' use conforms to features found by linguists in their studies of contemporary AAE and Early Black English (EBE).