"Keepin' It Real": White Hip‐Hoppers' Discourses of Language, Race, and Authenticity

Abstract

This study investigates the discursive construction of authenticity among white middle‐class young people in the New York City area who affiliate with hip‐hop. It explores the ways in which hip‐hop mediates the adoption of African American English‐influenced speech by these young people and how this phenomenon complicates traditional sociolinguistic conceptions of identity. There is a discourse within hip‐hop that privileges the urban black street experience. This forces white middle‐class hip‐hoppers whose race and class origins distance them from this socially located space to construct themselves linguistically as authentic via both form and content.