Abstract
The study of people’s response to adversity acquires substantially different connotations in the South African context because of the heavy legacy of apartheid. This article explores the construction of the notion of resilience through the oral narrative production of the most prominent conscious rappers that emerged in the 1980s in South Africa, namely Prophets of Da City and Black Noise. By means of a corpus approach, our analysis with AntConc revealed that resilience is intrinsically connected to the historical sociopolitical struggle of the black group. In building this notion, results show how the parallel emergence of an oppressive other, the white group, plays a fundamental role. Relevant to our study, the affirmation of their black identity appears to act as an effective way of underpinning their possibility of resurgence. Furthermore, the objective analysis of rappers’ linguistic choices in their lyrics underlines their strategic use of personal pronouns, ethnic labels and other contextual-loaded terms whilst conveying their messages and communicating with their audience. These results both demonstrate the contribution of rap music in construction of a specific notion of resilience and highlight the effectiveness of this methodological approach, opening the floor to comparative studies.
Highlights
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This article explores the construction of the notion of resilience through the oral narrative production of the most prominent conscious rappers that emerged in the 1980s in South Africa, namely Prophets of Da City and Black Noise
The in-depth study of the narrative oral production of prominent conscious rappers that emerged in the ‘80s in South Africa, namely Prophets of Da City (POC) and BN, highlighted the topicality of resilience in their lyrics
Summary
Read online: Scan this QR code with your smart phone or mobile device to read online. The objective analysis of rappers’ linguistic choices in their lyrics underlines their strategic use of personal pronouns, ethnic labels and other contextual-loaded terms whilst conveying their messages and communicating with their audience These results both demonstrate the contribution of rap music in construction of a specific notion of resilience and highlight the effectiveness of this methodological approach, opening the floor to comparative studies. As rap music started to spread internationally and returned to Africa, we can envision rappers as relevant social channellers of sentiments and narratives of resilience in that they could give voice to the reality in their communities In this regard, just like African griots, rappers would be linguistically competent and lyrically skilled witnesses of the events that affect their communities; and witty transmitters of enlightenment and truth. Reviewers have suggested using stylometric analysis or stylistics as an alternative description of our approach
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