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Signifyin' (sometime written "signifyin(g)") (vernacular), is a form of wordplay. 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. A simple example would be insulting someone to show affection.〔Cecil Adams, ("To African-Americans, what does "signifying" mean?" ), ''The Straight Dope'', September 28, 1984.〕 Other names for signifyin' include: "Dropping lugs, joaning, sounding, capping, snapping, dissing, busting, bagging, janking, ranking, woofing, putting on, or cracking." 〔"Signifying, Concept of." ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought''.〕 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. The expression comes from stories about the Signifying Monkey, a trickster figure said to have originated during slavery in the United States. The American literary critic Henry Louis Gates Jr. 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. To this list we could easily add aporia, chiasmus, and catachresis, all of which are used in the ritual of Signifyin(g)."〔Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ''The Signifying Monkey: a Theory of African-American Literary Criticism'', Oxford University Press, 1988, (p. 52 ).〕 ==Origin and features== Rudy Ray Moore, known as " Dolemite", is well known for having used the term in his comediac performances. While Signifyin(g) is the term coined by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. to represent a black vernacular, the idea stems from the thoughts of Ferdinand De Saussure and the process of signifying--"the association between words and the ideas they indicate."〔Roger Matuz and Cathy Falk, "Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Current Debate in African-American Literary Criticism, An Introduction to."〕 Gates states, "’Signification,’ in Standard English, denotes the meaning that a term conveys, or is intended to convey." Gates takes this idea of signifying and "doubles" it in order to explain signifyin(g). He states of Black Vernacular, "their complex act of language Signifies upon both formal language use and its conventions, conventions established, at least officially, by middle-class white people."〔 Gate’s examines the ways in which signifyin(g) differs from signifying. According to Gates, the practice derived from the Trickster archetype found in much African mythology, folklore, and religion: a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and societal norms. In practice, signifyin' often takes the form of quoting from subcultural vernacular, while extending the meaning at the same time through a rhetorical figure. The expression itself derives from the numerous tales about the Signifying Monkey, a folk trickster figure said to have originated during slavery in the United States. In most of these narratives, the Monkey manages to dupe the powerful Lion by signifying. The term ''signifyin itself currently carries a range of metaphorical and theoretical meanings in black cultural studies that stretch far beyond its literal scope of reference. In ''The Signifying Monkey'', Gates expands the term to refer not merely to a specific vernacular strategy but also to a trope of double-voiced repetition and reversal that exemplifies the distinguishing property of Black discourse. However, this subtle African-American device, if linguistically analyzed, becomes notoriously difficult to pin down, as Gates writes:
Gates, in "The Signifying Monkey and the Language of Signifyin(g)" clarifies the confusing nature of the subject matter by representing the two terms on a graph made up of intercepting x-axis and a y-axis. The x-axis is represented by the Standard English we recognize and use within most professional and educational settings. Simply put, the x-axis is the literal definition of a word as represented by the masses and the term coined by Saussure. The y-axis, however, is represented by the term Signifyin(g) and is labelled as Black Vernacular. As Gates represents, "the relation of signification itself has been critiqued by a black act of (re)doubling" in which the point of intersection permits new understandings of a term to take place.〔Gates, ''The Signifying Monkey''.〕 Where the x-axis and y-axis intersect, the two meanings of the word collide to form a new meaning, so often represented by puns and tropes. By viewing Signifyin(g) as a graph, such as Gates represents, the doubling nature of black vernacular becomes apparent. As Gates exhibits, "the English-language use of signification refers to the chain of signifiers that configures horizontally," or all accepted definitions of a term as represented by Standard English. The y-axis of black vernacular, however, "concerns itself with that which is suspended, vertically…the playful puns on a word that occupy the paradigmatic axis of language and which a speaker draws on for figurative substitution."〔 A term may share a name but the definitions may be completely different. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Signifyin'」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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