Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

Nationalism, Identity and Popular Culture 83
Tasha (no date) Hiphop Album. Korea: Gemini Bobos Entertainment.
Too Phat (2002) 360°. Malaysia: EMI.
Notes
1. This phrase, meaning Black, White, Arab (Beur derives from the common
verlan, inversion of the word ‘Arabe’), is a reference to the opposition that
emerged to the French hyper-nationalism of the red, white and blue of the
tricolor. Black, Blanc, Beur presents an alternative, multiracial, multilingual,
multicultural vision to the monolingual – cultural – racial view ascribed to by
French nationalists who cling to the traditions of the red, white and blue.
2. These interviews were part of two research projects on global and local hip
hop between 2003 and 2008. For further details, see Pennycook (2007).
Suggestions for further reading
Alim, H.S. (2006) Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip Hop Culture. London &
New York: Routledge.
Alim’s work brings together a close sociolinguistic analysis of language in Hip
Hop in the United States with an interest in language and education.
Alim, H.S., Ibrahim, A. and Pennycook, A. (eds) (2009) Global Linguistic Flows: Hip
Hop Cultures, Youth Identities, and the Politics of Language. New York: Routledge,
213–230.
This book has a wide range of contemporary work looking at hip hop (as well as
education) from sociolinguistic perspectives. Contexts range from Hong Kong to
Brazil, from Germany to Montreal.
Blommaert, J. (2008) Grassroots Literacy: Writing, Identity and Voice in Central Africa.
London: Routledge.
Jan Blommaert is another scholar who combines ethnography, text analysis, popular
culture and politics. In this book he looks at the relationship between globalization
and the writing of ordinary people.
Pennycook, A. (2007) Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows. London: Routledge.
My own book on this topic covers a lot of the ground discussed in this chapter, and
like Alim’s work, attempts to bring together sociolinguistics, cultural studies and
pedagogy. It takes a broad focus on the global spread of hip hop and the global
spread of English, and tries to show the complex interrelations between the two.
Rampton, B. (2006) Language in Late Modernity: Interaction in an Urban School.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ben Rampton’s work, looking in close detail at the language of kids in an urban
school, has been a cornerstone for fastidious research methodology as well as
innovative thinking about language use beyond narrow ascriptions of identity.
References
Akindes, F.Y. (2001) Sudden rush: Na Mele Paleoleo (Hawaiian Rap) as liberatory
discourse. Discourse 23 (1), 82–98.
Alim, H.S. (2006) Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip Hop Culture. London &
New York: Routledge.
Alim, H.S. (2009) Creating ‘An empire within an empire’: Critical hip hop language
pedagogies and the role of sociolinguistics. In H.S. Alim, A. Ibrahim and