Aggressively feminine

Abstract

This article builds on previous research on white male cross-racial linguistic appropriations of blackness by considering similar appropriations by white female characters in film. Specifically, it examines how such characters use semiotic resources of hip-hop, particularly its language and music, to perform an aggressive femininity that is simultaneously raced, classed, sexualized and gendered. While these performances are racially complex because they push against the boundaries of US racial categories, they also erase the distinctions between black, Latino, gang and hip-hop cultures. Furthermore, in using hypersexualized blackness to construct a white female hip-hop and/or gangster identity, black females become invisible in these films. The study demonstrates that the mediatized representation of white hip-hop relies on problematic ideologies of both race and gender

‘First things first, I'm the realest’: Linguistic appropriation, white privilege, and the hip‐hop persona of Iggy Azalea

“…In these videos, the visual, intended to be seen as very white, serves to highlight the contrast with the audio, intended to be heard as unequivocally black. Moreover, like language in the films discussed by Bucholtz and Lopez () and Lopez (), themes of Iggy's music center on stereotyped notions of African American life and hip‐hop culture: (hyper‐)sexuality, violence, drugs, and lavish displays of wealth. As such, she reifies the ideologies of essentialized blackness in listeners’ minds, drawing on readily available and popular notions of what it means to be African American.…”

“…Such questions call up discourses and politics surrounding relationships between white women and African American men, such as are enacted in the ‘war council’ scene of Spike Lee's Jungle Fever , and powerfully articulated in Cassandra Lane's essay Skinned (). This is a theme that Lopez () additionally takes up in her analysis of white female film characters performing hip‐hop identities.…”

Girls strike back

“…e.g. Lopez 2014;Bernhardsson and Bogren 2012). Like other feminist scholars on language and discourse we thus engage in finding ways to operationalise intersectionality in the analysis of dense, multimodal media texts.…”

“…Lazar 2006;Gill 2011;Lopez 2014). Here, in the vein of the most recent research on language, gender and the media (e.g.…”

“…Here, in the vein of the most recent research on language, gender and the media (e.g. Lopez 2014;Lünenborg & Fürsich 2014), we use the notion of intersectionality as a lens to unravel the simultaneous presence and interdependence of multiple differences from the point of view of their discursive production. Drawing on multimodal discourse analytical approaches (Blommaert 2005;van Leeuwen 2005;Scollon & Scollon 2004;Pietikäinen & Mäntynen 2009) we view language more broadly as discourse, which for us comprises besides spoken and written 'language' also various other kinds of semiotic resources, such as clothing, hairstyle, colour choices, and more.…”