Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

Nationalism, Identity and Popular Culture 73
Slyme’s use of ‘Yo Bringing that, Yo Bring your style’ (see Pennycook,
2003, 2007) or Malaysian Too Phat’s ‘Hip hop be connectin’ Kuala Lumpur
with LB/Hip hop be rockin’ up towns laced wit’ LV/Ain’t necessary to
roll in ice rimmed M3’s and be blingin’/Hip hop be bringin’ together
emcees’. It is already worth observing, however, that while Too Phat here
use African-American-styled lyrics (be connectin’ and so forth) and lace
their lyrics with references to consumerist cultural products (LV/M3s),
they are at the same time distancing themselves from this world through
their insistence that hip hop is about connecting MCs across time and
space rather than the accoutrements of bling culture (ostentatious consumerism
and display of wealth, especially large jewelry). Meanwhile,
more complex mixes of English with local languages can be found in Rip
Slyme’s lyrics when they describe themselves as ‘ Freaky
Japanese’ ‘Freaky mixed Japanese from Kinshichoo’, literally: ‘from
Kinshichoo’ (a suburb of Tokyo, written in Japanese kanji) ‘Freaky’ (in
English), ‘double’ (the word ‘double’ written in katakana, used to refer to
people of ethnically mixed background) and Japanese (using the English
word, written in Roman script). Korean singer Tasha meanwhile uses
codemixed lyrics: ‘Yo if I fall two times I come back on my third
and that’s my word’. The lyrics in Korean, meaning ‘I never give
up’, complement the English meaning, but what Tasha achieves here is not
just to move between languages, creating a set of new meanings by doing
so, but also she moves in and out of different fl ows. By artfully integrating
the fl ows of English and Korean rap styles in a bilingual performance, she
presents English and Korean in new relationships.
‘Now lisnen up por pabor makinig 2004 rap sa Pinas yumayanig lalong
lumalakas never madadaig’, rap GHOST 13 (Guys Have Own Style to
Talk – 1 group, 3 rappers) from Zamboanga in western Mindanao in the
Philippines. GHOST 13 use what they call ‘halo-halong lenguaje’ (mixed
language), which may include Tagalog, Visaya, Cebuano, Chavacano and
Tausug, as well as English. In these lines, for example, they mix English
(Now lisnen up/never), Chavacano (por pabor) and Tagalog (makinig . . .
rap sa Pinas yumayanig lalong lumalakas . . . madadaig): ‘Please listen to
2004 Philippines rap getting stronger and never beaten’. And they are
insistent that, in global hip hop style, they ‘represent’ Zamboanga, and at
the same time are not imitative: ‘Listen everyone we are the only one rap
group in the land who represent zamboanga man!/Guyz have own style,
style to talk a while di kami mga wanna [we are not imitators] because we
have own identity’.
Zamboanga, known as the City of Flowers, is home to Zamboangueño,
one of several Spanish-based creole languages in the Philippines, usually
grouped together under the general term Chavacano (from the Spanish
chabacano ‘vulgar’): ‘Chavacano de Zamboanga siento porsiento . . . kami
magdidilig sa city of fl ower’ – in Chavacano, Tagalog and English: ‘One