Multilingual Codeswitching in Quebec Rap: Poetry, Pragmatics and Performativity

Abstract

Quebec rap lyrics stand out on the world Hip-Hop scene by virtue of the ease and rapidity with which performers in this multilingual, multiethnic youth community codeswitch, frequently among three or more languages or language varieties (usually over a French and/or English base) in the same song. We construct a framework for understanding ‘artistic code-mixing’ in Quebec Hip-Hop, which may involve languages rappers do not profess to speak fully and upon which they have no ethnic ‘claim’. Lyrics were analysed according to their functions in respect to pragmatics (rapper signature, vocative, discourse-marking), poetics (facilitating internal rhyme), and performing multiple identities. Analysis was by origin of lexical item, type of switch (lexical, morphological, syntactic, phonological), and discourse function (getting attention, rhyming). Language choices made involve both codeswitching and the choice of languages themselves. Switching strategies perform functions of both ‘globalisation’ and ‘localisation’, and is exploited by individuals in different ways, but are fundamentally linked by a positioning of multilingualism as a natural and desirable condition. This study is the first to explore Hip-Hop codeswitching in the linguistic-sociopolitical context of post-Bill-101 Quebec. It illuminates a new way in which Québécois youth are challenging official definitions of ethnic and speech communities.