You Know What It Is: Learning Words Through Listening to Hip-Hop
You Know What It Is: Learning Words through Listening to Hip-Hop Paula Chesley* Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Abstract Music listeners have difficulty correctly understanding and remembering song lyrics. However, results from the present study support the hypothesis that young adults can learn African-American English (AAE) vocabulary from listening to hip- hop music. Non-African-American participants first gave free-response definitions to AAE vocabulary items, after which they answered demographic questions as well as questions addressing their social networks, their musical preferences, and their knowledge of popular culture. Results from the survey show a positive association between the number of hip-hop artists listened to and AAE comprehension vocabulary scores. Additionally, participants were more likely to know an AAE vocabulary item if the hip-hop artists they listen to use the word in their song lyrics. Together, these results suggest that young adults can acquire vocabulary through exposure to hip-hop music, a finding relevant for research on vocabulary acquisition, the construction of adolescent and adult identities, and the adoption of lexical innovations. Citation: Chesley P (2011) You Know What It Is: Learning Words through Listening to Hip-Hop. PLoS ONE 6(12): e28248. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0028248 Editor: Petter Holme, Umea˚ University, Sweden Received July 7, 2011; Accepted November 4, 2011; Published December 21, 2011 Copyright: ß 2011 Paula Chesley. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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