Gates the signifying monkey5/30/2023 ![]() ![]() Rudy Ray Moore, known as "Dolemite", is well-known for having used the term in his comedic performances. To this list we could easily add aporia, chiasmus, and catachresis, all of which are used in the ritual of Signifyin(g)." Origin and features wrote in The Signifying Monkey (1988) that signifyin' is "a trope, in which are subsumed several other rhetorical tropes, including metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony (the master tropes), and also hyperbole, litotes, and metalepsis. The American literary critic Henry Louis Gates Jr. ![]() The expression comes from stories about the signifying monkey, a trickster figure said to have originated during slavery in the United States. Signifyin' directs attention to the connotative, context-bound significance of words, which is accessible only to those who share the cultural values of a given speech community. Other names for signifyin' include: "Dropping lugs, joaning, sounding, capping, snapping, dissing, busting, bagging, janking, ranking, toasting, woofing, roasting, putting on, or cracking." A simple example would be insulting someone to show them affection. It is a practice in African-American culture involving a verbal strategy of indirection that exploits the gap between the denotative and figurative meanings of words. ![]() ![]() Signifyin' (sometimes written " signifyin(g)") (vernacular), is a wordplay. Wordplay in Black American communities emphasizes connotation over literal meaning ![]()
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