The Ass Camouflage Construction

African American English (AAE) has a cool expression called the Ass Camouflage Construction:

• They done arrested her stupid ass.
• I’m gonna sue her ass.
• Get your triflin’ ass out of here.
• I saw his ass yesterday.
• His ass is gonna get fried.

(Throughout this article, the examples are all actual instances of use recorded by linguists. See the References list for sources.)

Most varieties of American English have now adopted this or similar expressions from AAE, but the construction originated in AAE, where it is still much more widely used, and used in a wider range of contexts than in Standard American English.

Note how ass in this construction stands in for the entire person (which is why it’s called a “camouflage” construction). This is an example of metonymy, a linguistic technique where a concept is referred to by something else which is closely associated with it. Other examples include:

• the White House issued a statement (White House = executive branch)
• the book is coming along (book = progress through the book)
• Hollywood loves sequels (Hollywood = American film industry)

The Ass Camouflage Construction is a specific subtype of metonymy called synecdoche, where a part of something stands in for the entire object. For example:

• all hands on deck (hands = sailors)
• nice wheels (wheels = car)
• they done arrested her stupid ass (ass = woman)

Metonymy and synecdoche are often referred to as “figures of speech”, but I don’t think this characterization does justice to what’s happening cognitively and linguistically when we use them. Calling them “figures of speech” makes it sound like it’s a purely poetic or rhetorical choice, when in fact metonymy arises from how we categorize and conceptualize the world. Metonymy is a cognitive shortcut that allows us to recall a thing by its most salient feature or other things associated with it. It also allows us to highlight those features or associations for others: referring to lawyers as “the suits” imparts a subtly different pragmatic message than simply calling them “lawyers”. Other times, we use metonymy to highlight the feature or association that is most relevant in context: saying “who got the extra large?” is most helpful when there are two different-sized pizzas because it metonymically highlights the most salient difference between them. In the case of the Ass Camouflage Construction, what the choice of ass highlights is the informal, derogatory, or jocular intention behind the expression.

There’s also a related AAE expression called the Attributive Ass Construction:

• We some punk-ass parents, see.
• That raggedy-ass sweater should be thrown out.
• This my cute-ass friend.
• Parents please tell y’all sick-ass children to cover they mouth when they cough!!!
• just another lame-ass sad-ass excuse of a man

The main difference between an ugly cat and an ugly-ass cat has nothing to do with the cat or ugliness, and more to do with signaling that the speaker is talking in an informal and uncensored way. The attributive ass construction is frequently used in stand-up comedy, for example. For this reason it’s called an expressive.

Notice how, unlike the Ass Camouflage Construction, the ‑ass in the Attributive Ass Construction has lost its original meaning. While phrases like her stupid ass still refer metaphorically to a butt, phrases like raggedy-ass cannot possibly be referring to a butt. Instead, ‑ass in this context has taken on a purely grammatical function: it now operates similarly to the ‑ish and ‑y suffixes in that it turns the thing it attaches to into an adjective (punk → punk-ass ‘punk-like’). The loss of its original meaning as it shifts from a content word to a function word is called semantic bleaching, and the broader process by which content words (also called lexical words) become function words is called grammaticalization. We would say that the word ass has become grammaticalized into an attributive suffix ‑ass, with the result that there are now two different asses in English: lexical ass, referring to the butt, and attributive ‑ass, a suffix that turns words into expressive adjectives. This kind of split where a new use of a word sits alongside its older, original use, is extremely common in cases of grammaticalization, and the technical term for this pattern is divergence.

Other languages have camouflage constructions too! French uses pomme ‘apple’:

1. French (Indo-European > Romance)

   1. C’est pour ma pomme.

      ‘It’s for me.’

   2. Je m’occupe d’abord de ma pomme.

      ‘I’m looking after number one.’

   3. Je joue pour ma pomme.

      ‘I play for myself.’

      (Collins, Moody & Postal 2008: 63–64)

Yoruba uses ara ‘body’:

1. Yoruba (Atlantic–Congo)

   1. awe
   2. rísaw
   3. arabody
   4. waus/our

   ‘we saw ourselves / each other / one another’

   (Collins, Moody & Postal 2008: 65)

In fact, these kinds of camouflage constructions often give rise to reflexives in the world’s languages! Reflexives frequently derive from body part words, especially words meaning ‘body’ or ‘head’. Basque and Hausa both form reflexive constructions this way:

1. Basque (isolate)

   1. Jon‑ekjohn‑erg
   2. berehis.own
   3. buru‑ahead‑det
   4. hilkill
   5. z‑ue‑npast‑be‑past

   ‘John killed himself.’

   (Kuteva et al. 2019: 224)

2. Hausa (Chadic)

   1. sunthey
   2. kashèkill
   3. kânsùtheir.head

   ‘They have committed suicide.’

   (Kuteva et al. 2019: 224)

In Semitic languages like Arabic, Ge’ez, and Biblical Hebrew, reflexives derive from the word ‘soul’ instead of ‘body’: Arabic nafs‑, Ge’ez nafs‑, and Biblical Hebrew napš‑ reflexive prefixes, for example, all come from a Proto-Semitic root *napš‑ ‘soul’. You can see the classic signs of grammaticalization at work: these reflexive uses have lost their original meaning and become purely grammatical in function. But they also often exist alongside the original word: Arabic retains the word نَفْس *nafs ‘*a soul, a life’ in its original meaning, another example of the divergence during grammaticalization like we encountered earlier.

So while the Ass Camouflage Construction and Attributive Ass Construction in African American English might seem like mere expressive wordplay, both actually illustrate one of the most significant ways that languages change over time (grammaticalization), as well as the cognitive principle driving this particular set of changes (metonymy). Together they’re a fantastic illustration of how our brain’s cognitive efficiency shapes language over time. And who knows, maybe the Ass Camouflage Construction is on its way to becoming a full reflexive! Only time will tell.

📑 References

• Collins, Chris, Simanique Moody & Paul M. Postal. 2008. An AAE Camouflage Construction. Language 84(1). 29–68. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2008.0059.
• Irwin, Patricia. 2015. Expressive meaning in an AAE attributive construction. Language Sciences 50. 12–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2015.01.002.
• Kuteva, Tania, Bernd Heine, Bo Hong, Haiping Long, Heiko Narrog & Seongha Rhee. 2019. World lexicon of grammaticalization. 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press.
• Levine, Robert D. 2010. The ass camouflage construction: Masks as parasitic heads. Language 86(2). 265–301. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.0.0212.