Hip hop identity in a township reality. - Poppunt

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neologisms that are invented to guarantee clear and unambiguous communication in order to avoid misapprehensions. These specific words generally do not belong to the common vocabulary of a language and are mostly not known by people who are not part of this particular group. Nevertheless, a jargon is not used to deliberately exclude non-members of a group from the conversation, but it is more a consequence of the necessity to be able to deal with the more technical peculiarities of a given field (Wikipedia). Not only professionals of a certain field make use of jargons, other examples are criminal organisations or academics in general. Often slang is negatively perceived by the other members of the society for different reasons. Slang appears mostly in the language of societal groups with a low status, concretely meaning that they might have little power or responsibility. Next to that, slang is often taboo and is unlikely to be used by people of high status. Even more, slang is often negatively perceived by the other members of the society, because it often concerns words in the field of sexuality that are regarded upon as offensive and insulting, and used by rather young people (Papeleu: 17). This is a rather simplistic view that ignores the euphemistical tendency that is present in slang, because it provides a whole range of words to describe certain acts, organs or persons that make it possible to avoid explicit terms when this would be improper or inappropriate in a certain situation (Papeleu: 18). Slang is rather loaded with different meanings, which concretely means that different meanings are brought together in one word or expression (Papeleu: 18). To end, slang can be considered a sociolect, because, as we have seen, it is determined by social determiners such as class, age, profession, social status and alike. For youths, slang is a way of giving that extra dimension to their language, that makes it deviating from the standard, through which they can differentiate themselves from the society at large. Examples We will go on by providing a list of most of the hip hop slang words that our interviewees used during the interviews. We have used The (online) Rap Dictionary to look up the meanings, but we will only display the meanings in which our interviewees have used these words. To show that our interviewees actually used this slang, we will give a few examples for every word, from as many interviewees as possible, to show that it was widely spread.
- to battle: to compete, usually freestyle rapping, sometimes breakdancing or graffiti. 50 Cent is battling with whoever, Ja Rule I think. (Full Stop) It’s break time, you get cats battling each other, tryna test their strengths. (X) - beef: an argument or discrepancy with another individual or group of individuals. These gangstas have a lot of beef. (Full Stop) ‘Cause my mother and father had a beef. (Crosby) I don’t have a beef with them. (El Nino) - bling bling: jewellery such as chains, watches, bracelets, rings, earrings, etc. It’s not more about bling bling on us. (Mayja) He raps about bling bling chains. (X) - cat: a person. Coincidently I saw some other cats (referring to men). (Full Stop) So those cats expressing themselves. (Bad Luck) And then these cats from Khayelitsha… (X) - cipher: an informal gathering of rappers where they can show and prove their skills. He’s from around, we cipher together, we battle together. (El Nino) But you do get ciphers, but not in Gugs anymore. (X) - crew: a group, band or clique. I was actually influenced by local people like local crews like U.N.I.C. and Driemanskap. (Full Stop) Why don’t we like form up a crew? (El Nino) Yeah, Mayja is in my crew. (X) - to dig: to like; or to understand. I mean I usually dig some of their lyrics and I’ll be like wow. (Mayja) Yeah, I dig them, I respect them. (X) She’s so nice, even guys dig her. (Mayja) - to diss: short for disrespecting, to insult or thwart in a social manner. You can’t go there and perform a track that’s politics dissing on the politicians. (Full Stop) And they’re writing tracks to each other and dissing one another. (Full Stop) Then he will start dissing his mother in the next track. (Bad Luck)
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Universiteit Gent Faculteit Lettere
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3. Conclusion 52 4. GANGSTA RAP (KD
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music they make). The concept of id
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the Hoofweg Primary School in Wesba
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There is no further message in the
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adopted it for the name of their gr
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songs, he will perform his own acts
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where the many townships arose. The
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were forced to move during this per
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protests; many people were killed c
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The unemployment rate is very high,
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apartheid state imposed before 1990
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particularly interesting that we fo
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100% perfectly so I wouldn’t be e
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y writing a song in English in orde
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If he does not understand the langu
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to more than just his people. Not o
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2. Findings When we examine the rep
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Page 39 and 40: The reason why we discuss the topic
Page 41 and 42: Secondly, he tries to motivate yout
Page 43 and 44: apartheid, somebody that passed awa
Page 45 and 46: narrative. As such, the songs are e
Page 47 and 48: “That’s what we doing / make su
Page 49 and 50: man I’ve got guns / yeah right sh
Page 51 and 52: nigga who was like you know not an
Page 53 and 54: “More and more of the kids are re
Page 55 and 56: They are giving advice through the
Page 57 and 58: audience, in the mid nineties, it h
Page 59 and 60: will try to reach the same luxury,
Page 61 and 62: “But it’s being portrayed by th
Page 63 and 64: ecause it suggests it is all right,
Page 65 and 66: In this part we assess the given an
Page 67 and 68: Our interviewees do see a bigger pi
Page 69 and 70: 2.1. Generally accepted opinion and
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Page 73 and 74: Code-switched speech itself by the
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Page 79 and 80: 1998a: 272) states that three dimen
Page 81 and 82: about seven million black second-la
Page 83 and 84: for example the features of BSAE ar
Page 85 and 86: 2) Omission of articles How many pe
Page 87: Gough distinguish, but that did not
Page 91 and 92: Those guys that I was rolling with.
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Page 95 and 96: further on in this chapter, these t
Page 97 and 98: CONCLUSION For a particular segment
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Hip hop identity in a township reality. - Poppunt

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