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UNIVERSITÁ DEGLI STUDI DI VERONA DIPARTIMENTO DI LINGUE E LETTERATURE STRANIERE SCUOLA DI DOTTORATO DI LINGUE, LETTERATURE E CULTURE STRANIERE MODERNE DOTTORATO DI RICERCA IN LINGUE E LETTERATURE ANGLO-AMERICANE CICLO XXIX /ANNO 2014 THE LANGUAGE OF HIP HOP: A RACIAL BRIDGE? African American English (AAE) as Interracial Communication L-LIN/11 Coordinatore: Prof.ssa Rosanna Gorris Tutor: Prof. Roberto Cagliero Dottorando: Dott.ssa Camilla Fascina Quest’opera è stata rilasciata con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione – non commerciale Non opere derivate 3.0 Italia . Per leggere una copia della licenza visita il sito web: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/it/ Attribuzione Devi riconoscere una menzione di paternità adeguata, fornire un link alla licenza e indicare se sono state effettuate delle modifiche. Puoi fare ciò in qualsiasi maniera ragionevole possibile, ma non con modalità tali da suggerire che il licenziante avalli te o il tuo utilizzo del materiale. NonCommerciale Non puoi usare il materiale per scopi commerciali. Non opere derivate —Se remixi, trasformi il materiale o ti basi su di esso, non puoi distribuire il materiale così modificato. The Language of Hip Hop: A Racial Bridge? African American English (AAE) as Interracial Communication Camilla Fascina Tesi di Dottorato Verona, 16 Maggio 2017 3 Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful to my supervisor, Professor Roberto Cagliero (University of Verona) who initiated me into the field of African American studies and guided my research. I’d like to thank Professor Salikoko S. Mufwene (University of Chicago) - renowned linguist worldwide and a major expert in African American English – for believing in my project and for giving me essential linguistic references. Special thanks to Professor Hiram Smith (Pennsylvania State University) who, while travelling between America and Europe, always found the time to comment on my ideas and send me materials. He was of immense support in my understanding of African American Language and culture, helping me out with the lyrics during long hours of skype calls and conversations. I’d also like to thank Professor Andrea Carosso (University of Torino) for sharing his knowledge on African American music with great passion and for giving me detailed historical explanations on White’s appropriation of Black music, and on Rhythm and Blues. Many thanks to Professor Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman (Brandeis University) for commenting on my research in its early stages and for providing me with essential guidelines to carry on my project. My truest thanks to all the people I met during the semester at the Freie Universität (Berlin), especially to Professor Rebecca Brückmann, Professor Martin Lüthe and Professor Ulla Haselstein. I’d also like to thank Angelika Krieser, Head Librarian of the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies of the Freie Universität for her endless patience in initiating me into all the Library’s spaces and shelves and for giving me a private and comfortable workplace within the Library. I also thank my colleagues at the University of Chicago, especially Caressa Franklin for her insightful explanations on the practice of Signifying and Neal Jochmann for his suggestions on rap songs and artists. Special thanks to Mazi Mutafa, executive Director of Words Beats & Life, for inviting me to talk about Hip Hop at the Conference “Teach- In: Remixing the Art of Social Change” at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Thank you to my family who has supported me throughout my PhD. It has been an amazing journey. 4 INDEX INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................... 6 Terminology ........................................................................................................................................ 14 CHAPTER 1 AFRICAN AMERICAN ENGLISH ............................................................................................................. 18 1.1 African American English: Linguistic Prejudice and White Supremacist Thinking .......................... 18 1.2 The Language of Rappers: AAE - Origin and Features ................................................................... 34 Origin: An Open Debate ................................................................................................................ 35 Features of African American English ........................................................................................... 37 African Imprint ............................................................................................................................... 39 Distinctive Phonological Features of AAE ..................................................................................... 41 Distinctive Grammatical (Morphological and Syntactic) Features of AAE .................................. 44 CHAPTER 2 RAP IN ACTION: SIGNIFYIN(G) and ANTI - LANGUAGE ......................................................................... 52 2.1 Hip Hop Culture and the Art of Rap ............................................................................................... 52 2.2 The African American Oral Tradition of Signifyin(g) ....................................................................... 61 2.3 Signifyin(g) in Slavery times ........................................................................................................... 72 2.4 Signifyin(g) Rappers ....................................................................................................................... 74 2.5 Semantic Inversion ........................................................................................................................ 77 2.6 Anti-Language ............................................................................................................................... 78 CHAPTER 3 NIGGA: A HISTORICAL, LINGUISTIC AND SEMANTIC OVERVIEW .......................................................... 88 3.1 Nigg(-a) and Nigg(-er) .................................................................................................................... 91 3.2 The ‘Recency Illusion’ Theory and the Role of Non-Rhotic Speech (r-lessness) in American Southern Dialects ..................................................................................................... 94 3.3 A Matter of Pronunciation: Why People Think that the Schwa Pronunciation is a Typically Black One - The Great Black Migration ................................................................................................. 96 3.4 A Matter of Semantics: Multifarious Meanings Attached to Nigga and Nigger ............................. 97 3.5 Nigga in Hip Hop ......................................................................................................................... 109 5 3.6 Appendix: The term “Negro” ....................................................................................................... 119 CHAPTER 4 WHITE RAPPERS CROSSING TO AAE: MAKING A BRIDGE OR MAKING A BREAK? ........................................................................................ 122 4.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 123 4.2 Anti-White sentiments in Hip Hop ............................................................................................... 126 4.3 Black Empires White Desires: Cultural Appropriation? Musical Theft? ........................................ 142 4.4 Method ....................................................................................................................................... 147 4.5 Results ......................................................................................................................................... 153 4.6 Discussion ................................................................................................................................... 157 Eminem ........................................................................................................................................ 160 Paul Wall ...................................................................................................................................... 166 Iggy Azalea ................................................................................................................................... 172 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................... 184 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................................. 190 Sitography ......................................................................................................................................... 235 Filmography ...................................................................................................................................... 244 Artists ................................................................................................................................................ 245 6 INTRODUCTION Hip Hop youth battle through the theoretical houses of Michel Foucault, Mikhail Bakhtin, Judith Butler, Antonio Gramsci, Jürgen Habermas, shouting out, testing, and challenging theories and philosophies, trying to bring it back to their young bodies in motion, trying to