Hip Hop, Education and Polycentricity

Abstract

Hip hop has been one of the most influential global forms of popular culture among youth during the past two decades (Bucholtz 2011), and it has received increasing attention in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and educational studies. The studies of critical hip hop (language) pedagogies, in particular, has focused on hip hop as a means of drawing out-of-school experiences of language closer to classroom pedagogy and curriculum (Hill 2009; Alim, Ibrahim and Pennycook 2009; Alim 2011). These frameworks often emphasise creative, limitless and counter-hegemonic linguistic practices as a significant part of the pedagogical and political potentials of hip hop culture. In this chapter we focus on the way hip hop practices are appropriated by a group of adolescents in positioning themselves as educationally ambitious. We investigate what local meanings these practices achieve and their relations to wider semiotic models and norms to discuss the interplay between education, activities, and popular cultural resources. Against the background of previous hip hop research, the case study we report from involved some surprising discoveries. The boys we studied formed a rap-group and engaged in various local hip hop events and initiatives led by different mentors. They were certainly creative in enacting streetwise and school-positive personae, but their hip hop literacy and linguistic practices fell short of challenging hegemonic educational norms.