This research proposal seeks to investigate the relationship between the rate of slang usage and how it crosses between communities. It is hypothesized that the more that a slang word becomes popularized online, the further it spreads, and the faster it either enters into the long lasting public lexicon, or gets regulated to disuse. Opposed to before there was as much digital communication, when slang was largely spread by conversations between individuals, radio or television, not social media sites which allow for instant communication. This research seeks to understand slang in three parts, the history of the word ‘slang’, how using slang words is an in-group marker, and how slang disseminating online at such a rapid rate erodes the clarity of the in-group which was previously clear to slang users. This research is relevant as slang continues to swiftly spread from living communities, to online spaces, and back into the real world to new groups of people. As new words are created, through new meanings and completely new words being used, these changes can leave a lasting impact on how individuals communicate, which is further encouraged by social media which makes up such a large portion of how individuals communicate daily.

What does it mean to live in anticipation of violence? How can one take action when the opposing force is simultaneously ever-present and unknown? In Eritrea, decades of Italian colonization, British administration, and border-making have determined which bodies can move and which must remain fixed in space. My study examines Eritrean cultural practices as well as questions of embodied knowledge; how movement is restricted, how performance is policed, and ultimately, how the state leverages uncertainty over its populations to create geographies of containment in, through, around, over, and between the body. Using critical discourse analysis, alongside ethnographic interviews, Eritrean literature, media, policy documents, and other forms of visual culture that emerge from the African diaspora, I trace what I call "the waiting state": a form of life suspended between the not-yet and the no-longer. Cultural practices such as traditional coffee ceremonies offer narratives that reveal both the mechanisms and limits of state power. These practices serve as alternative mapping systems, demonstrating how communities navigate state-imposed restrictions through embodied knowledge. Ultimately, this project seeks to contribute to broader understandings of Pan-African thought, from Garveyism to Négritude, by mapping the alternative worlds that emerge when fugitive aesthetics and speculative freedoms collide.