"Keepin' It Real": White Hip‐Hoppers' Discourses of Language, Race, and Authenticity

Abstract

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.

Race and the re-embodied voice in Hollywood film

“…This typification (Agha, 2003) inevitably erases the complexity of white engagement in hip hop (see also Cutler, 2003). Small numbers of working-class white youth certainly participated in hip hop culture from its earliest days due to their friendships with more racially legitimated youth of color, but it is middle-class white teenagers, who adopted hip hop much later and often indirectly through rap music, who are represented as wigger figures.…”

Selfing and othering through categories of race, place, and language among minority youths in Rotterdam, The Netherlands

“…In real life, speakers subvert mainstream categories and constantly define and redefine social categories in processes of selfing and othering (cf. Auer & Dirim 2003, Bucholtz 1999, Cornips & Nortier 2008, Cutler 2003, Hewitt 1986, Hill 1999, Jaspers 2005, Rampton 1999[1995, Sweetland 2002). These processes require extra work as language contact and language mixing increase and speakers increasingly take part in transidiomatic practices (Jacquemet 2005) working with widely varying linguistic repertoires (Blommaert 2003: 608).…”

“…Thus, a social category such as Surinamese, initially thought to be fixed and unproblematic, is in fact constantly subjected to discussion and evaluation (cf. Cutler 2003, Hewitt 1986, Sweetland 2002. The fact that the fieldworker is seen as atypical is interesting because by examining what makes her anomalous, we are able to find out what norms are being reinforced.…”

Musical Cultures: To What Extent is the Language Used in the Song Lyrics of Hip-Hop and Country Music Reflective of and Shaped by Cultural Beliefs and Experiences?

“…(Cutler, 1999a(Cutler, , 1999bPennycook 2003Pennycook , 2007 Are White Hip-Hoppers in America, such as Eminem, or in the U.K., such as Plan B, inauthentic? Eminem addresses this in Yellow Brick Road, where there is recognition of the stereotype with the line "he looked at me like I'm out my mind, shook his head like white boys don't know how to rhyme.…”