Language, Localization, and the Real: Hip-Hop and the Global Spread of Authenticity

Abstract

This article addresses the relationship between the call for authenticity, its relocalization in other contexts, and the use of English. Hip-hop forces us to confront some of the conflictual discourses of authenticity and locality, from those that insist that African American hip-hop is the only real variety and that all other forms are inauthentic deviations, to those that insist that to be authentic one needs to stick to one's "own" cultural and linguistic traditions. The global spread of hip-hop authenticity provides an example of the tension between a cultural dictate to keep it real and the processes that make this dependent on local contexts, languages, cultures, and understandings of the real. Looking at various contexts of localization, this article suggests that the horizons of significance that constitute what counts as locally real open up useful perspectives on the local and global use of languages. The multiple realities of global hip-hop challenge ortholinguistic practices and ideologies, relocating language in new ways that both reflect and produce local language practices.

Bilingual intercultural education and Andean hip hop: Transnational sites for indigenous language and identity

“…The symbolic importance of Aymara in hip hop differs markedly from the Bolivian higher-education context where Spanish is supported by preexisting ideologies of language prestige. In contrast, hip hop internationally tends to challenge what Alastair Pennycook calls the "ortholinguistic practices" of standard language ideologies (Pennycook 2007). Wayna Rap's use of Aymara is both a countervalorization to racist discourses denigrating everything Indigenous and also consistent with the emphasis hip hop cultures across the globe place on "keepin' it real," being true to one's community, self, and roots (Morgan 2005).…”

Transcultural Performance

“…It is for this reason that efforts by scholars such as fairclough (2006), higgins (2009), Machin and van Leeuwen (2007), and Pennycook (2007) to analyze the role of local practices in globalized spaces continues to be necessary to move the conversation further away from a unidirectional conception of globalization. In the context of globalization, this scholarship recognizes the actions and reactions of the so-called 'periphery' and how they contest, assume, and reinterpret cultural and linguistic importations from the 'center'.…”

“…although few applied linguists have taken up the term 'glocalization', the role of the local in globalizing processes and practices is a large component of recent scholarship in applied linguistics, particularly regarding the interplay of English and indigenous languages, as seen in canagarajah (2013), higgins (2009), and Pennycook (2007). These and other scholars have discussed the complexity of daily life for local language learners and users, who are often in close contact with several cultures and countries, often simultaneously.…”

Indigenous Hip-hop: overcoming marginality, encountering constraints

“…A distinct discourse of locality and authenticity surrounds hip-hop (Pennycook 2007). For many black American youth in the 1980s and 1990s, disenfranchised with life in urban ghettos, hip-hop enabled articulation of oral stories confronting daily life on the streets; gang-related violence, extortion and drug dealing.…”