Assessing hip-hop discourse: Linguistic realness and styling

Abstract

AbstractThis 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.