For over a month now, I’ve been taking a look at Gizoogle, a website that parodies the search engine Google by rendering web content in language resembling Snoop Dogg‘s speech. In a series of posts, I’ve been trying to arrive at a conclusion about whether the website is just an amusing tribute to Snoop Dogg or a racist caricature of African-American English (AAE). I’ve looked at the creators’ stated intentions. I’ve also looked closely at the website’s grammatical accuracy relative to Snoop Dogg’s speech (which is obviously influenced by African-American English). In addition, I’ve looked at the degree to which Gizoogle is representative of Snoop Dogg’s linguistic repertoire. Finally, I’ve looked at whether Gizoogle exaggerates the differences between Snoop Dogg’s speech and so-called ‘standard’ English. This final post will deal with an extremely important piece of the puzzle, namely how Gizoogle is interpreted by others. At the end of the post, I’ll try to offer a final opinion on the question of whether Gizoogle is just an amusing tribute or a racist caricature. Read more ›