Delimiting cultural borders: The use of Wordsmith Tools to identify cultural differences in language uses by White or Black rappers

Abstract

In the field of linguistics, music has become an increasingly important field of study. Authors such as Alim (2006), Beal (2009), Cutler (2010) and Fought (2006), among many others, have based some of their studies on music in order to describe linguistic patterns, explore cultural phenomena, or study the use of a particular language feature. While conducting a sociolinguistic research project on processes of language crossing in rap music, we came up with two independent corpora corresponding to more than 30 rap songs by each ethnic group (European American and African American) studied. Our purpose is to explore how this data can potentially be used as a valuable source of information about these two interacting groups. This article presents some significant results from processing our corpora through Wordsmith Tools, which both delimits and reinforces cultural differences in rap language usage. The use of the term nigga, the presence of different terminology to refer to females in both corpora, and the explicit skin color references made by both rap groups creates an ethnic line that delimits their language uses and has particular relevance in the hip-hop context.