In the four previous chapters, I document Black disfranchisement’s significant effects on state legislative politics in the American South. In Chapter 4, I illustrate how in Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee, disfranchisement eliminated the Republicans as a meaningful political force, dramatically shifted the ideological behavior of representatives of more-Black legislative districts toward the Democrats, and entrenched Democrats as the main political power in the legislature. In Chapter 5, I described how disfranchisement changed roll call voting in states dominated by Democrats by shifting representatives of more-Black areas toward the roll call behavior of their more agrarian, reform-oriented colleagues; I also, however, showed that disfranchisement may have empowered different groups depending on the distribution of influence in state legislatures. In Chapter 6, I extended this exploration to two other Deep South states, Alabama and Louisiana, where unique political cleavages, political economies, and the timing of disfranchisement produced consequences of disfranchisement with distinctive features. Across all of these states, disfranchisement was associated with meaningful changes in legislative politics.

The word griot has been linked with hip-hop since its early days in the 1980s, but it is a fragile connection. Initially used by French travelers to West Africa who thought they were using a local term, it refers to hereditary praise singers, instrumentalists, and oral historians. Although there is some overlap between what modern-day rappers and griots do, there are also some significant differences, especially in their social status and roles in society. If rap has distant origins in Africa, dispersed via the transatlantic slave trade, and come back transformed, then how can we think about the highly specialized skills and roles of griots in Africa, their inspirations in the diaspora, and their intersections with rappers? Tracing the institution of griots in western Africa and charting how the term took root and expanded in the US will help us appreciate their congruencies and incompatibilities with hip-hop.

The concluding Chapter 8 gives a summary of the language disputes covered in the previous seven chapters. It then tries to answer the general question about why these disputes have arisen in American courts among people who do not normally miscommunicate and disagree like this. Four reasons are given. First, in cases of ambiguity and multiple interpretations one side in the dispute paid insufficient attention to, or chose to ignore, the disambiguating role of context. Second, at the heart of the dispute there was often a subtle and complex aspect of linguistic meaning and comprehension that the theories and empirical methods of the language sciences are designed to explain. Their findings can provide relevant linguistic information to the triers of fact for legal decision-making, and these subtleties and complexities would often not have been appreciated without linguistic expertise. Third, there were regularly legal and financial advantages and benefits that were motivating each of the parties in the dispute. And fourth, some of the opinions delivered by language consultants were unhelpful because these “experts” had little expertise in relevant areas of the language sciences.

This chapter examines English in the Midlands of England. It explores the structure of Mercian Old English, moving on to commonalities and differences across the Midlands region. It then discusses some of the features of Middle English in the area and investigates the ongoing complexities surrounding the processes of standardisation and the place of Midlands English in such processes. Finally, the chapter reviews dialect data from present-day Midlands English by looking at contemporary variation in both the East and West Midlands. It examines what makes Midlands English distinctive from the varieties of English in the north and the south in phonological, grammatical and lexical terms, and looks at similarities and differences between the East and West Midlands.

This chapter discusses lexical, phonological and morphosyntactic features of Northern Irish English, tracing their origins in dialects of English and Scots as well as Irish, and untangling some of the processes that resulted in specifically Northern Irish varieties of English which are separate from those in the south of Ireland. It also explores in detail a number of phonological and morphosyntactic features, differentiating between rural and urban forms of English in the province of Ulster. A distinction is also made between Ulster Scots, the heritage forms of English deriving from the original seventeenth-century settlers from Scotland, and Ulster English, which goes back to varieties taken by English settlers, largely from the north and north-west of England, to more central parts of Ulster. The sociolinguistic integration of recent immigrants to Ulster is also reviewed.

This chapter examines the transformative work of Danielle Dumile, the masked rapper who went by the stage name DOOM (among other aliases), and who was known for his complex lyricism and innovative personae. Adrian Matejka considers the MC’s use of persona through the dual lenses of hip-hop and poetry, highlighting the ways in which DOOM’s lyrics borrow from and enhance these twinned literary traditions. Drawing parallels between DOOM’s innovative lyricism and the tradition of persona poetry, Matejka considers how contemporary poets – particularly Black American poets – adopt various masks to explore history, culture, and identity. This longer tradition is related back to DOOM, whose layered personae subverted mainstream rap in the early 2000s. Matejka frames the rapper’s work as an enduring testament to persona’s power in mythmaking and cultural commentary.

Given data’s characteristics as a nonrivalrous, inexhaustible resource, some interpretation is necessary to apply Ostrom’s design principles to the challenge of data governance – starting with the question of boundaries. Building upon the Governing Knowledge Commons framework, this chapter argues that boundaries around data resources can be drawn through the intentional development and application of values statements. Since the potential value of data often increases in relation to the number of its users and potential uses, values statements set normative expectations around the kinds of processes and outcomes that are considered desirable – what do we think is good, and how do we agree to do this work? These statements functionas a kind of boundary object that can give shape to a community’s identity and, in turn, aid in the development of new institutional strategies to protect that identity. After considering this function in the context of examples – ranging from abstract signifiers such as “open data” and “smart cities,” to bundled declarations such as the CARE principles, to specific examples of environmental data commons – this chapter concludes by offering practical guidance for the development of values statements through democratic writing processes and collective choice-making.

The chapter discusses the confluence of material objects during the 1810s, especially when Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted in 1815 spewing ash into the stratosphere, and when Thomas Bruce (1766–1841), the 7th Earl of Elgin, sold the Parthenon marbles to the British Parliament for £35,000 in 1816. While these two events were continents apart geographically, they are interconnected materially and politically. Marble rock, ash, and potato, an assemblage of disparate objects, mark the tumultuous 1810s as a decade in which matter matters significantly to humanity.

On the eve of disfranchisement, African Americans in different states – and different parts of states – found themselves in very dissimilar political circumstances.Disfranchisement’s consequences thus also varied substantially. In some areas voting was relatively unfettered, while in others approaching a polling place may have risked serious physical harm. Even where voting was feasible, African Americans faced starkly different alternatives at the ballot box. In some states, Republicans continued to seek office and provided a real,meaningful vehicle for African Americans to pursue their programmatic goals. In others, the choice that African Americans faced at the ballot box – if there was a choice – was between different varieties of white supremacist Democrat.

This chapter examines funk music as a central artery of rap music and hip-hop culture. It charts a funk current that crests and flows throughout hip-hop’s fifty-year span such that, what Maner calls the funk impulse – the percussive, kinesthetic energy that undergirds and drives Black sound and Black life – is rendered audible. After charting the patterns of sampling that developed in the early stages of hip-hop, the chapter moves on to the evolution of the funk impulse in the contemporary era, from renderings on album covers to live stage performances. James Brown, Public Enemy and the Bomb Squad, George Clinton, and Parliament-Funkadelic, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and OutKast are all discussed in detail.

Language does not change in a vacuum; it always takes place in a social context. The relationship between that context and linguistic change is complex, ranging from large-scale societal influences on usage to fine-grained shifts in face-to-face interaction. This chapter reviews a number of social factors governing language change, each illustrated with examples from both historical and present-day varieties of English in the British Isles. The examples will show that, despite enormous historical change over 1,500 years, the underlying social processes that shape language – such as contact, networks, prestige, identity – remain remarkably stable.