Copula Variation Across Two Decades of Hip Hop Nation Language

This paper is missing several charts.

For many people, the only form of African American Vernacular English that reaches their world comes solely from the media, specifically popular Hip Hop music. On the other hand, there are those who have lived completely immersed in it. Hip Hop music is a genre whose medium was originally derived from African American Vernacular English. There are many popular musical artists in the United States and other countries today who are involved in this cultural movement that began decades ago. Over time, questions have risen about African American Vernacular English (AAVE), its origins and how it stands unique from Standard English. More recently a new term has come about in the sociolinguistics field of AAVE. Hip Hop Nation Language is the form of AAVE used in the cultural movement of Hip Hop.

Hip Hop Nation Language as a part of African American Vernacular English

The current study seeks to contribute to the academic discourse on the topics of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), known also as African American English (AAE) and Black English Vernacular (BEV), and also to the topic of Hip Hop Nation Language (HHNL). While African American Vernacular English is not a new topic in the field, as I stated above, Hip Hop Nation Language is. The study also seeks to contribute specifically to continuing work on the Hip Hop Nation Language syntactic feature of copula absence. Contributions to these areas will be made through an analysis of copula absence and contraction in the Hip Hop lyrics of six different East Coast artists across two decades of Hip Hop Nation Language. I will begin by reintroducing a summarized history of AAVE, taking a brief look at the origin debate and the key ...

... middle of paper ...

... coffin: Theoretical and methodological issues in the analysis of copula variation in African American Vernacular English. Language Variation and Change, 3, 103-132.

Rickford, John R. (1998). The creole origins of African American vernacular English: Evidence from copula absence. In s. Mufwene et al. African American English: Structure, history and use. London: Routledge.

Rickford, John R. (1999). African American Vernacular English. Malden: Blackwell Publishers, Inc.

Smitherman, Geneva. (1997). The Chain Remain the Same: Communicative Practices in the Hip Hop Nation. Journal of Black Studies, 28, 1, 3-25.

Spady, James G., Charles G. Lee & H. Samy Alim. (1999). Street Conscious Rap. Philadelphia: Loh Publishers.

Wolfram, Walt. (2003). Reexamining the Development of African American English: Evidence from Isolated Communities. Language, 79, 2.