Origin and features

According to Black literary scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., 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 norms of behavior. 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

Signifying monkey

The Signifying Monkey is a character of African-American folklore that derives from the trickster figure of Yoruba mythology, Esu Elegbara. This character was transported with Africans to the Americas under the names of Exu, Echu-Elegua, Papa Legba, and Papa Le Bas. Esu and his variants all serve...

, 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. Signifyin(g) directs attention to the connotative, context-bound significance of words, which is accessible only to those who share the unique cultural values of a given speech community.

The term Signifyin(g) itself currently carries a range of metaphorical and theoretical meanings in black cultural studies that stretch far beyond its literal scope of reference. In his highly influential book The Signifying Monkey

The Signifying Monkey

The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism is a work of literary criticism and theory by American scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. first published in 1988...

(1988), 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 states in The Signifying Monkey:

Thinking about the black concept of Signifiyin(g) is a bit like stumbling unaware into a hall of mirrors: the sign itself appears to be doubled, at the very least, and (re)doubled upon ever closer examination. It is not the sign itself, however, which has multiplied. If orientation prevails over madness, we soon realize that only the signifier has been doubled and (re)doubled, a signifier in this instance that is silent, a "sound-image" as Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics...

 defines the signifier, but a "sound-image" sans the sound. The difficulty that we experience when thinking about the nature of the visual (re)doubling at work in a hall of mirrors is analogous to the difficulty we shall encounter in relating the black linguistic sign, "Signification," to the standard English sign, "signification." This level of conceptual difficulty stems from – indeed, seems, to have been intentionally inscribed within – the selection of the signifier, "signification." For the standard English word is a homonym of the Afro-American vernacular word. And, to compound the dizziness and giddiness that we must experience in the vertiginous movement between these two "identical" signifiers, these two homonyms have everything to do with each other and, then again, absolutely nothing.

Music

Caponi (1999) "describes calls, cries, hollers, riffs, licks, overlapping antiphony" as examples of signifying in hip hop music

Hip hop music

Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...

 and other African-American music. She explains that signifying differs from simple repetition and from simple variation in that it uses material "rhetorically or figuratively — through troping, in other words — by trifling with, teasing, or censuring it in some way.

Signifyin(g) is also a way of demonstrating respect for, goading, or poking fun at a musical style, process, or practice through parody, pastische, implication, indirection, humor, tone- or word-play, the illusions of speech, or narration, and other troping mechanisms… Signifyin(g) shows, among other things, either reverence or irreverence toward previously stated musical statements and values." Schloss relates this to the ambiguity common to African musics including looping (as of a sample

Sampling (music)

In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...

) for "it allows individuals to demonstrate intellectual power while simultaneously obscuring the nature and extent of their agency… It allows producers to use other people's music to convey their own compositional ideas".

See also

• Call and response
  Call and response
  Call and response is a form of "spontaneous verbal and non-verbal interaction between speaker and listener in which all of the statements are punctuated by expressions from the listener."...
  
  
• Epideixis
• Signifying monkey
  Signifying monkey
  The Signifying Monkey is a character of African-American folklore that derives from the trickster figure of Yoruba mythology, Esu Elegbara. This character was transported with Africans to the Americas under the names of Exu, Echu-Elegua, Papa Legba, and Papa Le Bas. Esu and his variants all serve...
  
  
• "Signifying Rapper"
• Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present
  Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race In the Urban Present
  Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present is a nonfiction book by David Foster Wallace and Mark Costello. The book explores this music's history as it intersects with historical events, either locally and unique to Boston, or in larger cultural or historical contexts.- Title :The title...
  
  
• Wikipedia
  Wikipedia
  Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
  
  

Sources

• Caponi, Gena Dagel (1999). Signifyin(G), Sanctifyin', & Slam Dunking: A Reader in African American Expressive Culture. University of Massachusetts Press
  University of Massachusetts Press
  The University of Massachusetts Press is a university press that is part of the University of Massachusetts. The press was founded in 1963, publishing scholarly books and non-fiction. The press imprint is overseen by an interdisciplinary faculty committee....
  
  . ISBN 1-55849-183-X.
• Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. (1988) The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. Oxford University Press
  Oxford University Press
  Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
  
  . ISBN 0-19-503463-5.
• Schloss, Joseph G. (2004). Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop. Wesleyan University Press
  Wesleyan University Press
  Wesleyan University Press is a university press that is part of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. The Press is currently directed by Suzanna Tamminen, a published poet and essayist...
  
  . ISBN 0-8195-6696-9.
• Myers, D.G. Signifying Nothing. New Criterion 8 (February 1990): 61-64.