Gender references in rap lyrics
Pauliina Karru
University of Tampere
School of Modern Languages and Translation Studies
English Philology
Pro Gradu –thesis
May 2006
Tampereen yliopisto
Englantilainen filologia
Kieli- ja käännöstieteiden laitos
KARRU, PAULIINA: Gender references in rap lyrics
Pro gradu –tutkielma, 65 sivua + 1 liite
Kevät 2006
Rap-lyriikat on aihealue jota on tutkittu hyvin vähän. Se on kuitenkin hyvä peili
nykypäivän mustien amerikkalaisten, etenkin nuorten, maailmaan, kulttuuriin,
kieleen ja arvoihin. Vastaavasti blues-lyriikat kuvastavat omaa aikakauttaan.
Taustamateriaalina tässä tutkimuksessa toimii lukuisia tutkimuksia naisten ja
miesten kielenkäytöstä yleensä sekä myös spesifisemmin mustien amerikkalaisten
kielenkäytöstä. Lisäksi esitellään joitakin tutkimuksia jotka ovat paneutuneet
rapin ja bluesin maailmaan sekä tutkimuksia jotka käsittelevät naisiin ja miehiin
viittaavia sanoja.
Tähän tutkimukseen on valittu viisi mies- ja viisi naisrap-artistia sekä viisi miesja kuusi naisblues-artistia. Jokaiselta artistilta valittiin kymmenen suosittua ja
siten vaikutusvaltaista laulua. Kahdelta naisblues-artistilta löytyi vähemmän kuin
kymmenen sanoitusta ja siksi heidät yhdistettiin ikään kuin yhdeksi. Näistä
lyriikoista muodostettiin korpukset joista etsittiin sanoja joilla viitattiin naisiin ja
miehiin.
Tulokset esitellään niin sanallisesti kuin taulukoissakin, lukuisten esimerkkien
kera, ja niitä verrataan tutkimuksen alussa esitettyihin aikaisempiin tutkimuksiin
ja niistä pohjautuviin teorioihin. Tutkimuskysymykset olivat: Kuinka ja millaisia
sukupuoliviittauksia käytetään? Kuinka ne ovat muuttuneet blueslyriikoissa
käytettävistä? Kuinka eri tavalla naiset ja miehet niitä käyttävät?
Tuloksista käy ilmi, että rap-lyriikoiden sukupuoliviittaukset ovat oletettua
positiivisempia. Selvää on kuitenkin, että sanoituksissa vallitsee tietynasteinen
patriarkaalinen asenne. Blues- ja rap-lyriikoiden välillä on havaittavissa eroja.
Molemmissa esiintyy sanoja joita ei toisessa ryhmässä esiinny. Lisäksi blueslyriikoiden sukupuoliviittaukset ovat positiivisempia ja konservatiivisempia kuin
rap-lyriikoiden. Naisten ja miesten kesken löytyi joitakin eroja, mutta yleisesti
ottaen samat sanat olivat käytössä molemmilla. Ilmeni myös, että mustien naisten
käyttämä kieli poikkeaa tässäkin suhteessa stereotyyppisestä naisten kielestä.
Avainsanat: gender references, rap lyrics, blues lyrics, African-American
Vernacular English, stylistic change
Table of Contents
1
2
Introduction__________________________________________________ 1
1.1
Background __________________________________________________ 2
1.2
Males and females _____________________________________________ 4
1.3
Female singers ________________________________________________ 5
Linguistic background _________________________________________ 6
2.1
Language and gender __________________________________________ 6
2.1.1
2.1.2
2.2
3
Generalizations ____________________________________________________ 7
African-American speech ___________________________________________ 10
Word as a concept ____________________________________________ 13
Basic concepts and terminology _________________________________ 17
3.1
Rap Music___________________________________________________ 17
3.2
The Blues ___________________________________________________ 20
3.3
Previous studies ______________________________________________ 21
4
Methods Employed ___________________________________________ 25
5
Materials studied_____________________________________________ 27
6
Findings____________________________________________________ 29
6.1
General observations __________________________________________ 29
6.2
Details ______________________________________________________ 38
6.2.1
6.2.2
6.2.3
6.2.4
6.2.5
6.2.6
6.2.7
Nigga and bitch ___________________________________________________ 38
Other rap specific words ____________________________________________ 41
Words from the family______________________________________________ 46
Gender reference usage in relation to goals of language usage _______________ 49
Are women more conservative?_______________________________________ 51
Edibles, animals, etc. _______________________________________________ 52
Names __________________________________________________________ 56
7
Conclusions _________________________________________________ 58
8
Bibliography ________________________________________________ 62
Appendix 1.
1
1
Introduction
The topic of my pro gradu thesis is gender references in rap lyrics. My aim is to
study how male and female artists refer to the two different genders in their lyrics.
To do this, a list of the most common words and phrases used to refer to males
and females in the songs is collected and the positive or negative values of the
words are determined and what kind of connotation they are meant to evoke is
considered. This is done by consulting dictionaries and by looking closely at the
context in which the word is found. The main focus will be on modern day rap
lyrics, but I will also try to see how the language has changed by doing a
historical analysis by comparing the words found from rap lyrics to those used in
blues lyrics. Blues is considered to derive from the songs African slaves used to
sing and rap is seen as a modern version, a derivative and a continuator of the
narrative nature of blues, and thus it will be well suited in this study to give an
indication of stylistic development in this subject in the African-American speech
community. I will also study the differences between male and female artist of
both rap and blues and see whether there is a difference in the words used and in
their meanings.
Rap music is one of the fastest growing areas in music today and one
that has a great deal of influence among its fans (Ryan & Calhoun III 1996, 121),
which include young people from many different ethnicities besides AfricanAmerican. It is also an area that has received very little interest in the scholarly
field and has thus been studied very little. In addition, most of the studies that
have been made are from the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Therefore this study is
interesting and hopefully useful. The questions this study is trying to answer are:
How and what kind of gender references are used?
How have they changed from those found in blues lyrics?
What kinds of differences exist between male and female usage of
the gender references?
2
The study contains only American blues and rap artists as the focus is on African
American English speakers. The blues artists are chosen from the early 20th
century and the rap artists are those most popular and most influential in 19952005. The popularity is determined by record sales, placement on different singles
charts and possible awards and award nominations. All artists chosen will be
African American. This is again to bring coherence and comparability to the
group.
1.1 Background
Rap music is predominantly black music, but it has fans and listeners in all ethnic
groups, black and white being the most common (Ryan & Calhoun III 1996, 126).
As already said, it is also a style of music which has been studied very little. The
limited amount of studies that have been conducted have focused on the themes,
styles and use of rap music (Ryan & Calhoun III 1996, 124). The lack of previous
studies adds some challenges to doing this one, but it also makes it very
interesting.
Blues and rap are both forms of music where the performer
dominates the song and the lyrics are often his or her personal experiences and
feelings (Bowers 1993, 29). Even when this is not the case, the lyrics tend to
reflect typical experiences and thoughts common to the performer’s community
and audience (Bowers 1993, 29). As Stephens says “rap music evidences the
discursive practices of an imagined community in which the outgroup can no
longer be defined along color lines” (1991, 86 quoted in Ryan & Calhoun III 1996,
126). It has also been noted that “even when rap goes international, it remains
proudly local; we find in French rap, for example, the same targeting of specific
neighbourhoods and concentration on local problems” (Shusterman 1991, 619).
Therefore it can be assumed that the gender references found in rap lyrics, and
also in blues, reflect the attitude towards the two genders in the groups that they
influence, mainly African-American youth of the 21st century and the AfricanAmerican working class of the early 20th century, respectfully. Of course, both rap
and blues have branched out and both include a section that is more performance
3
and entertainment oriented in style, where the reflective quality of the words used
is more uncertain (Bowers 1993, 29).
Davis (1990, quoted and referenced in Rose 1994, 153) writes:
“Music has long permeated the daily life of most AfricanAmericans; it has played a central role in the normal socialization
process; and during moments characterized by intense movements
for social change, it has helped to shape the necessary political
consciousness. Any attempt, therefore, to understand in depth the
evolution of women’s consciousness within the Black community
requires a serious examination of the music which has influenced
them – particularly that which they themselves have created.”
This argument by Davis links African-American music with everything from
African-American politics to black women’s identities. Therefore studying
African-American music is an excellent source when trying to learn about the
“collective consciousness of black Americans” (Davis, 1990).
Rap music is known to have a great influence on young African Americans
and as said above it can be seen to be representative of their speech, I believe that
the results of my study could also be applied to the African American youth speak
in general and thus further the understanding of African American Vernacular
English of today. It should be noted, however, that one of the key aspects of rap is
showing one’s power through verbal prowess (Ryan & Calhoun III 1996, 125)
and thus the complexity of the lyrical speech and the perhaps large vocabulary
cannot be seen as the stereotypical speech of the audience members. However,
this study, as stated, will focus on word choices and these can easily be reflected
and replicated from the artist to the youth and vice versa. Also, although rap can
and often is spontaneous, the rap songs included in this study are thought out and
memorized and it is also true that rhythm and rhyme are important and can
influence word choices. However, this does not lessen their popularity and the
potential influence they have. In addition, since rap is directed to African
Americans it is likely to use words that are meaningful and common to the
listening community as well.
My assumption is that the gender references used in blues differ from those
used in today’s rap songs and that at least part of those that are common to both
groups have changed their meaning. Krims (2001, 47) says that even just within
4
“the rap and hip hop worlds” “ideas of style are constantly changing… and not
only because of ‘stylistic innovation’, but also because of reconfigurations of
internal relationships between and within styles”.
1.2 Males and females
Rap and blues music are fields that are greatly dominated by male artists. Because
of this the music genres in general will, naturally, mostly reflect the male usage of
the words and phrases. In this study, however, the ratio of men and women artists
and their lyrics is equal. The hypothesis derived from the common expectations
given by the media and supported by some studies (for example Teachout, 1990)
says that in rap songs women mostly appear as a source of sexual gratification for
males (Ryan & Calhoun III 1996, 125). There are however a group of female
rappers whose work “carries an expressly feminist message” (Ryan & Calhoun III
1996, 125). Therefore it will be useful and interesting to separate the two genders
and see how differently males and females refer to and address the genders. I will
also expect to see a difference in the word choices themselves. Music from a
certain group, ethnic or other, “transcodes the social dynamics” (Krims, 2001, 46)
of that group and therefore rap music and blues in a way reflect “the gender
relations (and gender domination)” within the African-American population of
their time (Krims, 2001, 46).
According to Brown (1998, 83) people are involved in different social
networks in which they interact with other people and these networks give the
people belonging to them social motivations that determine their actions which in
turn create the need for communicative strategies by which people try to achieve
their goals. These strategies lead to making certain linguistic choices with which
the communicative strategies are implemented. The linguistic choices, such as the
tone of voice or the words used, are not thought to be random, but expressive of
the features of the style of speech (such as “feminine style”). The masculine and
feminine speech is further discussed in chapter 2.1 Language and gender in
general. The language styles can then be related back to the sex roles and social
relationships in the community. This is because when individuals use language,
whether to express or create something or to challenge or conform existing social
5
meaning, they “draw on established sociolinguistic norms in doing so” (Holmes
1997, 196).
A successful rap artist possesses the skills of “verbal mastery, mastery of
delivery, creativity, personal style, and virtuosity” (Rose 1994, 163) and during a
performance the artist must win the audience’s attention and admiration and
acquire an identity that exudes confidence and power (Rose 1994, 163). This is
true for both genders and thus female rap artists have to break the conventional
moulds of female performance and cultural identities in order to succeed. Hence
their lyrics may differ from the stereotypical feminine language use and from the
way females are expected to speak. However, they can be thought of as
representatives of black females, who look up to female rap artists, because they
are bringing their voices and their experiences in to the public sphere. It is also
worth noting that black women’s speech in general differs somewhat from the
standard women’s speech, which is mainly based on white women, as can be seen
in chapter 2.1.
1.3 Female singers
As a further incentive to comparing the words used by male and female artists,
Bowers (1993) has observed that “the emergence of women singers in ‘classic’
blues introduced a shift in the viewpoints and gender images represented in blues”
and with the help of the female singers public image “reclaimed female sexuality
from being an objectification of male desire to a representation of female desire”
(p. 29). The women singing blues introduced the audiences to “a new, different
model of black women – one that was assertive, sexy, sexually aware,
independent, realistic, complex, and alive” (Bowers 1993, 29). Considering just
the lyrics, it would seem that the female rap artists would also promote this type
of image.
Another study has found that lyrical themes in rap songs differ by gender.
The lyrics of male artists tend to be about “individualistic boastfulness”, whereas
females focus on emotions and often sing about relationships between males and
females and, further, about the treatment females receive from males (Ryan &
Calhoun III 1996, 144).
6
2
Linguistic background
This chapter will look into the general area of language and gender as well as
specifically African American speech. It will also outline the central element of
this study, the word as a concept.
2.1 Language and gender
The general study of language and gender gives further incentive to studying
gender references in rap music. For example Johnstone (1993, 68) says that
“Evidence of a variety of kinds suggests that men and women do not – or do not
always – use and interpret language in the same way.” Furthermore, Ochs (1992,
336) says that “gender hierarchies display themselves in all domains of social
behaviour, not the least of which is talk.” She continues: “Gender ideologies are
socialized, sustained, and transformed through… verbal practices that recur
innumerable times in the lives of members of social groups” (1992, 336). As we
can see, language is used to symbolize the different social identities a person has.
Through speech we humans “assert or cede control, we indicate the different
social groups with which we identify, the social roles we embrace, and the
sometimes conflicting values we espouse” (Holmes 1997, 195). Milroy (1987, 14)
defines a community as a cohesive group “to which people have a clear
consciousness of belonging”. This is undoubtedly true among the AfricanAmericans as a group and as a speech community.
McConnell-Ginet (2003) uses the term communities of practice to
define a group of people that share some mutual endeavour and to which they all
are also accountable. These groups have shared resources, including linguistic
resources. She says that “social identities, including gendered identities, arise
primarily from articulating memberships in different communities of practice”
(McConnell-Ginet 2003, 71). The gender categories, male and female, are shared
globally by all communities, but “much of the real substance of gendered
experience arises as people participate in the endeavours of the local communities
of practice to which they belong and as they move between such communities”
7
(McConnell-Ginet 2003, 71). So, how for example females are perceived and
referred to in speech and how females view themselves can be different from one
community to another. McConnell-Ginet (2003, 72) further explains the concept
of communities of practice, which is similar to what this study refers to as a
speech community. The following quotation (McConnell-Ginet 2003, 72) also
shows how and why studying rap lyrics is important and worthwhile:
Communities of practice are not free-floating but are linked to one
another and to various institutions. They draw on resources with a
more general history – languages as well as various kinds of
technologies and artefacts. Their members align themselves not only
to one another but with others whom they imagine have shared
values and interests. it is not only those we directly encounter who
have significant impact on our sense of possibilities for social
practice and identity.
2.1.1 Generalizations
According to Stenström (2003) gender influences, in general communication, the
choice of topics, the mode of interaction and the vocabulary, and all these are also
connected to one another. Stenström has studied teenage talk and found that girls
use language to maintain relationships and to create a feeling of closeness and
equality. They also use it to interpret correctly and accurately the speech of other
speakers, especially other girls. Girls can be critical, but they try to do it in
acceptable ways. Boys, on the other hand, use language to establish and reinforce
their position and dominance. Boys also often speak for an audience and try to
maintain its attention as long as possible. Speech for boys is a way to compete
with each other. (Stenström 2003, 94). Stenström (2003, 94-95) summarizes the
differences by saying that “girls’ talk is said to be non-hierarchical, co-operative
and non-competitive, and to reflect intimacy, loyalty and commitment, while
boys’ talk is characterised by a hierarchical structure and power, briefly
competitiveness and lack of cooperation.” This study will try to find out if these
same characteristics can be seen in rap lyrics as well.
Pilkington (1998, 268) arrived at the same conclusion when she
studied the speech of adults in same-sex interaction. However, she notes that
while the behaviour and the style of interaction between males and females is very
8
different, the goal of the interaction is the same, to demonstrate that they belong to
the group and to show solidarity towards the other members of the group.
One common generalization about male and female speech is that
women’s speech is more conservative than men’s. The common explanation for
this is that women are more polite and more concerned about their status and of
other’s opinions of them, where as men are more practical and rough. Trudgill
(1972, quoted in Eckert 1998, 67 and Brown, 1998, 81) has studied this aspect in
detail and thinks a possible explanation could be that as women are in a
subordinate role in the society and have fewer occupational opportunities to
establish their position in society they instead use symbolic means to enhance
their standing. Eckert (1998, 67) also notes that the more conservative speech of
women could be due to the jobs women traditionally do, such as those of a
secretary, receptionist, writer and teacher, all of which require clear and polite
language to be used. It must be noted that Trudgill’s research was done some time
ago and that society and women’s status in it has changed since then.
The studies of language history done by Romaine (2003) partly
support Trudgill’s results and partly challenge them. She agrees that in the past
women may have been using speech as a way of achieving the status otherwise
denied from them and that “since women have long been denied equality with
men as far as educational and employment opportunities are concerned, these are
not reliable indicators of a woman’s status or the status she aspires to” (Romaine
2003, 104). She also points out another historical source for what is considered
feminine speech and its connection with Standard English. During the Victorian
era a woman wanting the status of a lady could not attain it independently, but
only through marriage, so it was very important for her to act and also speak like a
lady in order to attract a suitable husband and was trained to do so from a very
young age. Thus, the use of Standard English “became associated with being a
female and with being a lady, in particular” (Romaine 2003, 104).
Despite all the historical evidence Romaine (2003) found, she also
found data in the modern society that contradicted it. “If women are using the
standard to achieve status denied to them through conventional outlets, we might
expect that this need should diminish once women have more access to highstatus and high-paying jobs, for example” (Romaine 2003, 105-106). However,
the studies she has done and other’s whose results she has looked into, show that
9
is not the case. She concludes that the way women and men speak is not
straightforward “but mediated through other identities and ideologies” and that
“as variables both gender and language comprise rather complex social practices
and performances” (Romaine 2003, 116). Thus, more research with different
kinds of research methods is needed.
This difference in the level of conservativeness has also been found
among smaller speech communities, and considering Trudgill’s explanation it
should not be surprising that the pattern has been most consistent among the
African American communities. Eckert (1998, 68) notes that “among the women
in our [American] society, African American women are the most subject to
denigration, and that their very systematic use of standard language may well be a
response to their greater social vulnerability.”
Speech that contains stereotypical masculine and feminine features,
like the ones mentioned above, is called genderlect (Hoar 1992). Even though not
everyone speaks according to the stereotypical features of their gender, and
certainly not all the time, it is a useful term and a subject that deserves to be
studied as “expectations and stereotypes are, of course, powerful filters in our
perception of others” (Hoar 1992, 127). Hoar (1992) also uses the term powerlect
to describe speech that contains features that show the status of the speaker.
Genderlect is derived from powerlect and “genderlect is actually the expression of
powerlect interpreted according to culturally based gender expectations” (Hoar
1992, 127). Romaine (2003, 104), although not using the same terms as Hoar,
came to the same conclusion, and said that this might be another “reflection of
women’s powerlessness in the public sphere”. In her studies Hoar (1992)
confirmed the descriptions of many other scholars (for example Lakoff, Kramarae,
West and Zimmerman, and Fishman) in that women’s speech can often be
described with adjectives like weak, tentative, hesitant and trivial (Hoar 1992,
129). She points out that, in fact, these are also features of the speech of a person
whose status is low or lower than those of the other speakers. “We see, then, that
what is actually being communicated by “genderlect” is not so much masculinity
or femininity but relative amounts of status and power” (Hoar 1992, 129-130).
Women who have achieved a powerful position or a high status, for example in
their careers, are not likely to use stereotypically insecure feminine speech, in
other words features of low powerlect, in their professional lives.
10
Romaine (2003) has studied variation in language and gender and
mentions many of the same studies as others here as well as their results, such as
that women’s language is more polite and that women use more standard forms.
She has also studied carefully the different explanations given to this phenomenon,
but in the end finds them unsatisfactory. “After all, it is in some respect
paradoxical that women should tend to use the more prestigious variants when
most societies accord higher status and power to men” (Romaine 2003, 103). She
is also questioning the common approach that is usually taken when studying
language and gender, the approach that it is the women’s behaviour that is being
studied and seen as the deviant.
When viewing the result of recent surveys and studies done in the
field of language and gender it is clear that “the over-reaching conclusion to be
drawn about the language practices among girls, boys, women, and men is the
presence of elaborate variability” (Freed 2003, 702). There is data of a diversity of
speech patterns and language practices in the categories called male and female.
“When
studied
closely,
gendered
linguistic
practices
that
have
been
overgeneralized “unravel” and become more complex” (Freed 2003, 702). Freed
(2003) is worried that despite the modern data and results that have been analyzed
and interpreted, the common impression that people, scholars included, have
about male and female speech remains mostly unaltered. It might be due to the
fact that the new data does not give exact answers, but mostly just states the old
theories or reasons behind them as being incorrect. Many questions are still left
unanswered and many new questions emerge.
2.1.2 African-American speech
Gender and gender images in blues lyrics have been studied and it has been found
that women singers usually direct their songs to other women (Bowers, 1993).
The topics of the songs are things that women confront in their daily lives and can
easily relate to. Female singers become, and to some extent portray themselves as,
role models to the target audience. A typical topic is for the singer to tell the other
women how to get good treatment for themselves, from their husbands or
boyfriends and even from the society at large (Bowers 1993, 28). A similar
11
composition, of women singing to other women, can be observed in rap music as
well.
Johnstone (1993, 68) points out that “work on language and gender
in the United States has tended to be about well-educated middle- to upper-middle
class women, who are white and either Jewish or Christian”. Therefore a study
concentrating on African-American speakers of English will be interesting,
especially when it comes to differences between males and females. Johnstone
(1993) goes on to list the several reasons scholars have attributed to the
differences between male and female speech. These include psychological
differences, differences in social status and prestige as well as cultural differences.
Tannen (1993) also points out the effect of cultural background in language use
and says that the more the backgrounds differ, the more the “lines of interpretation
and habitual use of many linguistic strategies” will differ (165). Clearly, the
background of white middle- and upper-middle class women is greatly different
from the background of African-American women and so the results of the studies
conducted on gender cannot directly be attached to those speakers.
Despite there being plenty of middle-class African Americans these
days, they have a greatly different background to white Americans and thus their
speech and language use should be studied separately for more accurate results.
Similarly the speech of African-American women should not be grouped together
with that of white women. Black female identity is composed of many different
elements and black females thus have a different background to those of white
females. Race, gender and social class all play a part. Scott (2000) claims that it is
very important to study the language behaviour of black women as they are in a
large part responsible for the language development of the children and thus
ultimately of the whole speech community. The language use of black women is
often described as assertive and outspoken. This is in contrast with the general
stereotypes of collaboration and focus on relationship maintenance given above
for female speech. However, on closer inspection this distinct feature is just
another way to communicate and show the same nurturing characteristic that is
associated with the language use of females in general (Scott, 2000). Tannen
(1993) writes along the same lines and says that for both men and especially
women, the methods are different, but that the meaning and end result is the same:
to show solidarity towards a group and to show belonging.
12
Another interesting aspect of the language use of African-American
women is that they tend to have a more complex communicative repertoire than
white women, as they often can speak using both the African-American
Vernacular and the standard form of English, which they often use when speaking
to white women (Scott, 2000) or in their professional careers. In addition,
women’s speech in general has a wider stylistic variability than men’s speech
(Holmes 1997, 197).
However, despite this ability to switch between different registers,
many black women still use the vernacular as a way of identification with cultural
norms and practices even when they are pursuing professional and economic
advancement. Scott (2000, 239) writes that: “As a result of movement across
social and cultural roles, language becomes a vehicle for marking identity in those
various worlds.”
Milroy (1987), who has studied what she calls low-prestige ethnic
and status groups all over the world, has made similar observations. She has noted
that these groups, among which she lists for example Lowland Scots in Southern
Scotland, Catalan in Spain, Canadian French in Canada and Black English in the
United States, perceive their language or dialect as a powerful symbol of group
identity. Usually these groups maintain the language or dialect despite continued
pressure from the standardized speech around them. African-Americans are using
their vernacular as “a symbol of adherence to [their] local communities” (Milroy
1987, 18) and also “to indicate loyalty to a local community and rejection of
metropolitan and national prestige values” (Milroy 1987, 19), in their case the
values of the governing white society.
Therefore it is clear that the African-American vernacular is very
important and essential to those speaking it. It is a way for them to express their
identity and also to express their culture and talk about their daily lives in a way
that feels natural to them. Language closely reflects the world the speaker lives in
and thus “in order to talk about black cultural experience, [they need] the
language created out of that experience” (Scott 2000, 239). Johnstone (1993)
made a similar observation about language in general. She studied how differently
men and women created their worlds in conversational storytelling, usually
recounts of things that had happened to the speaker and of things that they had
encountered during the day, and wrote that “talk is certainly often about the world
13
and reflects what the world is like” (Johnstone 1993, 68). Telling stories is a very
explicit means of constructing and presenting a particular social identity for one’s
self or for others (Holmes 1997, 196). Rap lyrics, with their very strong narratives,
are stories of their own kind, often directly representing the black community and
life in it.
Johnstone’s results showed that women tended to include more
details about the people involved and more reported speech in their stories than
did the men. Men tended to use their stories to create a world of “contest in which
power comes from the individual acting in opposition to others” (Johnstone 1993,
75). However, she added that the stories men and women tell “are not simply the
products of women’s and men’s worlds. People create worlds in discourse, as they
create selves, communities, and places” (Johnstone 1993, 76). In other words, she
came to the conclusion that although differences do exist between men and
women and their language use, the speakers own persona is also an important
factor. Also the sense of any community is partly created and maintained by
speech.
2.2 Word as a concept
As this study concentrates on single words and their meanings and positive and
negative values, it is worthwhile to briefly look at how a word originates and what
processes it can go through to arrive at the point, or points, it is at today. The
methods outlined below also serve as a reminder that words and their meanings
are not stable, but that a language, and how people use it, is constantly evolving
and changing. Studying isolated instances of language use within a single speech
community, as is done in this study, it is important not to bring the value
judgements attached to the words being studied in one’s own speech community
into the research.
A word has a denotation and a connotation. Denotation is the
generally accepted and largely fixed meaning of the word, the relation between a
word and an entity, while connotation is more flexible and less determinate.
Connotations can change and vary from one generation to the next. Therefore
connotations are subjective and not necessarily shared by all speakers of the same
14
language. The connotations of the community are learned just as the language of
the group is learned and are thus inherently known to the individuals of any given
community. Because of all this variety, the connotation of a word can sometimes
be difficult to derive, especially when dealing with speakers from a different
speech community. In addition to this, new ways of using words, new
connotations, are invented all the time. To truly understand the meaning of a word,
one must take into account the linguistic context of the word as well as the
situational context (Jackson 1988, 50-60).
According to Nida (1975, 25-28), word meaning is composed of
three parts: the conceptual meaning, contextual connotation and emotive value.
Ullman (1962, 54) adds that in a speech process, the context is the determining
factor and gives the word its concrete meaning, in that particular utterance. Nida
(1975) also writes that word meaning can be looked at from several perspectives.
The extensionalist approach concentrates on word usage and contexts and the
intensionalist approach looks at the conceptual structures of different linguistic
units (Nida 1975, 22-23). This study will use the extensionalist method.
While studying the meaning and usage of the words used to refer to
gender, the study will then, naturally, also show the way language in this area has
changed in the African-American community during the time span between the
two generations, blues artists of the early 1900’s and present day rap artists. Word
meanings can change by various different methods and some of the most common
ones are explained below. The following examples, numbered 1 to 6, are from
Gramley & Pätzold 1992, pp. 31-34.
1. One way for a word to get a new meaning is if the speakers no longer
understand the old meaning or when two words are formally similar. An example
of the former one is bridegroom which used to be bridegome, but the speakers no
longer recognized the word gome meaning ‘man’ and thus the word changed. An
example of the latter is using the word technological instead of technical or
realistic instead of real. This is called folk etymology but it has never been a very
productive method of creating new meanings for words.
15
2. Another method is ellipsis where a part of a word or a phrase takes on the
meaning of the whole. For example Adidas for Adidas running shoes, anchor for
anchorman and microwave for microwave oven.
3. Metaphors are another way to give a new meaning to a word. In a metaphor
some of the qualities of the original meaning are maintained, but they are used in
a different context. For example bank in bottle bank and blood bank still mean a
place something is collected in, but it no longer has any association with money.
Many metaphors can be found from the world of computers, for example mouse
and window.
4. Metonymy is when a proper noun is used as a general noun, for example Xerox
and Kleenex. It can also mean when a word changes from abstract to concrete as
in the leadership meaning the leaders.
5. Specialization and generalization are another method. For example the word
straight and gay have been given specialized meanings, ‘heterosexual’ and
‘homosexual’ respectively. An example of generalization is the phrase you guys
which can now be used for a group of people of both males and females and also
for a group of women as well.
6. Amelioration and deterioration are word changes where the meaning of the
word becomes either more positive or more negative, respectively. A good
example of amelioration is the phrase state of the art which used to mean a report
that described the achievements of a particular field. Now the phrase has risen
from its neutral state to mean the latest and best, as in state-of-the-art technology
for example. In other words, it has gained positive value. The word mental, on the
other hand, is an example of deterioration. Instead of meaning just ‘of the mind’
or ‘in the mind’ it now has an additional meaning, ‘insane’. The originally neutral
word has thus become negative.
The norms of language usage are formed and shaped by the speech
community. However, for a new meaning to become accepted and used, it means
that the entire speech community must understand the word in approximately the
16
same manner (Lähteenmäki, 2000). The African-Americans form a speech
community, one that is clearly separate from the white American speech
community. Thus the words used or the meaning of familiar words can be very
different. This study looks at the words from the point of view of the African
American speech community, regardless of their meaning in Standard English.
The meaning of the words is derived from the context in which they appear, from
my general knowledge of the language used in rap lyrics, from websites that have
rap dictionaries and from The New Oxford American Dictionary (2001) and the
internet version of the Oxford English Dictionary. Some of the words and their
meanings where they differ from the Standard English are explained where
appropriate.
These methods for the change in a word meaning hence explain how
a word can have different meanings in different speech communities. They also
account for how a word can be used differently in blues and rap lyrics and how a
random listener from another speech community, for example a white American,
may not understand the lyrics fully or correctly.
17
3
Basic concepts and terminology
Western music can be described with the word ‘harmony’, whereas African and
African-derived music can be described with the word ‘rhythm’. Like so many
other Afrodiasporic musics, rap is very rhythmic and percussive, showing clearly
where its roots are coming from (Rose 1994, 65).
Springer (1995, 1) says that “Black American music is a hybrid music
elaborated from African cultural principles transferred to a foreign continent and
subjected to its influences”. He also notes that “for the black man, whether
African or American, music is part of everyday life and is integrated within the
everyday existence”. This can easily be noticed from the lyrics of both blues and
rap, which both are a part of everyday life and also often tell stories of the daily
life.
3.1 Rap Music
“Rap music is a confusing and noisy element of contemporary American popular
culture that continues to draw a great deal of attention to itself” writes Rose (1994,
1). She continues by listing many benefits she sees in rap music. Those include
cultural criticism, women rappers as rare examples of pro-women lyricists in
popular music and bringing out in the open the problems of racism.
Rap and hip-hop are terms that are well known but that people
sometimes have difficulty in explaining or distinguishing their meanings from one
another. Berns and Schlobinski (2003) define hip-hop as a lifestyle involving rap,
graffiti and break-dance and say that hip-hop culture was born sometime in the
70’s and late 80’s. They also offer the following definition for rap:
Rap is the umbrella term for the fast spoken lyrics of a hip-hop song.
The verb ‘to rap’ nowadays mainly means singing or speaking
rhythmically, but throughout its history it has been used in quite
different contexts. Back in 1971, Clarence Major defined ‘rap’ as
“holding conversation”, or a “long, impressive monologue”. Rap has
become a pars pro toto for the whole hip-hop music in America.
(Berns & Schlobinski 2003, 199)
18
They also speculate on why rappers rap instead of sing and say that it probably
has to do with “the complex beat structures” (Berns & Schlobinski 2003, 199) and
the fast paced rhythm of rap songs, therefore making rapping the easier and more
practical choice. The added benefits of rapping are that it “can be performed
almost everywhere, and can contain more information than any other kind of song
lyrics because of its speed” (Berns & Schlobinski 2003, 199).
Rap might be thought of as a new genre in music, but actually its
“lyrical style of the long narrative… has a long history firmly derived from black
culture” (Ryan & Calhoun III 1996, 145). Hess (2005) agrees saying that rap
music “has roots in oral traditions of testimony and bearing witness” (p.297).
However, the content of the songs could be viewed as new. Blues songs and the
slaves’ songs before them have told about the conditions and lives of the black
Americans, but they have mostly focused on the rural life. Rap, on the other hand,
comes from a new environment and tells accurate stories and “the emotional
orientations” that depict “the existing minority conditions of poor, urban blacks”
(Ryan & Calhoun III 1996, 145). It is a way for the black minority to express and
prioritize their voice “from the margins of urban America” (Rose, 1994, 2).
Rap is further divided into different categories. Possibly the most
distinctive style and one that certainly gets most attention from the media is that
called gangsta rap. This particular style has its roots in a district of Los Angeles
called South Central (Berns & Schlobinski 2003, 199). Gangsta rap “tells stories
about life in the ghettos, criminality, drugs, and sex. The language of gangsta rap
is very harsh, just like its music. It can be regarded as an authentic report of the
situation in certain areas at the time of its inception” (Berns & Schlobinski 2003,
199). Other styles include dance-oriented “commercial” rap, mixed genre rap,
party rap, mack or pimp rap and jazz or bohemian rap (Krims, 2001). A common
feature of all rap music is self-praising, often in the form of sexual desirability and
material wealth, but most importantly about the rapper’s verbal talent
(Shusterman 1991, 614-615). This study will not focus on any particular style,
instead a broad range of the different rap styles is covered, but popularity of the
artist and availability of the lyrics and recordings are the determining factors. In
other words the so-called underground artists are by necessity left out, although
19
their potential influence on and reflective quality of the African-American youth
culture is recognized.. The artists who receive the greatest public exposure are
most interesting for this study as they also have the greatest possibility of
affecting the most people.
The usual themes in rap lyrics are sex, sexism, racism, crime, black
pride and the ghetto experience (Ryan & Calhoun III 1996, 124-125). In addition,
rap songs tend to be very critical. It is common to find “1) self-critique or critique
of the rap culture; 2) societal critique; 3) cultural critique including a belief in the
redemptive power of black music –especially the ability of shared rhythm to
overcome status boundaries; and 4) racial critique or discourse on race relations”
(Ryan & Calhoun III 1996, 125). Realness is a very vital part of rap lyrics and a
rapper claims his right to speak and be heard through claims of realness and by
proving through “narrative evidence that those claims are rooted in lived
experience” (Hess 2005, 299).
Rap lyrics protest against racism and the accustomed ideologies of
the white-majority society (Rose 1994, 104). Yet they at the same time appear
very sexist and reinforce patriarchal domination, especially in regards to AfricanAmerican women. The same phenomenon can be observed in blues lyrics.
Therefore black women rap artists, and blues artists before them, are seen as very
important for the black females, whose voices have otherwise been “relegated to
the margins of public discourse” (Rose 1994, 146).
Gilroy (1993, quoted in Hess, 2005) and Smith (1997, also quoted in
Hess, 2005) talk of rap music’s “doubleness”. They say rap has two aspects that
are operating within it at the same time: the ghetto and the mainstream
commercial culture. The ghetto is a mark of their authenticity, which is crucial in
rap music, and at the same time it is a marketable feature, the Other, in the
mainstream culture. As Smith (1997, 346) says, rappers use “mimetic narratives to
secure and maintain ghetto territory simultaneously as commodity and safehaven”. This is a complicated and often contradictory process, and because of it,
despite their commercial success, rappers are still rapping for and in behalf of the
people living in the ghettos (Hess, 2005).
20
3.2 The Blues
As well as rap, blues is also “a form of oral literature” (Springer 1995, 8). It
originates from the period between the end of the American Civil War and the
beginning of the twentieth century (Springer 1995, 29). Carney (1987, 4) says this
time period is a time of transition in American music. Before, the music listened
to and played in America had been borrowed and adapted from that played in
Europe. During this period the social and musical developments led to two
distinct music styles America can call its own: the Anglo-European hillbilly and
the Afro-American blues. These were not only new musical genres, but they also
represented a break from the view that music was somehow aristocratic and
connected it with the lower classes. In the beginning blues was considered to be
the music of the rural black working class (Springer 1995, 27). The songs
discussed the loss of the old rural way of life and the troubles and sorrows of the
new environment and now they depict an accurate picture of the social conditions
and values of their time (Carney 1987, pp.4-5). Carney also says that “the factors
that contributed to the lyrics of the roots of American music were the result of
complex and deeply ingrained mores and behaviour patterns bred by the Southern
rural environment.” (1987, 36)
Blues has always been an activity performed and listened to in one’s free
time (Yurchenco 1995, 449) and the same is true of rap music. Just as in rap
music today, different styles of blues can be identified, mostly based on the region
of the singer, such as New Orleans blues, but also in more general terms, such as
rural blues and modern blues (Springer, 1995). The artists used in this study
represent different styles, although they are from a rather small time period.
Both rap and blues music have achieved notable commercial success that
would have not been possible if the audience had been all black. Although the
songs are about black people and culture, they do not exclude others from
listening. Rose (1994, pp. 4-5) notes that “white America has always had an
intense interest in black culture”.
21
3.3 Previous studies
Considering the topic of this study, one of the most interesting studies done
previously on rap lyrics is the one conducted by Ryan and Calhoun III (1996).
They studied the emotional models present in commercial rap and country music.
In their study they found that “the dominant emotional theme of the male rap
songs has to do with feelings associated with competence/strength” (Ryan &
Calhoun III 1996, 131). Maybe surprisingly, the same was true for female rap
songs, but they stress that it does not mean that the context of these emotions is
the same for the different genders (Ryan & Calhoun III 1996, 134 and 136).
The findings of their study contrast with the stereotypical view of
rap and, according to Ryan and Calhoun III, “reflect the fact that the media tend to
focus on gangsta rap –a form which, in our sample [taken from Billboard
magazine’s charts], did not receive the highest airplay and sales” (1996, 134). In
other words, they feel that gansta rap is not just by itself a true representative of
rap music and in a wider scope, of the opinions and ideals of African-American
youth.
Bradby (1993) has studied gender, among other things, mainly in
dance music. She notes that historically speaking women have been portrayed as
wives and mothers in the media. This has, however, now greatly receded. In the
context of popular music “representations of women have clearly been much more
partial than in [other media], and mainly confined to ‘sex’ rather than work or
motherhood” (Bradby 1993, 160). Popular music thus shares a general view of a
freed woman, although “within the confines of a patriarchal sexuality” (Bradby
1993, 160). She, however, sees a difference between white music and black music,
saying that “generally in rock and pop, women have had to be ‘young’ or ‘teen’”
whereas in black popular music, here mainly blues and soul, “there has been a
place for the mature, more maternal body and voice of a woman” (Bradby 1993,
160).
Holland and Skinner (1987) have studied the different words used to
refer to the two genders in the English language in general. They say the meaning
of the words, such as hunk or stud, are ingrained in the culture and the user
automatically knows what they mean and how to use them. “A great deal of
22
knowledge about gender-marked types is taken for granted” (Holland & Skinner
1987, 79). The words contain “unspoken expectations and implicit common
knowledge” and explaining the meaning of them is difficult (Holland & Skinner
1987, 79).
Their study was conducted in America and they found that
Americans have hundreds of words for both males and females. They also noted
that the vocabulary is very varied and colourful and contains many metaphorical
expressions derived from many different domains ranging from food to animals.
(Holland & Skinner 1987, 79).
In their study, they asked people to group the gender words given to
them together according to their connotations, for example according to the
positivity or negativity of the words, or prestige and intimacy. Holland and
Skinner were surprised to find that the people in their study didn’t group the
words by focusing on the main attributes of the types, but rather they “related the
types to a set of scenarios in which the prototypical male/female relationship is
disturbed” (Holland & Skinner 1987, 103). In other words, the key to
understanding the implied meaning of the words is to know the possible situation
in which they interact. “Our studies indicate that individual Americans understand
talk about jerks, wimps, he-men, chicks and broads, and their behaviour by
thinking of these characters in relation to a taken-for-granted relationship between
males and females” (Holland & Skinner 1987, 103). An interesting finding was
that most “gender-marked types” have negative connotations, i.e. they are types
who cause disruptions in the relationship (Holland & Skinner 1987, 103).
Studying the words used to address people or refer to them can reveal a lot about
the given speech community and its values. The words used are “always
grammatically optional, but they are often socially required” and, even more
importantly, “they are always socially loaded” (McConnell-Ginet 2003, 77). The
meaning of any particular word used to refer to or address another person can be
found from within the speech community and from the history of usage the word
has in it. The history of the word and other aspects of social practice in the given
community are what mark a word “with respect and affection or with contempt,
condescension, or dislike” (McConnell-Ginet 2003, 79).
Women are usually defined by their relation to men, with terms such
as Mrs. Smith and Mr. Smith’s widow, while men have autonomous status
23
(Thorne et al. 1983, 9). In addition, men tend to name women after body parts,
fruit, animals, mindless creatures or as child-like. This is said to reflect men’s
disrespect for women and to support their control over them and to maintain their
role at the top of gender hierarchy. As an example to the difference between the
terms for women and the terms for men, Stanley (1977, quoted in Thorne et al.
1983) has found that in the English language there are 220 terms for sexually
promiscuous women and only 22 terms for men.
Female gangsta rappers have been studied by Haugen (2003). He
concentrated on their “ladylikeness” or lack thereof. He looked at their lyrics,
their performances and their interviews. He found that the most common
derogatory words used by males to refer to females, such as bitch and ho, are
being used in two different ways by the females. The female rappers can use these
words as negative reference to other women but also as solidarity statements,
where the word has positive connotations, much the same way as black people,
especially black male rappers, use the word nigga or nigger, which spoken by
anyone else would be highly inappropriate and derogatory. In other words, female
rappers are doing what Haugen calls “reappropriating male words” (Haugen 2003,
434-435), making the words their own and turning their meaning around.
Rose (1994) has studied the lyrics of male and female rappers in
terms of sexism and feminism, among many other views. She finds that the lyrics
of male rappers clearly aim to sustain patriarchal dominance and objectify black
females. Female rappers are generally seen, and confirmed by Rose to be, as a
feminist voice, trying to transform the image of black women. However, there are
cases where the message they send out is contradictory. Rose says that “some
female rappers affirm aspects of sexual power relationships as they raise incisive
questions that seriously challenge the current distribution of power between men
and women” (1994, 147). Rose writes that the way female rappers place a black
woman’s body in the spotlight also sends a very contradictory message. It is
positive in that it shows the beauty of African-American females but also at the
same time preserves sexual objectification. On the other hand, there are rap lyrics
by male artists where black men are disapproving of men who abuse women and
lyrics that call black men to support their families and black women in general
(Rose 1994, 150).
24
One explanation to the degrading words men use for women can be
found in Di Mare’s (1992) studies. She has taken a historical perspective in her
studies of language and says that the differences between the language use of men
and women, and the reasons for these differences, can be traced far back in history.
Di Mare (1992) has studied women and rhetoric and points out that throughout
history, women have been encouraged and even forced to stay at home and were
forbidden from, for example, making public speeches. Women were perceived as
less intelligent and less capable than men. Di Mare (1992, 47) writes that “the
rhetorical tradition has acted as a tool of the dominant cultural position to promote
the notion that women are capable of only one function – a biological one”. This
eventually has led the whole society to believe that women cannot operate in the
public realm and that this belief is something that modern women today have to
deal with as well. According to Di Mare (1992) women today are still “perceived
as having limited rhetorical skills” (47) and thus they often “find it difficult to
succeed in the public sphere” (47). This perceived lack of rhetorical skills is one
of the reasons women have a lower status in the economic and political fields, but
also in the society at large as well.
One of the problem areas in today’s rhetoric is the fact that men do
not know how to speak to women. Di Mare (1992, 48) quotes two sources (Janice
Halper and Fortune 500) when she makes her claim that men only know how to
interact with women in sexual terms. This all reaches back to society viewing
women as serving only biological functions, which are mainly sexual in nature,
and hence encourage men to interact with women in a style and language that
does not meet with the expectations of public language use (Di Mare 1992).
However, the very thing that is at the root of the problem can also be the solution.
“Rhetoric serves as the condition for the possibility of the emergence of any
situation that the community desires. So, in as much as rhetoric has stood as the
condition for the emergence of patriarchy, it can also stand as the condition for the
emergence of a dialectical reciprocity between men and women that would
undermine patriarchy” (Di Mare 1992, 48).
25
4
Methods Employed
This study uses two corpora to conduct the research, one with rap lyrics and one
with blues lyrics. I had to compile them myself as none were available. This
turned out to be a positive circumstance as it allowed me to control the number of
the artists and lyrics included, in this case an equal number from all the groups
involved. I was also able to choose songs from a time period suitable to the
purposes of this study. In compiling the corpora, the various sites on the internet
providing written rap and blues lyrics were an important source. The lyrics thus
found were then studied and the gender references picked out. Next the findings
were compiled into different charts, which were then studied closely and
compared with one another.
The research was started by doing a quantitative study of the words
used. Some of the words whose meaning may be obscure, particularly those found
only in rap lyrics, are explained with the help of dictionaries further on in this
thesis. Some of the words clearly formed lexical sets, such as words from the
family, and these are further looked into and analyzed under their own subtitles.
Comparisons between male and female artists and between rap and blues artists
were conducted and the results are clearly stated and illustrated with the help of
tables and diagrams.
The next step was to study the perceived charge (positive, negative
or neutral) of the words. This was done by assuming a neutral status for a word at
the beginning and then studying the context of the word to see whether the given
word was meant as a positive or a negative expression. Of course, some of the
words are generally viewed as positive or negative within the society, but in this
study the words were assumed to be neutral to begin with and acquired their value
only through the context, the words and the tone. Naturally, these kinds of
decisions always involve value judgements and another person may have viewed
individual cases differently, but nevertheless, the overall results are what matter.
How a word is interpreted can differ greatly from one person to another and also
be different to the meaning intended by the speaker. The interpreted meaning
cannot be studied in this study, so the perceived intended meaning of the word is
studied, by studying the context of the word, as already stated before.
26
Thus, the first stage of the research consisted of compiling the list of
lyrics, which is described in detail in chapter 5. Materials studied. The lyrics were
then read through and a word list was collected. Some songs, especially among
the rap songs, feature other artists alongside the main artist. These parts of the
lyrics were read as part of the main artist’s lyrics regardless of the gender of the
featuring artist. Most songs have repeated chorus lines and the words occurring in
them are counted as many times as the chorus is repeated throughout the song.
The exception to this is at the end of the song where the chorus is sometimes
repeated until it fades out, thus the words in a chorus at the end of the song are
only counted once. The artists often refer to themselves in their lyrics and these
are counted as well. For example a male rap artist referring to himself as a stud is
included in the references for male gender.
27
5
Materials studied
The materials for the study come from five male rap artists and five female rap
artists as well as five male blues artists and six female blues artists. Six female
blues artists were needed to get an even number of lyrics from both genders. The
male rap artists chosen are 50 Cent, Tupac, Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z and Dr. Dre
and the female rap artists chosen are Missy Elliott, Queen Latifah, Eve, Lil’ Kim
and Lauryn Hill. The focus is on modern day rap and the artists chosen are those
that are the most popular at the moment or otherwise having a great influence on
it.
The male blues artists chosen are Mississippi John Hurt, Charley
Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Boy Fuller and Blind Willie McTell and the
female artists are Bessie Smith, Memphis Minnie, Ma Rainey, Alberta Hunter,
Victoria Spivey and Ida Cox. All the blues artists are from the early days of blues,
the early 1900’s. They were chosen based on their popularity at the time and also
on the availability of their lyrics today.
The lyrics of ten songs will be chosen from each artist, with the
exception of Alberta Hunter (four songs) and Victoria Spivey (six songs),
resulting in a data base of 200 song lyrics. The rap lyrics were chosen on the basis
of the popularity of the songs. The popularity was determined by chart placements,
mainly Billboard Music Charts, and nominations and awards the song has won as
well as general opinion which comes through different fan sites. When there were
more than or less than ten clear candidates from an artist the suitability of the
lyrical content in regards to this study was considered. In addition to the common
practice of remixing songs, it is possible for a single song to have many versions
for different media and different purposes because of the sometimes vulgar
content of rap songs. The original, unedited versions were chosen for this study.
The availability of blues lyrics is not as great as that of rap lyrics and
therefore there is less choice in which songs to include. Where there has been the
possibility for choice, the suitability of the lyrics has been the determining factor.
All the lyrics used in this study have been found from the internet.
Several different websites have been used and a list of them can be seen in the
bibliography. All the lyrics have been carefully read through and if the
28
authenticity of the lyrics was doubted, they were checked against other sites’
lyrics and whenever possible by listening to the actual song.
While studying the lyrics it is noticeable that some words can be
spelled and pronounced in various ways and also it must be remembered that
spelling mistakes are possible. In the best interest of this study some spellings
must, and should, be combined, thus for example ho and hoe are grouped together,
but separated from hooker although they are derivates of it. Also the s/z variation
is left without attention as in words like niggas and niggaz. These are examples of
variations in spelling which do not affect the meaning or usage of a word so they
are not relevant to this study.
A complete list of artists and songs used in this study can be found
in the appendices. The year of recording is also listed where known.
29
6
Findings
Studying the lyrics was challenging but also very interesting. Statistics and other
general findings are shown below in 6.1 General observations. A more detailed
analysis looking at the theories and questions raised above follows in 6.2 Details.
In all of the following graphs, tables and numbers mentioned only those words
that have appeared more than once are taken into account, unless otherwise noted.
6.1 General observations
In all of the following graphs, tables and numbers only those words that have
appeared more than once are taken into account. In the sample of lyrics used in
this study, there were 73 words that appeared more than once that were used to
refer to males and females. 40 words were used to describe males and 40 to
describe females. There were only 7 words that were used for both genders. The
total number of references, counting only words that have been used more than
once, is 2411 of which 1607 instances were found in rap lyrics and 804 in blues
lyrics.
Male rap artist referred to the genders 973 times, 548 to males and
425 to females. Female rap artists, on the other hand, referred to males 360 times
and to females 274 times, the total being 634. Blues artists had fewer instances
with males referring to other males 123 times and to females 355 times and
females referring to males 223 times and to females 103 times. Looking at these
numbers it can be seen that usually the artists refer to the opposite sex more than
to their own. This is only broken by the male rap artists.
The tables 1 and 2 below show what were the most popular words
for males and females in blues and in rap. As can be seen only some words are
common to both genres: man, boy and baby for males and girl and baby for
females. The number in the parenthesis, in this and all the following tables,
indicates the number of times the word was used. Following the tables are
examples of the words being used.
30
Table 1. Top 5 words for males and females in rap lyrics
Males
Females
nigga (369)
bitch (162)
man (112)
girl (113)
boy (68)
baby (66)
baby (64)
lady (66)
homey (41)
ho (60)
1. Nigga you mad? I thought that you'd be happy I made it (50Cent:
In Da Club)
2. C'mon man, you know how I shine (50Cent: Piggy Bank)
3. He and his boys gon be yappin to the captain (Jay-Z: 99
Problems)
4. and I'm gonna love you baby (Missy Elliott: Take Away)
5. On what me and my homey Snoop Dogg came to do (Dr. Dre:
Nuthin’ But A G’Thang)
6. bus stop full of fly bitches and skeezers (Dre. Dre: Let Me Ride)
7. Girls used to diss me (Notorious B.I.G.: Juicy)
8. I'll break it down for you now, baby it's simple (50Cent: Candy
Shop)
9. Don't cha know we love ya? Sweet lady (Tupac: Dear Mama)
10. All respect to those who break their neck to keep their hoes in
check (Tupac: I Get Around)
Table 2. Top 5 words for males and females in blues lyrics
Males
Females
man (164)
baby (117)
daddy (49)
woman (99)
papa (29)
mama (97)
boy (27)
gal (24)
baby (20)
girl (23)
31
11. That bad man, oh, cruel Stack O' Lee (Mississippi John Hurt:
Stack O’Lee Blues)
12. Oh, daddy, you with your foolin', think what you're losin' (Bessie
Smith: Oh Daddy Blues)
13. Papa likes his sherry, mama likes her port (Ma Rainey: Barrel
House Blues)
14. Boy, you better watch it 'cause she's tricky (Memphis Minnie:
Hoodoo Lady)
15. I want you to come here, baby, come here quick (Memphis
Minnie: Dirty Mother for You)
16. I asked you, baby, to come and hold my head (Mississippi John
Hurt: Big Leg Blues)
17. She's a tailor-made woman, she ain't no hand-me-down (Blind
Lemon Jefferson: Bad Luck Blues)
18. Going to leave this town, pretty mama, going away to stay
(Blind Willie McTell: Statesboro Blues)
19. I wants all you men to let my good gal alone (Blind Willie
McTell: Weary Hearted Blues)
20. Girls I'm gonna tell you this, ain't gonna tell you nothin' else (Ida
Cox: Four Day Creep)
It is also interesting to see that the most common terms for males
and females in rap lyrics are words with a possible negative connotation (nigga
and bitch). The most common word for males derives from race but the most
common word for females derives from being a female. The words having the
second place (man and girl) also seem to show a typical patriarchal society as the
males are referred to as adults but the females are referred to by a word describing
a child. It is appropriate to mention already here that nigga is a very sensitive
word associated heavily with racism. The history and usage of the word is
explained in detail in 6.2.1 nigga and bitch, although the general results of the
usage of the word are mentioned here.
In blues lyrics the top five words seem to have a balance with both
genders being called by the terms referring to adults, children and infants as well
as pet names with parental origin.
A change in language use between the two musical genres can also
be seen from these tables as both contain words not found in the other. For
example nigga, homey, bitch and ho did not appear in the blues lyrics at all and
gal and papa only had one occurrence in rap lyrics although they were fairly
common in blues lyrics.
32
The next two tables (tables 3 and 4) will show the top 5 words used
by the different genders in rap lyrics with examples following.
Table 3. Top 5 words for males by male artists and by female artists in rap lyrics
By male artists
By female artists
nigga (276)
nigga (93)
man (47)
man (65)
homey (40)
baby (64)
boy (29)
boy (39)
friend (23)
thug (21)
21. All my niggaz go (Tupac: Temptation)
22. for a woman it ain't easy tryin to raise a man (Tupac: Dear
Mama)
23. This is God's plan homey, this ain't mine (50Cent: If I Can’t)
24. Niggaz is crazy baby, don't forget that boy (Jay-Z: Dirt of Your
Shoulder)
25. I try and find my friends, but they're blowin in the wind (Tupac:
Keep Ya Head Up)
26. You know my name, show me a real nigga wit a brain (Queen
Latifah: Just Another Day)
27. I don’t jump into the arms of every man (Queen Latifah: Fly Girl)
28. Come on baby, light my fire (Lauryn Hill: Superstar)
29. Misdemeanour on the flow, pretty boy here I come (Missy Elliott:
Pass That Dutch)
30. All my true thugs and all my real bitches (Lil’ Kim: Thug Luv)
33
Table 4. Top 5 words for females by male artists and by female artists in rap lyrics
By male artists
By female artists
bitch (92)
bitch (70)
baby (56)
girl (57)
girl (56)
lady (32)
ho (49)
woman (18)
mama (38)
ho (11)
31. Bitches lookin at me strange but you know I don't care (Dr. Dre:
The Next Episode)
32. Baby you got me feelin' right (50Cent: Just a Lil’ Bit)
33. Girl...It's easy to love me now (50Cent: 21 Questions)
34. All I really know your hoe wants to be with me (Dr. Dre: Bad
Intentions)
35. Lil' mama show me how you move it (50Cent: Disco Inferno)
36. I'm the bitch he'll never leave (Eve: Gotta Man)
37. Girl, she lost a lot of weight (Missy Elliott: Gossip Folks)
38. The ladies will kick it, the rhyme that is wicked (Queen Latifah:
Ladies First)
39. Nuttin make a woman feel better (Lil’ Kim: No Time)
40. you ain’t a bitch or a ho (Queen Latifah: U.N.I.T.Y)
These look somewhat different than the previous charts. We can see
that although nigga is the most often used word for males by both genders, males
use it three times more than females. Bitch is used equally by both genders but the
other generally negative word, ho, is in much more use among the male artists,
which would indicate a difference between the level of insult and usage of these
words among the females.
Note also that words denoting children, girl and boy, are used by
both genders, but the word denoting an infant, baby, is only used by males for
females and by females for males. Male artists never used the word baby about
other males and females used it only ten times about other females. Looking at
these results, it is worth remembering, though, that the word girl used by black
34
females can have a special meaning signifying solidarity. This is further explained
in 6.2.2 Other rap specific words.
For comparison, the next two tables (tables 5 and 6) will show the
top five words used by the different genders in blues lyrics.
Table 5. Top 5 words for males by male artists and by female artists in blues
lyrics
By male artists
By female artists
man (64)
man (100)
boy (20)
daddy (32)
daddy (17)
papa (27)
brother (3)
baby (20)
friend & joker (both 3)
bee (11)
41. And you'll be sorry you drove your man away (Blind Willie
McTell: Lord, Send Me an Angel)
42. Boy, if he hollers at you, you don't stop (Charlie Patton: Revenue
Man Blues)
43. She's tryin' to fool her daddy (Blind Lemon Jefferson: Low
Down MojoBlues)
44. Brother got 'em, mama got 'em (Blind Willie McTell: Statesboro
Blues)
45. Police walked up and shot my friend Jesse down (Blind Willie
McTell: The Dyin’ Crapshooter’s Blues)
46. That joker stole off with that long-haired brown of mine (Blind
Lemon Jefferson: Bad Luck Blues)
47. But if you got a good man and don't want him taken away from
you (Ida Cox: Four Day Creep)
48. So the next daddy I get, I'm going to take him to the restaurant
(Memphis Minnie: Good Biscuits)
49. Aggravating Papa, don't try to two-time me (Alberta Hunter:
Aggravating Papa)
50. If my baby don't come back, I know I'll be doin' time (Victoria
Spivey: I Can’t Last Long)
51. I got a bumble bee, don't sting nobody but me (Memphis Minnie:
New Bumble Bee)
35
Table 6. Top 5 words for females by male artists and by female artists in blues
lyrics
By male artists
By female artists
baby (98)
mama (26)
woman (75)
woman (24)
mama (71)
baby (19)
sugar (19)
girl (8)
gal (18)
gal & friend (both 6)
52. I love my baby better than a farmer likes his Jersey cow (Blind
Lemon Jefferson: Low Down Mojo Blues)
53. The woman rocks the cradle, I declare she rules the home (Blind
Lemon Jefferson: That Crawling Baby Blues)
54. You gonna want my love, mama, some old lonesome day (Blind
Boy Fuller: Weepin’ Willow Blues)
55. I ain't seen my sugar in three long weeks today (Blind Lemon
Jefferson: Bad Luck Blues)
56. I had a dream last night all about my gal (Blind Lemon Jefferson:
Lonesome House Blues)
57. You took my man and left his mama standing here (Bessie Smith:
Chicago Bound Blues)
58. she's stealing some woman's good man (Memphis Minnie:
Chickasaw Train Blues)
59. If I catch you out with your high-brown baby (Alberta Hunter:
Aggravating Papa)
60. With a girl I thought was my friend (Bessie Smith: Lady Luck
Blues)
61. Just a poor gal in trouble (Ma Rainey: Chain Gang Blues)
62. Well he quit me for my best friend (Victoria Spivey: I Can’t Last
Long)
The contexts of the words were also studied and the tone of the word,
whether it was positive or negative, was determined. Of the 2411 words 759 could
be said to be used in a positive manner and 286 in a negative manner. The
majority of the words, 1366, were neutral when judged in the context they
appeared in. Of course, some of the words are generally viewed as positive or
36
negative, but in this study the words were viewed to be neutral to begin with and
acquired their value only through the context, the words and the tone. The low
number of negative words and the high number of positive words is in contrast to
the general opinion of today’s society of rap music being negative.
The following table (Table 7.) shows the distribution of the word
values among the two genres and genders.
Table 7. Word values in percentages by user
positive
negative
neutral
All
31 %
12 %
57 %
Rap – total
32 %
15 %
53 %
Rap – males
26 %
16 %
58 %
Rap – females
41 %
15 %
44 %
Blues – total
30 %
5%
65 %
Blues – males
31 %
4%
64 %
Blues – females
28 %
6%
65 %
Positive words are used equally in all categories, the most positive
being female rap artists and the least positive being male rap artists. Blues artists
use fewer negative words than rap artists, instead they use more neutral terms.
Table 8. is similar to Table 7. but it has a different viewpoint. It
shows the percentages from the point of view of the target gender instead of the
gender of the artist using the word.
37
Table 8. Word values in percentages by target
positive
negative
neutral
All words for females
35 %
12 %
52 %
Words for females – rap
36 %
19 %
45 %
Words for females –
34 %
2%
64 %
All words for males
28 %
11 %
61 %
Words for males – rap
29 %
12 %
59 %
Words for males – blues
25 %
9%
66 %
blues
As can be seen, positive words are again divided quite equally.
Contrary to popular beliefs, females in rap songs have a more positive image than
males. There is, however, a great difference between the negative words used for
females in rap songs and in blues songs. The females in blues songs are hardly
ever described with a negative word, whereas the females in rap songs receive a
negative term 1/5 of the time.
These statistics are interesting when compared to the findings of
Holland & Skinner (1987), who said that there are more negative gender reference
words than there are positive. The above tables show that the words with a
positive or neutral meaning are used far more often than negative words.
Furthermore, of the 65 different gender reference words found in the rap lyrics
sample of this study, only eight (8) were decidedly negative or were used as
negative words for a majority of the time. Thus, if there are more negative words
for referring to the two different genders than there are positive words, it can be
deduced that they are nevertheless not that often used, at least in rap and blues
lyrics.
38
6.2 Details
The following sections look at the results in more detail. The results are also
compared to the various statements introduced in 1. Introduction and 3. Basic
concepts and terminology above.
6.2.1 Nigga and bitch
The word male rappers most often use when referring to a male or males is nigga
and niggas. This word is rich in history and for most of it, it has been a purely
negative word. Nowadays, it still retains its highly derogatory meaning when used
by persons who are not black, even though it has been taken up by black people to
use among themselves, where it has no negative meaning to it. The New Oxford
American Dictionary (2001) definition of the word is:
nigger: n. derogatory, a contemptuous term for a black or darkskinned person. –ORIGIN late 17th cent. (as an adjective): from
earlier neger, from French nègre, from Spanish negro ‘black’.
USAGE: The word nigger was used as an adjective denoting a black
person as early as the 17th century and has long had strong offensive
connotations. Today it remains one of the most racially offensive
words in the language. Also referred to as ‘the n-word’, nigger is
sometimes used by black people in reference to other black people in
a jocular or disparaging manner, or some variant between (in
somewhat the same way that queer has been adopted by some gay
and lesbian people as a term of self-reference, acceptable only when
used by those within the community).
The word was used 276 times by the male rappers. Most of those (235) were
neutral in meaning, 13 could be interpreted as positive and 28 had a slightly
negative meaning. In no instance could the word by itself be described negative,
thus the negativity was only derived from the surroundings. When used in a
positive way, the word usually referred to the artist himself, for example:
63. I handle mine just like a real nigga should (50Cent: Hate It or
Love It)
64. If I wasn't ah, eight figure nigga (Jay-Z: Can I Get A)
39
Examples of negative usage is:
65. Them trick niggas (50Cent: P.I.M.P.)
Generally, the word was used as a simple reference to a black male, with no
implications.
66. the memory of my nigga Biggie (Jay-Z: Hard Knock Life)
67. The type of nigga that you need in yo' crew (Jay-Z: Money Ain’t
a Thang)
As this was the most often used word for males, 50 percent of all words for males
by male artists, it can be deducted that male rap artists mostly rap for other black
males instead of to males in general. It is clear that the word nigga has gone
through a transformation, but it is also curious to see that it has not completely
lost its segregational meaning, but that it has been turned around. Where it once
meant that the person in question was the outsider it now is used to show one
belongs to a certain circle of society and excludes those who do not belong to it.
This is done on two fronts as a white person can never be a nigga and a white
person can not even use the word nigga. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning
again that the word still retains its racist and very derogatory and insulting quality
when used by persons who are not black, especially when used by white people.
The change is meaning, in other words, has only happened within the AfricanAmerican speaking community and should not be used by those not included in it.
Haugen claimed that female rappers have started to use the words
bitch and ho, shortened from the word whore, in much the same way as male
rappers use the word nigga, in addition to using them as the derogatory terms they
are generally seen as. In Haugen’s words female rappers are “reappropriating”
male words. The New Oxford American Dictionary (2001) defines bitch as
follows, notice that it has no mention of this reappropriating usage:
bitch: n. 1. a female dog, wolf, fox or otter. 2. informal, derogatory,
a woman whom one dislikes or considers to be malicious or
unpleasant. –ORIGIN Old English bicce, of Germanic origin.
Although the results of this study clearly show the transformation
undergone by the word nigga, they do not fully support the statements made by
Haugen. In the sample of lyrics used in this study, females used the word ho 11
40
times and all of those times it was seen as a negative expression. Most of the 11
times it was used were to the effect of telling a female she is not a ho.
68. you ain’t a bitch or a ho (Queen Latifah: U.N.I.T.Y.)
The word bitch was used 70 times by female rap artists. 17 of those
were positive, 27 negative and 26 neutral. The following are examples of each,
respectively:
69. I rep for bitches, he rep the boys (Lil’ Kim: The Jump Off)
70. I can’t stand the bitch no way (Missy Elliott: Gossip Folks)
71. You won’t find a bitch that’s even betta (Missy Elliott: Work It)
It seems that bitch is a word females have “reappropriated” and is
used in the way Haugen suggests. Furthermore, the fact that females have used it
24 percent of the time in a positive manner and 37 percent of the time in a neutral
manner is even further emphasized by noting that male rap artists never used this
word in a positive way about a female and only 28 percent of the time in a neutral
manner as shown in Graph 1.
41
Graph 1. Usage of the word bitch.
80 %
70 %
60 %
50 %
females
40 %
males
30 %
20 %
10 %
0%
positive
negative
neutral
6.2.2 Other rap specific words
Nigga and bitch are not the only words that appeared only in rap lyrics. Other
such words are homey, homeboy, homegirl, pimp, shorty, thug, gangsta, player
and hustler. The difference is that nigga and bitch did exist as words in the early
20th century but their meaning was different. Most of the rest of the example
words were created and still are used almost exclusively in the hip hop
community and thus were not present in the blues artists’ vocabulary. In fact,
some of the words may even be unclear to the average present day speaker of
English. The meanings of these words are, according to The New Oxford
American Dictionary (2001), as follows. Following each dictionary entry are
examples of the words in use from the lyrics.
gangsta: n. 1. black slang, a gang member. 2. (also gangsta rap) a
type of rap music featuring aggressive lyrics, often with reference to
gang violence. – ORIGIN 1980s: alteration of gangster
42
72. I'm representing for them gangstas all across the world (Dr. Dre:
Still D.R.E.)
73. All incarcerated scar faces, gangstas with the fed cases (Lil’ Kim:
Came Back For You)
homeboy: n. informal, a young acquaintance from one’s own town
or neighbourhood, or from the same social background. > (esp.
among urban black people) a member of a peer group or gang. > a
performer of rap music.
74. On what me and my homey Snoop Dogg came to do (Dr. Dre:
Nuthin’ But A G’Thang)
75. If I can't do well, homey, it can't be done (50Cent: If I Can’t)
homegirl: n. a female equivalent of a homeboy.
76. ‘Cause that’s what happened to your homegirl, right? (Queen
Latifah: U.N.I.T.Y.)
hustler: n. informal, an aggressively enterprising person; a go-getter.
> an enterprising and often dishonest person, esp. one trying to sell
something. > an expert player, esp. at pod or billiards, who pretends
to be less skilful than they are and lures or challenges less skilled,
esp. amateur, players into games in order to win money from them.
> a female prostitute. > a male prostitute, esp. for homosexual
clients.
77. Do it like a hustler (Lil’ Kim: Thug Love)
78. Where my hustlers where my boosters at (Jay-Z: Change
Clothes)
pimp: n. a man who controls prostitutes and arranges clients for
them, taking a percentage of their earnings in return. – ORIGIN late
16th cent.:of unknown origin.
79. True pimp niggaz spend no dough on the booty (Notorious
B.I.G.: Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems)
80. And pimps be on a mission for them greens (Tupac: California
Love)
player: n. 1. a person taking part in a sport or game: a tennis player.
> a person or a body that is involved and influential in an area or
activity: the country’s isolationism made it a secondary player in
world political events. 2. a person who plays a musical instrument: a
guitar player. > a device for playing compact discs, audiocassettes,
etc. 3. an actor.
81. See you later, cause baby I'm a player (Tupac: Temptation)
43
82. Throw your hands in the air, if youse a true player (Notorious
B.I.G.: Big Poppa)
shorty (also shortie): n. informal, a person who is shorter than
average (often used as a nickname). > (often as adj.) a short
garment, esp. a short dress or nightgown: she pulled on a shorty
nightshirt.
83. Shorty she so fine, I gotta make her mine (50Cent: Wanksta)
84. Come on try your luck shorty, I got the rest scared (Eve: Who’s
That Girl)
thug: n. 1. a violent person, esp. a criminal. (ORIGIN: mid 19th cent.:
extension of sense 2.) 2.(Thug) historical, a member of a religious
organization of robbers and assassins in India. Devotees of the
goddess Kali, the Thugs waylaid and strangled their victims, usually
travellers, in a ritually prescribed manner. They were suppressed by
the British in the 1830s.
85. Cause even thugs get lonely (Tupac: Temptation)
86. You can call your mama right now, tell her you met a thug (Lil’
Kim: Magic Stick)
The internet provides an abundant source to find the meanings of
various hip hop slang words. The websites are, of course, informal, but
nevertheless enlightening. The Rap Dictionary (www.rapdict.org/Main_Page) is
one of them. It is set up in a way that allows its users to add definitions to the
words, similarly to the more widely know online encyclopaedia Wikipedia
(www.wikipedia.org). It is by no means scientific, but the fact that the users of the
words have been able to explain in their own words what the words mean, makes
it worth a look. Here is a compilation of the definitions for the same words as
above from The Rap Dictionary where they differ from or add to the official
dictionary definitions. Notice that here the new meaning of bitch is mentioned.
bitch: prostitute, girlfriend, lover or an empowered woman.
homeboy: a respected friend or associate.
pimp: 1. the term is associated with someone who has a lot of hoes
around. 2. Someone in control of hoes, the cops or other niggas.
Status is achieved by money and power.
44
player: 1. someone who is “true to the hood”. 2. A form of con artist,
whose "game" involves confidence schemes, usually perpetrated
against the opposite sex, aimed at procuring sexual favor, material
items, money or all three - usually from multiple victims
simultaneously.
shorty: 1. friend. 2. female (similar to baby and honey). 3. child or
teenager.
thug: someone who has gone through a lot of hardship in ones life.
42 percent of the gender references in rap songs are from this group
of words that only appeared in rap lyrics. They can all be classified as new words
or words with a relatively new meaning. This would concur with Pilkington’s
(1998) findings (introduced in 2.1 Language and gender in general) that both men
and women use language to demonstrate that they belong to a certain group.
As noted in 6.1 General observations, the word girl used by
African-American women can have a special significance. Scott (2000) has
studied the use of this word and found it functions as a marker of identity in black
women’s language use. Scott (2000) says the word girl is a “culturally-toned
diminutive” and that it is highly visible and very often used. It is used to show
solidarity and to “bridge social distance even when the females engaged in
conversation are strangers” (Van Dijk et al 1997, 154, quoted in Scott 2000, 239).
This use of the word girl is not restricted to any age group but is used by all black
women in both private and public situations and hence “indicates the importance
of marking shared identity through language” (Scott 2000, 239). It also shows a
sense of shared understanding. Scott (2000) found that in discussions girl
functions as a discourse marker and indicates a switch in language style. She also
found that it is usually used with and to refer to other black female friends. For
example in sentences like: “Girl, how you doing?” and “Girl, let me tell you!”.
Girl in these instances is usually pronounced with a lengthened vowel. According
to Scott (2000) it is one of the distinct prosodic features of African-American
women’s speech. Scott (2000, 245) says that the concept of shared understanding
that the use of the word girl indicates “lends some comfort to the women, who are
participants in a world that they perceive as not being wholly their own.”
45
Female rap artists used the word girl 57 times. This amounts to 21
per cent of all references they made to females in their lyrics. 12 of these 57 times
it was used in the manner Scott describes. Here are a few examples of such usage:
87. Girl that is Missy Elliott (Missy Elliott: Gossip Folks)
88. You make it hard for a girl to roll (Queen Latifah: Paper)
Another term, specifically in use in the AAVE, is the man, meaning
a white man or the white society. The Oxford English Dictionary definition is:
c. Chiefly among African-Americans: a white person, esp. regarded
as an oppressor; white people collectively.
1931 L. HUGHES & Z. N. HURSTON Mule Bone (1991) 142 Dis
railroad belongs to de man I kin walk it good as you, cain't I? 1963
N.Y. Times 18 May 12/2 A well-educated Negro said today: ‘The
demonstrations, I think, suggested to “The Man” that tokenism won't
make it and that he has to come to grips with the problem right
now.’ ‘The Man’, in Negro parlance, is the white man. 1972
Guardian 12 Aug. 9 Rus is not Uncle Tomming it around Harlem
with ‘the Man’. He has brought a foreign visitor. 1989 C. R.
WILSON & W. FERRIS Encycl. Southern Culture 1548/2 The
majority of southern blacks spent much of their lives ‘workin' for
the man’ (a catch-all phrase for whites).
As can be seen from the years of the examples given in the dictionary entry, this is
not a new phenomenon, and thus not specific to rap lyrics but something that
could be found in blues lyrics as well. However, and perhaps surprisingly, there
were no clear instances of this usage in the lyrics. The following example could
be seen to mean white society, but as the contextual reference is biblical it is more
likely the term is simply used to refer to the whole of human kind. A double
meaning, with a play on words, could also be possible.
89. And God said he should send his one begotten son
to lead the wild into the ways of the man (Tupac: Hail Mary)
The lack of the usage of this term in the lyrics of this study, could be
due to several reasons. All the lyrics chosen were popular and commercially
successful and perhaps the lyrical content of the songs that achieve this status are
less critical of the society and hence the man did not appear in this respect.
46
Another reason could be the choices made when choosing the songs. Songs that
seemed to have the most references to males and females were chosen as
explained in 5 Materials studied. These factors might be the reason behind the
lack of the appearance of the man as white man and white society. However, the
term, interesting as it is, is of little significance to the overall topic and research
questions of this study. This does not mean that white men were not referred to at
all, although it was not common. Usually it was simply done by inserting the word
white in front of a gender reference word. For example:
90. A white dude (Lil’ Kim: How Many Licks?)
6.2.3 Words from the family
Words that are associated with families – that are commonly used for parents,
children and siblings – are very common in both rap and blues lyrics. These words,
especially brother and sister, can have a variety of different meanings other than
the most common denotations of referring to ones actual family members. The
Oxford English Dictionary 3 on the internet gives the following definitions to
illustrate the non-literal meaning of the words brother and sister, which are
common in the AAVE:
brother: slang (orig. U.S.). Chiefly in African-American use: a
(fellow) black man. Also in extended use: a fellow non-white man
(used esp. as an expression of solidarity).
sister: a. One who is reckoned as, or fills the place of, a sister. In
mod. specific uses: (i) a (fellow) prostitute; (ii) a (fellow)
feminist; (iii) among Blacks, a Black woman
Examples number 93 and 95 below use the words in these meanings. Brother and
sister thus work as solidarity markers similarly as the word girl discussed
previously. The are used to show belonging, common culture and shared
understanding. Their use also shows friendship and identifies the person as
someone whom should be treated with respect.
47
91. So today, here is a message to my sisters and brothers (Queen
Latifah: The Evil That Men Do)
Despite the fact that in these lyrics the words are often not used in
their standard meaning, it is nevertheless very interesting to see that such a large
number of words used in the rap and blues lyrics are from this category and
therefore they deserve a closer look. Words that could be placed into this category
were used 640 times, that is 27 percent of all words used. Only a small part of
these words were used in the literal meaning of the words, for example using
sister and meaning a blood relative. Random examples, both those with standard
denotation and those with a different intended connotation, to show the usage of
these words, from rap lyrics are:
92. No love from my daddy cause the coward wasn't there (Tupac:
Dear Mama)
93. 'Cause most brothers are raised to decide for the pesos (Dr. Dre:
Been There Done That)
94. I need you baby, and if it's quite all right, I need you baby to
warm a lonely night (Lauryn Hill: Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of
You)
95. Desperately stressing I'm the daughter of a sister (Queen Latifah:
Ladies First)
The following table, Table 9., will illustrate the words used in more detail.
48
Table 9. Usage of the family oriented words.
all family words
640
100 %
parents
283
44 %
children
295
46 %
siblings
41
6%
other
21
3%
male
231
36 %
female
409
64 %
As can be seen, a majority of the family oriented words (64 percent)
are used to describe females. This coincides with several of the theories and
studies quoted previously in this study, which state that it is common for men to
call women with child-like words, such as baby, or to define them by their
relations to other people, for example mother or wife, in order to emphasise their
own masculine superiority. This becomes even more distinct when we look at
these words from the point of view of who is using them. 60 percent of the words
in this category are used by men and only 40 percent by women. Table 10. will
illustrate this matter further.
Table 10. Family oriented words by user.
all
rap
blues
used by males
60 %
26 %
34 %
used by females
40 %
20 %
20 %
total
100 %
46 %
54 %
Another interesting thing that can be observed from this table is that
the usage of the words in this group has diminished over time. Blue artists used
more than half, 54 percent, of all the family oriented words in this study. The gap
49
between the two genres grows even bigger when we look at the percentage of
these words from all the words used in this study. 44 percent of all the gender
references in blues lyrics are from this category, where as only 18 percent of the
gender references in rap lyrics are from this family oriented category.
However, when the value of the words is investigated, the matter
becomes more interesting. 47 percent of all family oriented words are used in a
positive way and the results show an increase in this respect from the blues lyrics
to the rap lyrics. Only 38 percent of the family words in blues lyrics were positive,
where as in rap lyrics the percentage of positive family words is more than half,
57 percent. The positive words were divided between the genders quite equally.
Perhaps, this indicates a slight change from the wish of men to define women in
relation to themselves to a more kinder way of expressing endearment. The fact
that family oriented words are included for both genders on the tables above
showing the most popular words (6.1 General observations, Tables 1. and 2.)
would seem to support this further.
The words in this category have stayed relatively unchanged from
blues to rap lyrics. However, there is one significant change. Blues lyrics use the
word child to refer to a woman a man is in a romantic relationship with.
96. I got me another woman, can't use you no more
It doesn't matter child how it happened (Blind Boy Fuller: It
Doesn’t Matter Baby)
This was not common in the blues lyrics either, but it did not appear in rap lyrics
at all. Considering our modern society, it would also seem highly unlikely that
this word would ever be used in this manner.
6.2.4 Gender reference usage in relation to goals of language usage
According to Stenström (2003) teenage girls use language to create and maintain
relationships and closeness with other speakers, especially other girls, and even
when they are being critical they try to express it in acceptable ways. The five
words most often used by female rap artists to refer to females, themselves or
others, were bitch, girl, lady, woman and ho. Generally speaking, not all of these
50
words are seen as positive words that are used in a close relationship or to show
constructive criticism. However, as shown above only the word ho can be seen to
be a purely negative word in the speech community in question.
The top five words amount to 43 percent of all words used by female
rap artists. When looking at them closely it can be found that three of the words –
girl, lady and woman – are never used in a negative way. 43 percent of the time
the five most popular words are used in a positive manner, 37 percent in a neutral
manner and only 20 percent of the time in a negative manner. This would appear
to endorse Stenström’s findings.
The goal of the language use of teenaged boys, according to the
same study by Stenström (2003), is to show their position in the given social
circle and to compete with the other speakers, to show themselves to be better.
The top five words used by male rap artists to refer to males comprise 76 percent
of all the words used by them to refer to males. These words – nigga, man, homey,
boy and friend – are all seen as positive words when taking into account the given
speech community they are in this case used in. This is quite surprising when
considering the statements made by Stenström. The majority, 76 percent, of the
time these words are used in a neutral manner. They were used in a positive
manner for only 16 percent of the time and in a negative manner 8 percent of the
time. These do not seem like the numbers one would expect to see when it comes
to speech which aim would be to compete with others and to boost one’s own
standing. It then appears that the language used by the male rap artists would have
different aims or then different means to achieve these aims.
As already mentioned, Pilkington (1998) had had similar results as
Stenström in regards of gender specific tendencies in speech when she studied the
speech of adult speakers in same-sex interaction. Where the two results differ is
that Pilkington stated showing solidarity as the main goal for both sexes. The
results of this study support that notion.
Graph 2. will illustrate these numbers in a side by side comparison.
51
Graph 2. Usage of positive, negative and neutral words.
80 %
70 %
60 %
50 %
females
40 %
males
30 %
20 %
10 %
0%
pos
neg
neut
6.2.5 Are women more conservative?
Trudgill (1972, quoted in Eckert, 1998) and Eckert (1998) have studied male and
female speech looking for reasons for the notion that women’s speech is polite
and conservative whereas men’s speech is practical and direct. According to them
it is a result of their social standing (see 2.1. Language and gender in general).
According to Eckert this is especially true among African-American women. How
does this apply to rap lyrics? If it is such a strong phenomenon as they claim, does
it seem to affect the choices made when choosing gender reference words?
Looking through the gender words used for words that could be seen
as non-conservative expressions, it was clear albeit surprising that most of them
were directed toward males. The non-conservative words found were thug,
gangsta, faggot, nigga, pimp, hustler, punk, ho (and its different variations such as
hooker and whore) and bitch, nine words all together, seven of which were mainly
used for males.
52
These words were used 667 times thus amounting to 28 percent of
all gender expressions. These words are only found in rap lyrics and they amount
to 42 percent of gender expressions in those lyrics. It is interesting to see that
blues lyrics had no non-conservative expressions thus showing that there has
clearly been a change in this respect between the two genres and the two
generations. Rap lyrics are, at least in this respect, more direct and less polite. As
to the difference between male and female usage of these words, it follows
Trudgill’s and Eckert’s theory. Of the 667 instances, males used it 462 times and
females 205 times, in other words 70 percent and 30 percent respectively. So in
this respect, rap lyrics and the speech community they represent follows the
standards of the general society.
6.2.6 Edibles, animals, etc.
Bradby (1993) had noticed in her study that unlike other media, blues music
portrayed a more mature woman through maternity and women who work,
whereas elsewhere in modern popular culture women were often viewed via
sexual aspects. When looking at the gender reference words found in the sample,
it can be seen that this does not show in the gender words used. Choosing words
that can mostly only be interpreted as parental or professional words, the results
show only a very small percentage. 5 percent of all words for females in rap lyrics
and 4 percent of all words for females in blues lyrics fit this category. This does
not, necessarily, disagree with Bradby’s findings, but merely shows that it is not
mirrored in the word choices, even if such a view is present or implied otherwise.
It is often said, as was mentioned in 3.3 Previous Studies section of
this paper, that women are being referred to as body parts, fruit, animals, mindless
creatures and child-like and men are not. These terms were used by Thorne et al.
(1983) and for this study these categories were re-named where it was deemed
appropriate. Looking at the rap lyrics only, there are words that fit into each of the
categories listed, at least approximately:
53
Bodily features (body parts): shorty
Edibles (fruit): honey
Animals: queen bee, bitch, chick, cat, dog
Mindless creatures: doll
Child-like: baby, girl, boy
Nine (9) of these 11 words are used to refer to females and only four (4) to refer to
males. The words for males are shorty, dog, baby and boy. Here are some
examples of these words in use in the lyrics:
97. I am the baddest chick (Lil’ Kim: Magic Stick)
98. Are you my soulmate? 'Cause if so, girl you a blessing (50Cent:
21 Questions)
99. And ya hit a R&B chick and she fit the bill (Jay-Z: Money Ain’t a
Thang)
100. Honeys start to stare. (Dr. Dre: Been There Done That)
101. Had enough of fake cats tryin' to shine off these schemes (Eve:
Eve of Destruction)
The following table (Table 11.) shows who is using these words to
refer to females.
Table 11. Use of the body part, fruit, etc. words in rap lyrics.
Times used
By males
By females
shorty
9
8
1
honey
12
12
0
queen bee
6
1
5
bitch
162
92
70
chick
13
5
8
cat
7
2
5
doll
2
2
0
baby
66
56
10
girl
113
56
57
54
These words were used for a total of 390 times, which is 56 percent
of all references to females. The four words listed above that were used to refer to
males were used 142 times which is only 16 percent of all references to males. Of
the female words, men used them 234 times, equal to 60 percent of the total usage
of these words and 55 percent of all the words male rappers used to refer to
females. That means females themselves used these words 40 percent of the time
and it amounts to 57 percent of all references females made to females.
It would seem then that it is true that women are often referred to as
and called by names that are body parts or bodily features, fruit or other edibles,
animals, mindless creatures and child-like and that men are not. What is
interesting to see is that women themselves are using these words almost as much
as men are. With the exception of the word bitch, all of these words are mostly
used in a positive or at least neutral way. Some would argue, however, that this
does not lessen their insulting and belittling characteristics and suggestive
patriarchal tones. What remains unknown is whether the women recognize they
are using words like these and do it consciously or whether referring to women in
such terms is ingrained in their vocabulary and language use as something that is
common practice in the society and so they use the words without realizing it and
all that the words might imply.
Of the 142 times the four words in this category, shorty, dog, baby
and boy, were used to refer to a man, females used them 111 times and men only
31. These are equal to 78 percent and 22 percent. It also amounts to 30 percent of
all the references females made to men and only 6 percent to those that men used.
Here it can be seen clearly that these words are not popular for men and especially
that men do not use them when talking about themselves and about other men.
In blues lyrics, there are eight (8) words in these categories. Some
are the same as in rap lyrics and some are different. The words in these categories
in blues lyrics are honey, baby, girl, child, sugar, dog, bee and boy. These were
used a total of 240 times. Five (5) of the words were used for females and four (4)
for males. The words for males are baby, dog, bee and boy. The following table
(Table 12) will illustrate the use of the words for females.
55
Table 12. Use of the body part, fruit, etc. words in blues lyrics.
Times used
By males
By females
honey
7
7
0
baby
117
98
19
girl
33
15
18
child
5
5
0
sugar
19
19
0
Males used these words for females 80 percent of the total of 181
times and females only 20 percent. That equals 41 percent of all references male
blues singers made to females and 36 percent of those made to females by females.
The total percentage is 40 percent of all female references. The four words used
for males were used a total of 59 times, 21 times by males and 38 times by
females. These equal to 17 percent, 17 percent and 17 percent, respectively, of all
the references made in blues lyrics.
When comparing the results from the two genres it can be seen that
rap lyrics use these words more frequently, again showing the blues lyrics to be
more conservative and considerate compared to rap lyrics.
Another preconception is that in general in music women are seen in
terms of patriarchal sexuality. This study cannot really make a strong statement on
that subject, one way or the other, as this is a difficult subject to study based on
just single words. Nevertheless, the findings of this study would seem to support
the view in light of the statistics shown previously in this chapter. Women are
largely seen as different kinds of objects and rarely in terms of their profession or
another characteristic like that. In addition, words which are in general viewed as
derogatory terms for females, such as bitch and ho, are among the most used in
rap lyrics. This would seem to support the preconception. At least is does not
contradict it. What this study has shown is that if the notion about women being
seen in terms of patriarchal sexuality is correct, women themselves go along with
it and endorse it, whether they are doing it consciously or not.
56
6.2.7 Names
One of the obvious ways to refer to a male or female is to use his or hers name.
Names – first names, last names or nick names – were not common in the rap or
blues lyrics. They were not counted, although some names were used more than
once. Calling someone by name, in light of the theories presented above, would
likely indicate that that particular person is seen as an individual and not as an
object and not defined by his or her relationships to other persons or his or her
gender. However, as such, names do not tell much about the social dynamics and
gender hierarchies of a society. Especially, since the use of names applied to both
males and females and were used by both male and female artists in both genres.
Nevertheless, one difference was found between the rap and blues
lyrics. The names that appear in rap lyrics are usually those of the artist himself or
the featuring artists in the song or of other well know rap artists. Also, the names
used are usually the rap names each artist has chosen for himself and not the
person’s real name.
Some examples are:
102. throw the keys to Lil Cease (Notorious B.I.G.: Big Poppa)
103. This is 50, comin' out your stereos (50Cent: Just a Lil’ Bit)
In blues lyrics, the artists sometimes referred to themselves using
their names but no other artists were mentioned by name. Names were also used
for characters in the songs. Usually the songs, where this occurred, told a story
and the characters were given names. Examples of this are:
104. Frankie was a good girl, everybody know,
105. she paid one hundred dollars for Albert's suit of clothes
(Mississippi John Hurt: Frankie)
106. When I heard Ginny say (Bessie Smith: I’ve Got What it Takes)
It seems these were not actual people that the singer knew and to whom the story
had happened to. If they were real people, it at least is not brought out in the song.
The rap lyrics had no names that were made up.
57
These differences seem to reflect the change in a subject matter of
the songs themselves more than any attitude towards the different genders and in a
habitual change in referring to the genders. Rap songs seem to have a more
personal narrative point of view and more aim for a truly realistic depiction of
events than blues songs. McConnell-Ginet’s (2003) studies support this view. She
writes that “proper names and pronouns do not standardly have content in the
same way as ordinary common nouns do. Their relative emptiness precludes their
occurrence as predicate expressions: rather than characterizing, they indicate a
person or group” (McConnell-Ginet 2003, 73).
58
7
Conclusions
The word choices people make when speaking tell a great deal about the culture
the person is coming from and about the values of their speech community. They
also reflect the social status of the speaker and also, when looking at the gender
references, the status of the person being referred to. The gender references also
reflect the gender hierarchies of the speakers and his audience’s community. Rap
music is both influenced by the community it comes from and also a great
influence on it, through its listeners. As these are mostly, and the songs are mostly
targeted to, the African-American youth, it is a great vehicle for understanding
their world a bit better. As Shusterman (1991) said, rap is, wherever it is made,
proudly local. For example, the black rappers in the United States still rap about
the ghetto and target their music and lyrics to a black audience who share a
similar background with the artist, even though rap music is commercially
successful and popular among listeners from other ethnicities as well, including
white middle class youth. This would indicate that rap music and the African
American Vernacular that is used in the lyrics are seen as essentially black culture
and the community, including the rap artists, wants to keep it as an outlet for
expressing their own culture and its values and way of life.
At the beginning of this study, three research questions were stated.
The findings section (chapter 6) of this thesis has tried to answer these questions
in the light and with the help of the theories and previous studies introduced in the
chapters 1. Introduction and 3. Basic Concepts and Terminology. The research
questions stated at the introduction to this study were:
How and what kind of gender references are used?
How have they changed from those found in blues lyrics?
What kinds of differences exist between male and female usage of
the gender references?
The results show that the gender references used comprise a great
variety of words taken from many different sources. A total of 40 different words
were used for males and 40 words for females, when counting words that
59
appeared at least twice in the corpus of 200 song lyrics. If taking into account all
the words that were used only once, the numbers would be even greater. The
words used came from different areas and those that were most prominent were
discussed in detail. These included words from the family, edibles, animals, body
parts and bodily features. A significant proportion of the gender references were
words generally found only in and seen as being part of the African American
Vernacular or rap music in particular. The value of the words was studied and the
results showed that positive, negative and neutral words were all used abundantly.
In the light of the general opinion about rap lyrics, a surprising find was that the
amount of negative gender references was less than that of neutral and even
positive words.
The time span between the rap and blues lyrics in this study was
several decades and during that time, there have been some changes in the gender
references used. The results show that rap lyrics have a larger vocabulary when it
comes to gender references. 70 different words that were used more than once
were used in rap lyrics and only 41 of such words were found in blues lyrics. The
gender references as a whole in blues lyrics were also more conservative and
more polite than those found in rap lyrics. The lexical set where most of the words
came from was family words in blues lyrics and in rap lyrics the most used source
was the words from their own culture and the African American Vernacular.
How men and women are referred to differed from each other as did
the words used by males and females. The most used word for males in rap lyrics
was nigga and the most used for females was bitch. Both of these words were
non-existent in blues lyrics, which also indicates there has been some change
between the two genres. The most used words also reflect the general attitude
towards the genders. The word nigga in the content of rap lyrics is mostly either
positive or neutral, whereas bitch is mostly negative or neutral. The only ones
occasionally using it in a positive way are the females themselves. The
overwhelming number of times the word nigga was used, compared to other
words, also gives indication of the fact that most of the gender references in lyrics
of the both genders was to men.
The results also show that female rap artists use more words with a
positive value where as male artists use more neutral words. The percentage of
negative words used was almost equal, with females using slightly more of them.
60
The category men most often chose the words to refer to females was from the
family oriented words or the words describing someone as an object. These words
were not commonly used for men, especially by men. Most words for females
were derived from other sources whereas most words for males derived from their
gender and masculinity. Although there were some differences in as to what
words the genders used, the overall result was that, despite the negativity and
degrading implications of the words men often use for women, women themselves
are also using these words to refer to other women or to themselves.
It seems that female rap artists are mostly working in a men’s world
and trying to adhere to the masculine standards of it. Some female rap artists are
seen as feminists and praised for bringing the voice of black women out in the
open. Judging by the results of this study, the underlying standards and values are
still mostly unchanged as evidenced by females using the same degrading words
to refer to women. The most visible exception to this is the reappropriation of the
word bitch that seems to be in progress. This reappropriation could also be seen as
an attempt to change the rhetoric in the manner DiMare (1992) suggested. The
results show that female rap artists are rather aggressive and most of the results go
against the general stereotypes of what is expected of female speech. This could
be a result of the overall masculinity of the field they are working on or simply an
indication that black women’s speech is not similar to white women’s speech in
stylistic features as some scholars have said (for example Tannen 1993, Scott
2000 and Milroy 1987).
As a final conclusion one could state that rap music is indeed
somewhat chauvinistic and degrading towards women. However, this is not a
prominent aspect of it. Also, the vocabulary and word meanings are tied together
with the whole of the African American society and its beliefs and values and its
way of speaking. Their culture and the way they speak are different to that of
white Americans and thus should be studied on its own and with its own set of
criteria and study methods. It is a world all on its own, including its own unique
vocabulary. Rap lyrics as a whole are a subject that has not been studied very
much and definitely something that could be looked on in more detail and one that
could offer insightful results. Gender references in particular is an interesting area
of study and one that has a lot to offer. Rap music is an important part of the lives
61
of many of today’s youth, especially black youth, and it greatly affects their
thinking and their speaking.
62
8
Bibliography
Abate & Jewell (eds.). (2001) The New Oxford American Dictionary. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Berns & Schlobinski. (2003) “Constructions of identity in German hip-hop
culture”, in Androutsopoulos & Georgakopoulou (eds.), Discourse Constructions
of Youth Identities. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 197-219.
Bowers, Jane. (1993) “I Can Stand More Trouble Than Any Little Woman My
Size: Observations on the Meanings of the Blues of Estelle “Mama” Yancey”.
American Music, 11:1, 28-53.
Bradby, Barbara. (1993) “Sampling Sexuality: Gender, Technology and the Body
in Dance Music”. Popular Music, 12:2, 155-176.
Brown, Penelope. (1998) “How and Why Are Women More Polite: Some
Evidence from a Mayan Community”, in Coates, Jennifer (ed.), Language and
Gender: a reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 81-99.
Carney, George O. (1987) “The Roots of American Music”, in Carney, George
(ed.), The Sounds of People and Places: Readings in the Geography of American
Folk and Popular Music. Lanham: University Press of America, 3-40.
Davis, Angela. (1990) “Black Women and Music; A Historical Legacy of
Struggle”, in Braxton & McLaughlin (eds.) Wild Women in the Whirlwind: AfroAmerican Culture and the Contemporary Literary Renaissance, new Jersey:
Rutgers University Press, 3-21.
Di Mare, Lesley. (1992) “Rhetoric and Women: The Private and the Public
Spheres”, in Perry et al. (eds.), Constructing and Reconstructing Gender: The
Links Among Communication, Language, and Gender. Albany: State University
of New York Press, 45-50.
Eckert, Penelope. (1998) “Gender and Sociolinguistic Variation”, in Coates,
Jennifer (ed.), Language and Gender: a reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 6475.
Freed, Alice. (2003) “Epilogue: Reflections on Language and Gender Research”,
in Holmes & Meyerhoff (eds.), The Handbook of Language and Gender. Oxford:
Blackwell Publishing, 699-721.
Gilroy, Paul. (1993) The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness
quoted in Hess, Mickey. (2005) “Metal Faces, Rap Masks: Identity and Resistance
in Hip Hop’s Persona Artist”. Popular Music and Society, 28:3, 297-311.
Gramley & Pätzold. (1992) A Survey of Modern English. London: Routledge.
63
Haugen, Jason. (2003) “’Unladylike Divas’: Language, Gender, and Female
Gangsta Rappers”. Popular Music and Society, 26:4, 429-444.
Hess, Mickey. (2005) “Metal Faces, Rap Masks: Identity and Resistance in Hip
Hop’s Persona Artist”. Popular Music and Society, 28:3, 297-311.
Hoar, Nancy. (1992) “Genderlect, Powerlect, and Politeness”, in Perry et al. (eds.),
Constructing and Reconstructing Gender: The Links Among Communication,
Language, and Gender. Albany: State University of New York Press, 127-136.
Holland & Skinner. (1987) “Prestige and intimacy: The cultural models behind
Americans’ talk about gender types”, in Holland & Quinn (eds.), Cultural Models
in Language & Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 78-111.
Holmes, Janet. (1997) “Women, language and identity”. Journal of
Sociolinguistics, 1:2, 195-223.
Jackson, Howard. (1988) Words and Their Meaning. London: Longman.
Johnstone, Barbara. (1993) “Community and Contest: Midwestern Men and
Women Creating Their Worlds in Conversational Storytelling” in Tannen,
Deborah (ed.), Gender and Conversational Interaction. New York: Oxford
University Press, 62-80.
Krims, Adam. (2001) Rap music and the Poetics of Identity. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Lähteenmäki, Mika. (2000) Emergenssin kielelliset kasvot. Tampere: Tampereen
yliopisto.
McConnell-Ginet, Sally. (2003) ”’What’s in a Name?’ Social Labeling and
Gender Practices”, in Holmes & Meyerhoff (eds.), The Handbook of Language
and Gender. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 69-97.
Milroy, Lesley. (1987) Language and Social Networks. Second Edition. Oxford:
Basil Blackwell.
Nida, Eugene. (1975) Componential Analysis of Meaning. The Hague: Mouton.
Ochs, Elinor. (1992) “Indexing gender”, in Duranti & Goodwin (eds.), Rethinking
context: Language as an interactive phenomenon. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 335-358.
Pilkington, Jane. (1998) “’Don’t try to make out I’m nice!’ The Different
Strategies Women and Men Use When Gossiping”, in Coates, Jennifer (ed.),
Language and Gender: a reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 254-269.
64
Romaine, Suzanne. (2003) “Variation in Language and Gender”, in Holmes &
Meyerhoff (eds.), The Handbook of Language and Gender. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing, 98-118.
Rose, Tricia. (1994) Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary
America. Hanover: University Press of New England.
Ryan & Calhoun III. (1996) “Gender or genre? Emotion models in commercial
rap and country music”. Popular Music & Society, 20:2, 121-155.
Scott, Karla. (2000) “Crossing cultural borders: ‘girl’ and ‘look’ as markers of
identity in Black women’s language use”. Discourse and Society, 11:2, 237-258.
Shusterman, Richard. (1991) “The Fine Art of Rap”. New Literary History, 22:3,
613-632.
Smith, Christopher. (1997) “Method in the Madness: Exploring the Boundaries of
Identity in Hip Hop Performativity”. Social Identities 3:3, 345-375.
Springer, Robert. (1995) Authentic Blues, Its history and its themes. New York:
The Edwin Mellen Press.
Stanley, Julia. (1977) “Paradigmatic Woman: The Prostitute”, in Shores, David
(ed.), Papers in Language Variation. Birmingham: University of Alabama Press,
303-321.
Stenström, Anna-Brita. (2003) “It’s not that I really care about him personally you
know: the construction of gender identity in London teenage talk”, in
Androutsopoulos & Georgakopoulou (eds.), Discourse Constructions of Youth
Identities. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 93-117.
Stephens, Gregory. (1991) “Rap Music’s Double-Voiced Discourse: A Crossroads
for Interracial Communication”. Journal of Communication Inquiry No. 15, 70-91.
Tannen, Deborah. (1993) “The Relativity of Linguistic Strategies: Rethinking
Power and Solidarity in Gender and Dominance” in Tannen, Deborah (ed.),
Gender and Conversational Interaction. New York: Oxford University Press,
165-188.
Teachout, Terry. (1990) “Rap and Racism”. Commentary, 89:3, 60-62.
Thorne, Kramarae & Henley. (1983) “Language, gender and society: Opening a
second decade of research” in Thorne, Kramarae and Henley (eds.), Language,
gender and society. Rowley, Massachusetts: Newbury House Publishers, 7-24.
Trudgill, Peter. (1972) “Sex, covert prestige and linguistic change in the urban
British English of Norwich”. Language in Society, 1, 179-195.
65
Van Dijk, Ting Toomey, Smitherman & Troutman. (1997) “Discourse, Ethnicity,
Culture and Racism”, in T. van Dijk (ed.) Discourse as Social Interaction.
London: Sage, 144-180.
Yurchenko, Henrietta. (1995) “Blues Fallin’ down like Hail: Recorded Blues,
1920s-1940s”. American Music, 13:4, 448-469.
www.rapdict.org/Main_Page, visited 7.11.2005
http://dictionary.oed.com, visited 11.5.2006
For the lyrics:
http://www.theonlineblues.com/
http://blueslyrics.tripod.com/
http://www.seeklyrics.com
http://www.azlyrics.com
http://www.lyrics4all.net
http://www.lyricsdepot.com
http://www.sing365.com
http://www.lyrics007.com
http://www.lyricsdownload.com
Appendix 1
Artists, songs and recording years (where known):
Bessie Smith: Baby Won’t You Please Come Home (1923), Chicago Bound
Blues (1923), Devil's Gonna Git You (1928), Empty Bed Blues (1928), I've Got
What It Takes (1929), Keep It To Yourself (1930), Lady Luck Blues (1923), Oh
Daddy Blues (1923), Put It Right Here (Or Keep It Out There) (1928), You've Got
To Give Me Some (1929)
Memphis Minnie (1929-1937): Chickasaw Train Blues, Hoodoo Lady (1936), I
Hate To See The Sun Go Down, Me And My Chauffeur, Memphis Minnie-Jitis
Blues, New Bumble Bee, North Memphis Blues, Dirty Mother for You, Good
Biscuits, If You See My Rooster
Ma Rainey: Black Cat Hoot Owl Blues (1928), Black Dust Blues (1928), Blues
And Booze (1924), Chain Gang Blues (1926?), Barrel House Blues (1924), Don’t
Fish in My Sea (1926), Jelly Bean Blues (1925?), Moonshine Blues (1924), See
See Rider (1925?), Sissy Blues (1926?)
Alberta Hunter: Chirpin' The Blues (1922), Down Hearted Blues (1922), He's
Got A Punch Like Joe Louis (-), Aggravating Papa (1923)
Victoria Spivey: Detroit Moan (1936), Down Hill Pull (-), How Do You Do It
That Way? (1929), I Can’t Last Long (1936), Organ Grinder Blues (1928), Sweet
Peas (1936)
Ida Cox: Blues Ain't Nothin' Else But (-), Booze Crazy Man Blues (1928),
Chicago Monkey Man Blues (-), Coffin Blues (1925), Death Letter Blues (-), Four
Day Creep (1927), One Hour Mama (-), Take Him Off My Mind (-), Worn Down
Daddy (1928), You Stole My Man (1928)
Mississippi John Hurt: Louis Collins (1928), My Creole Belle (-), Stack O' Lee
Blues (1928), Big Leg Blue (1928), Candy Man Blues (1928), Frankie (1928),
Got the Blues, Can’t be Satisfied (1928), Nobody Cares for Me (-), Pay Day (-),
Richland’s Woman Blues (-)
Charlie Patton: Revenue Man Blues (1934), High Water Everywhere (1929),
Pony Blues (1929), Screamin' and Hollerin' the blues (1929), Bird Nest Bound
(1930), Green River Blues (1929), Hammer Blues (1929), Mississippi Bo Weavil
Blues (1929), Moon Going Down (1930), Poor Me (1934)
Blind Lemon Jefferson: Bad Luck Blues (1926), Dry Southern Blues (1926),
Low Down Mojo Blues (1928), Rambler Blues (1927), Big Night Blues (1929),
Lonesome House Blues (1927), Long Distance Moan (1929), That Crawling Baby
Blues (-), Shuckin’ Sugar Blues (1926), Pneumonia Blues (1929)
Blind Boy Fuller: Cat Man Blues (1936), Flyin' Airplane Blues (1938), Hungry
Calf Blues (1937), I Want Some Of Your Pie (-), It Doesn't Matter Baby (1939),
Lost Lover Blues (1940), You Never Can Tell (1937), Little Woman You’re So
Sweet (1940), Weepin’ Willow Blues (-), Thousand Woman Blues (-)
Blind Willie McTell: B and O Blues #2 (1933), Death Room Blues (1933), East
St. Louis Blues (aka Fare You Well) (1933), Love Makin' Mama (1933), Runnin'
Me Crazy (1933), Statesboro Blues (1928), The Dyin' Crapshooter's Blues (-),
Weary Hearted Blues (1933), Broke Down Engine (-), Lord, Send Me an Angel (-)
Missy Elliott: Work It (2002), Get Ur Freak On (2001), One Minute Man (2001),
Gossip Folks (2002), Sock It 2 Me (1997), The Rain (1997), Pass That Dutch
(2003), Take Away (2001), Hot Boyz (1999), I’m Really Hot (2003)
Queen Latifah: U.N.I.T.Y. (1993), Just Another Day (1993), Fly Girl (1991),
Latifah’s Had It Up 2 Here (1991), Ladies First (1989), Bananas (1998), Weekend
Love (1993), Evil That Men Do (1989), Paper (1998), How Do I Love Thee (1991)
Lauryn Hill: Doo Wop (1998), Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You (1998), The
Lost Ones (1998), Ex Factor (1998), To Zion (1998), Everything Is Everything
(1998), Mystery Of Inequity (2002), Nothing Even Matters (1998), Superstar
(1998), When It Hurts So Bad (1998)
Lil’ Kim: Not Tonight (2005), Kimnotyze (2003), Shake Ya Bum Bum (2003),
How Many Licks? (2000), No Matter What They Say (2000), Came Back For
You (2003), Magic Stick (2003), No Time (1996), The Jump Off (2003), Thug
Luv (2003)
Eve: Gangsta Lovin’ (2002), Let Me Blow Ya Mind (2001), Satisfaction (2002),
What Ya Want (1999), Gotta Man (1999), Love Is Blind (1999), Who’s That Girl
(2001), Got What You Need (2001), Eve Of Destruction (-), You Had Me, You
Lost Me (2001)
Notorious B.I.G.: Big Poppa (1994), Juicy (1994), One More Chance (1994),
Hypnotize (1997), Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems (1997), Sky’s the Limit (1997),
Niggas (1999), Notorious (1999), Dead Wrong (1999), Get Money (-)
50cent: Candy Shop (2005), Disco Inferno (2005), Just a Lil’ Bit (2005), In Da
Club (2003), Wanksta (2003), 21 Questions (2003), P.I.M.P. (2003), Piggy Bank
(2005), Hate it or Love it (2005), If I Can’t (2003)
Jay-Z: Can I Get A (1998), Hard Knock Life (1998), Nigga What, Nigga Who
(1998), It’s Alright (1998), Money Ain’t a Thang (1998), Izzo (2001), 99
Problems (2003), I Just Wanna Love U (2000), Change Clothes (2003), Dirt off
Your Shoulder (2003)
Tupac: Keep Ya Head Up (1993), I Get Aroung (1993), So Many Tears (1995),
Temptation (1995), Dear Mama (1995), California Love (1996), How Do You
Want It (1996), I Ain’t Mad At Cha (1996), To Live & Die In LA (1996), Hail
Mary (1996)
Dr. Dre: Nuthin’ But A G’Thang (1992), Fuck Wit Dre Day (1992), Let Me Ride
(1992), Keep Their Heads Ringing (1995), Been There Done That (1996), Still
D.R.E. (1999), Forgot About Dre (1999), The Next Episode (1999), Bad
Intentions (2001), The Wash (2001)