Assessing hip-hop discourse: Linguistic realness and styling
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Valentin Werner
Valentin Werner is assistant professor of English and Historical Linguistics at the University of Bamberg, Germany. He mainly works in the areas of applied and variational linguistics, focusing on the language of pop culture, the corpus-based analysis of learner language, and the corpus- and questionnaire-based study of varieties of English. He has published two books on the present perfect (UBP, 2014; Mouton de Gruyter, 2016) and a volume on the language of pop culture (Routledge, 2018).
Abstract
This study provides a corpus-linguistic take on hip-hop discourse (as represented in rap), relating to one of the most influential cultural mass movements to date. To this end, a custom-built corpus of lyrics by US-American rap artists (LYRAP) was compiled, containing performed hip-hop discourse over a 25-year period. This material is used to test the alignment of hip-hop discourse with African American English in terms of morphosyntax, and to determine the amount of styling present in the lyrics. In addition, a comparative perspective with pop lyrics (as represented in the LYPOP corpus) is established, and highly characteristic lexical and discourse features of hip-hop discourse are identified. The analyses suggest that “linguistic realness” (in terms of conveying a street-conscious identity) is created on multiple structural levels, but that different artists style their lyrics to various extents to achieve this realness, and that a complete congruence of African American English with hip-hop discourse cannot be traced.
About the author
Valentin Werner is assistant professor of English and Historical Linguistics at the University of Bamberg, Germany. He mainly works in the areas of applied and variational linguistics, focusing on the language of pop culture, the corpus-based analysis of learner language, and the corpus- and questionnaire-based study of varieties of English. He has published two books on the present perfect (UBP, 2014; Mouton de Gruyter, 2016) and a volume on the language of pop culture (Routledge, 2018).
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Kristy Beers Fägersten, Fabian Vetter, three anonymous reviewers, and Srikant Sarangi for helpful advice on the content and structure of this paper. First ideas were discussed at the “Pop culture and linguistics” workshop featuring as part of the fourth meeting of the International Society for the Linguistics of English (English in a Multilingual World: Challenges and Perspectives) held in Poznań, Poland, in September 2016. Travel to this meeting was supported by a mobility grant provided by the Bavarian Academic Center for Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (BAYHOST).
Appendix
A
Overview of song and token numbers for LYRAP artists.
| Artist | n songs | n tokens |
|---|---|---|
| 50 Cent | 288 | 147,684 |
| Drake | 209 | 103,886 |
| Eminem | 279 | 190,719 |
| Jay Z | 263 | 151,283 |
| Kanye West | 161 | 80,938 |
| Lil’ Wayne | 643 | 350,123 |
| Ludacris | 158 | 86,270 |
| Nas | 263 | 146,099 |
| Nicki Minaj | 181 | 75,914 |
| Notorious BIG. | 88 | 51,398 |
| Snoop Dogg | 311 | 161,611 |
| T.I. | 219 | 134,059 |
| Tupac | 246 | 164,063 |
| Tyga | 253 | 111,666 |
| Wiz Khalifa | 349 | 143,930 |
Appendix B
List of morphosyntactic features used for the characterization of HHD.
| Feature | Source(s) | Area |
|---|---|---|
| Me instead of I in coordinate subjects | eWAVE 7 | pronouns |
| Regularized reflexives paradigm | eWAVE 11 | pronouns |
| Forms or phrases for the second person plural pronoun other than you | eWAVE 34 | pronouns |
| Associative plural marked by postposed and them/them all/dem | eWAVE 52 | noun phrase |
| Plural marker ’em | Lüdtke (2007) | noun phrase |
| Dem/them for demonstrative those | eWAVE 68 | noun phrase |
| They for their | Smitherman (2000) | noun phrase |
| Double comparatives and superlatives | eWAVE 78 | noun phrase |
| Regularized comparison strategies: extension of synthetic marking | eWAVE 79 | noun phrase |
| Regularized comparison strategies: extension of analytic marking | eWAVE 80 | noun phrase |
| Addition of s to indicate habituality | Jansen (2012) | tense & aspect |
| Invariant be as habitual marker | eWAVE 90 | tense & aspect |
| Future marker gon(na) | Smitherman (2000); Edwards and Ash (2004) | tense & aspect |
| Completive/perfect done | Edwards (1998); eWAVE 104 | tense & aspect |
| Future marker finna/fitna/fidna | Jansen (2012) | tense & aspect |
| Anterior/perfective been/bin | Lüdtke (2007); eWAVE 111 | tense & aspect |
| Here go/there go in a non-movement sense | Jansen (2012) | tense & aspect |
| Double modals | Lüdtke (2007); eWAVE 121 | modality |
| Contracted modals (modal + to/have) woulda/coulda/mighta/liketa/posedta | Lüdtke (2007) | modality |
| Multiple negation/negative concord | Aleshinskaya (2013); eWAVE 154 | negation |
| Ain’t but/don’t but for only | Lüdtke (2007) | negation |
| Ain’t as negator | eWAVE 155–157 | negation |
| Invariant don’t | eWAVE 158 | negation |
| Invariant present tense forms due to zero marking for the third person singular | eWAVE 170 | agreement |
| Existential/presentational there’s/there is/there was with plural subjects | eWAVE 172 | agreement |
| Variant forms of dummy subject there in existential clauses | eWAVE 173 | agreement |
| Copula absence before progressive | eWAVE 174 | agreement |
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Rhetorical strategies of political persuasion: The play of irrealis and realis meaning in re/aligning readers in newspaper editorials
- Peer responses to self-disclosures in group counseling
- The distant “gaze” on academic mentoring
- Assessing hip-hop discourse: Linguistic realness and styling
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Rhetorical strategies of political persuasion: The play of irrealis and realis meaning in re/aligning readers in newspaper editorials
- Peer responses to self-disclosures in group counseling
- The distant “gaze” on academic mentoring
- Assessing hip-hop discourse: Linguistic realness and styling
