Hip Hop Music and BEV

Paper Summary:

The phenomenon of hip hop has spawned a new way of dressing, acting, and speaking adopted by black young people, as well as an increasing number of young whites, especially males. Hip hop and its music and speech patterns, known as hip hop or rap or gangsta rap, has moved out of the ghettos and into suburban, middle-class neighborhoods, especially among the young males in those neighborhoods. This paper questions whether it is a bona fide language type, such as Black English Vernacular (BEV), in and of itself, or whether it is a dialect of BEV. Also investigated are the vectors by which this speech might have crossed the color divide and why. Finally, how hip hop/rap/gangsta came to be and what it owes to previous black dialects, as well as to African and West Indian influences, are considered. What emerges is a constantly changing dialect that appeals to the same populations that generally cause language change, the lower classes, which start it, and the middle classes, which carry it upward.

Table of Contents
Abstract
Introduction: Statement of Problem
Review of the Literature and Research Questions
Language of the Black Diaspora
Other Cultural Factors
Black English Vernacular Dialects: Africans via the West Indies
Use of "Downmarket" Speech among Britons, White and Black
Is Estuary English Equivalent to BEV Dialects?
Lowest Common Denominator?
Hip-hop Language and Women
Women as Primary Musicians/Speakers of BEV Dialects
Other Voices
Methodology and Results
Appendix

From the Paper:

"Kopano argues, in essence, that in their defiant states, both bebop and rap (hip-hop) artists create a rhetoric that is creative in the verbal and nonverbal mode. Both obviously include, either by contribution or adoption, other lifestyle factors, such as clothing choices. And, by extension, the dialect of Black English each one has engendered is likewise dispersed throughout the Black community, and adopted, at least in some ways, by the White community, particularly by the White males who are arguably attracted to the inherent subversive/aggressive message contained in it."

More papers on Hip Hop Music and BEV:

• Research Paper # 60858 : "Hip Hop Culture and Identity"
• Analytical Essay # 112157 : "Hip-Hop and the White Community"
• Analytical Essay # 114883 : "The Co-Culture of Hip Hop"

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