Being a complex and blurred concept, an urban speech community is not easy to define. As Labov (1972) puts forth, it may be defined in terms of participation in a set of shared norms, while according to Hymes (1974) “to participate in a speech community is not quite the same as to be a member of it”. As demonstrated by numerous studies in the sociology of music (Frith 1988; Bennet et al. 1993; Starr and Waterman 2003) the analysis of songs, because of their reflexive nature, can offer illuminating insights into cultural values and social attitudes. The aim of the proposed paper is to investigate to what extent a sense of belonging to and/or alienation from a certain urban community may be differently communicated through the lyrics of two different types of modern music, namely rap and pop. These two musical genres make use of different stylistic features which may convey dissimilar images of identity and alterity in the urban milieu. Rap songs, on the one hand, belong to the long-standing Afro-American oral tradition and have always been marked by controversial lyrics which, with their strong socio-political connotation, express urban black America’s rage and discontent. Pop songs, on the other hand, encompass a variety of socio-political contexts and often convey the ordinary man’s concern with everyday problems, which may include the sense of community and individuality in the urban setting. The present study analyses a corpus of around fifty songs composed in the last decades and dealing with the author’s attitude towards urban milieus. Adopting a post-Labovian approach, in other words assuming self-perception to be a cogent factor discriminating between participation and membership, I will focus my attention on elements which might prove to be essential for membership to occur, in an attempt to explore how membership can be said to be achieved rather than what membership is. The analysis is pragmatic rather than structural, because interaction between the author and the listener is one of the most distinctive features of songs as a genre. The stylistic approach aims to highlight how linguistic and rhetorical strategies, such as rhyming, repetition, alliteration, metaphors, metonymy may convey the author’s feelings towards his/her urban background, offering examples of how differently the same city, Los Angeles or New York for instance, may be viewed by a rapper and a pop-singer respectively.

“Sometimes I feel like my only friend...”: identity and alterity in urban milieus through song lyrics

ATTOLINO, Paola
2007-01-01

Abstract

Being a complex and blurred concept, an urban speech community is not easy to define. As Labov (1972) puts forth, it may be defined in terms of participation in a set of shared norms, while according to Hymes (1974) “to participate in a speech community is not quite the same as to be a member of it”. As demonstrated by numerous studies in the sociology of music (Frith 1988; Bennet et al. 1993; Starr and Waterman 2003) the analysis of songs, because of their reflexive nature, can offer illuminating insights into cultural values and social attitudes. The aim of the proposed paper is to investigate to what extent a sense of belonging to and/or alienation from a certain urban community may be differently communicated through the lyrics of two different types of modern music, namely rap and pop. These two musical genres make use of different stylistic features which may convey dissimilar images of identity and alterity in the urban milieu. Rap songs, on the one hand, belong to the long-standing Afro-American oral tradition and have always been marked by controversial lyrics which, with their strong socio-political connotation, express urban black America’s rage and discontent. Pop songs, on the other hand, encompass a variety of socio-political contexts and often convey the ordinary man’s concern with everyday problems, which may include the sense of community and individuality in the urban setting. The present study analyses a corpus of around fifty songs composed in the last decades and dealing with the author’s attitude towards urban milieus. Adopting a post-Labovian approach, in other words assuming self-perception to be a cogent factor discriminating between participation and membership, I will focus my attention on elements which might prove to be essential for membership to occur, in an attempt to explore how membership can be said to be achieved rather than what membership is. The analysis is pragmatic rather than structural, because interaction between the author and the listener is one of the most distinctive features of songs as a genre. The stylistic approach aims to highlight how linguistic and rhetorical strategies, such as rhyming, repetition, alliteration, metaphors, metonymy may convey the author’s feelings towards his/her urban background, offering examples of how differently the same city, Los Angeles or New York for instance, may be viewed by a rapper and a pop-singer respectively.
2007
9788884673947
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11386/1662036
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