Donna Whitmore

The language that is being analyzed is taken from the movie ATL, which is set in the southern city of Atlanta, Georgia. The movie is about two Atlanta brothers, Rashad and Antwon whose parents recently passed away and are forced to live with their uncle. Rashad, the older of the two is saving to get him and his brother out of the "ghetto", but his brother is drawn to the street and life of hustling.

The conversation takes place between Antwon who is around the age of sixteen

and an older man who is trying to purchase some drugs from him. Due to the city where the movie is placed, the characters are supposed to have southern accents, but theses accents mixed with the slang terminology cause communication to be difficult. The man says" Waz happenin' playa, man dig dis cuz I heard you da man behind da plan, dig dis playboy I went round da corner a lil' while ago and scoped me a lil' gilly o, I'm talkin' bout man that was garbage, dig what I'm sayin? What you got for me?" During this dialogue the audience sees subtitles which translate the mans request: Good Evening, sir, I understand that you have certain connections to a substance for which I am searching, listen to this, I made a purchase earlier this evening and let me tell you I was very disappointed in the quality. The boy proceeds to tell the man that he does not understand a word the man is saying, and asks him, if he wants to buy some weed. I will analyze the pronunciation and word choice illustrated in the dialogue which causes confusion. For instance, instead of "what is", the man pronounces the word as "waz" and instead of using "the" he uses "da". The same changing of pronunciation can also be seen when he says "dis" instead of "this".

Also shown in the conversation is the dropping of the letter "-g" on the suffix "-ing",