Hip hop identity in a township reality. - Poppunt

Code-switching seemed to be a valuable way to construct this identity by the way
you speak. Most of our informants make use of the American hip hop slang to
define their ‘real’ hip hop identity and membership. They are crossing a figurative
boundary which is not a legitimate action since they don’t actually ‘belong’ to this
group of American hip hoppers. We have to note two things here. First of all, not all
people have equal access to the resources necessary to build a particular identity,
because these resources and capacities are unequally distributed. Thus, not all
people will be able to perform a certain identity, due to the restricted capacities to
do so (Blommaert, 2005: 207). Secondly, some capacities may be successful in
certain environments, but may have the opposite effect in other circumstances
(Blommaert, 2005: 206). A Gambian person speaking English in The Gambia, will
probably be associated with societal success, while his variety of English would very
likely be categorised as ‘bad’ English by a lot of British, and he or she would be
associated with the lower ranks of society. This also applies to our interviewees’ use
of American hip hop slang, which is part of a specific variety of ‘black’ English,
centralised around certain topics. They may drop just enough slang words to show
alignment with this particular group, but if they were to actually be in the Bronx, it
would become immediately clear that they come from a different place.
When one does not pay attention to all of these seemingly small and trivial switches
in code, a great deal of important identity markers passes one by completely
(Blommaert, 2005: 209). Because we researched on all of the different elements that
are used to construct identity, we are able now to have a more complete and
profound picture. This is in contradiction to people who see this from a greater
distance, which blurs their view. The identity categories become more general and
less precise the greater the distance is. To substantiate this, all African people may
look the same to an average European but it is unlikely he or she would not be able
to distinguish the Italian amongst a group of Swedish people. He or she would be
able to categorise people coming from all parts of the relatively small continent of
Europe, while he or she would probably fail on this task with one such as Africa.
This example might be just in the sphere of appearance, it can also be applied to
stereotypes in general. For people who do not know much about rap music, this
music genre seems to be constrained to gangsta rap only, while it might be clear,
after reading this thesis, that rap music consists of more than this particular
subgenre.