This case study focuses on a white upper middle class New York City teenager who employed linguistic features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). It describes some of these features, discusses their origins, and explores the complex dynamics of identi®cation with hip hop, a youth subculture involving the consumption of rap music, baggy clothes and participation in activities like break dancing, writing grati and rapping.

This study investigates the discursive construction of authenticity among white middle‐class young people in the New York City area who affiliate with hip‐hop. It explores the ways in which hip‐hop mediates the adoption of African American English‐influenced speech by these young people and how this phenomenon complicates traditional sociolinguistic conceptions of identity. There is a discourse within hip‐hop that privileges the urban black street experience. This forces white middle‐class hip‐hoppers whose race and class origins distance them from this socially located space to construct themselves linguistically as authentic via both form and content.

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