Underlining authenticity through the recreolization process in rap music: A case of an in-group answer to an identity threat

Authors

  • Pedro Álvarez Mosquera University of Salamanca Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v9i1.19960

Keywords:

recreolization, language appropriation, in-group bias, identity threat, authenticity, rap

Abstract

Despite its African American roots, there has been a gradual rise of rappers from different ethnic groups, which has placed authenticity, especially at the linguistic level, under the spotlight. In this article, we hypothesize that the recreolization process carried out by African American rappers can be directly connected with the appropriation of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) features by non-African American rappers. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed the use of four AAVE features by three African American rappers and three Caucasian rappers over the past three decades. Our results show the progressively increasing use of the four AAVE features by the African American rappers, as well as their appropriation by the Caucasian rappers to a varying extent. We argue that, from a sociocognitive point of view, the recreolization process constitutes an in-group strategy that enables African American rappers to preserve their distinctiveness as a way of responding to a perceived identity threat.

Author Biography

  • Pedro Álvarez Mosquera, University of Salamanca
    Dr. Pedro Álvarez-Mosquera has been lecturing at the University of Salamanca (Spain) since 2010. During his academic career, Álvarez-Mosquera was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to support his PhD thesis research at the Claremont Colleges (USA, 2009). He has also conducted research abroad with prominent scholars at Radboud University (Holland, 2010), UNISA (South Africa, 2012 and 2013) and University of Pretoria (South Africa, 2014). His main areas of research are sociolinguistics, cognitive sociolinguistics and discourse analysis. Recent publications include Identidad y Language Crossing: El uso de ingles afroamericano por raperos blancos (Peter Lang, 2012) and ‘Delimiting cultural borders: the use of WordSmith Tools to identify cultural differences in language uses by white or black rappers’ (Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, 2013).

Published

2015-06-11

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Álvarez Mosquera, P. (2015). Underlining authenticity through the recreolization process in rap music: A case of an in-group answer to an identity threat. Sociolinguistic Studies, 9(1), 51-70. https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v9i1.19960