Elastic vernac : the (in)significance of indigenous languages in South African rap music.

• Main Author: Maduna, Mvuyo E.
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10539/7668

This research investigated the significance of indigenous languages in South African rap music in relation to identity formation, maintenance and proliferation within multilingual rap music culture. It also investigated the role of cultural hybridity and creolisation in multilingual South African rap music. Implications of the research pertain to the possibilities of including South African rap music that uses indigenous languages in the English classroom. This research was motivated by the observation that learners’ lives are a web of plurals and hybrids whereas the English classroom seeks to instil singularity and purity. Learners bring to the English classroom their own multiple and hybrid identities and creolised languages. However, the learners’ identities and languages seem not to be in line with the demands of the English classroom. The study of English thereby becomes foreign, cumbersome and misaligned with the real world of the learners. To achieve its goal, this research used lyrics of two rap songs that use local indigenous languages as primary data. These lyrics were discussed and analysed as poetry in order to reach a basic understanding of the general socio-cultural function and of their general function within a song. Close reading was used as a primary tool for the analysis of the data. Close reading helped in the basic understanding of the content, structure and style of the lyrics. It was used alongside Critical Discourse analysis, which deals with language as a social practice that embeds issues of power. A small amount of significant supporting data was obtained through interviews with some South African rappers. The intention of the analysis was to explore the use and significance of language usage and ways in which this related to the issue of identity and creolisation. The research revealed that the songs present language creoles and hybrid identities. This is exemplified by the emergence of a variety of slang languages (creoles) like “tsotsitaal” and “Motswako”. Hybridity in identities has yielded “amabhujwa” and “Smartees”. A possible implication from this research is that it may be possible to use multilingual rap music as a springboard for the use of multiple languages in the English classroom.