The Language of Hip Hop: A Racial Bridge? African American English (AAE) as Interracial Communication

This study questions whether rap - the musical voice of Hip Hop culture - is a form of interracial communication. What makes rap music sound so peculiar is the use of African American English (AAE). Reportedly, in the book Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip Hop Culture (2006), linguistic anthropologist H. Samy Alim describes the linguistic practices of US Hip Hop as both deriving from and expanding from African American English. In light of this, rap can be examined not just as a musical but also as a speech genre. Even though typically African American, as a language and cultural form rap has enjoyed such a great mainstream success that also non-Black ethnicities have started to seek access to this practice. According to Toni Mitchell, Hip Hop and rap should not be viewed simply as an expression of African American culture. In fact, they have become vehicles for global youth affiliations and tools for reworking identities all over the world (2001, 1-2). During the 1990s Whites were drawn to Hip Hop culture and language and to the rhetorical power of rap music. Exactly starting from this time-period, White rappers began adopting a wide range of AAE structural patterns in their lyrics. The language practice of White rappers who want to affiliate with Hip Hop culture is a phenomenon that has not received a great deal of attention. It is precisely this lacuna of scholarly dialogue that this research tries to fill. For White rappers to use AAE and engage in a Black genre is not only a totally unexpected linguistic behavior, but also a worth-researching paradox. This is especially true if we consider two aspects: first, that AAE in mainstream White U.S. society is stigmatized as an inferior and ungrammatical variety; second, because White people and institutions traditionally figure prominently as objects of disdain and anger in politically-oriented Hip Hop music from the 1990s (see Public Enemy, NWA, KRS-One, Ice-T and others). Therefore, the aim is to shed light on the underestimated potential of such a linguistic behavior, which might provide insightful considerations on rap as a cultural and linguistic practice where racial divides are reimagined.