摘 要

说唱乐作为一种基于大量语言表达的特殊艺术形式，近年来在格莱美大奖中崭露头角，因此说唱乐研究经常被归为音乐艺术范畴而非语言文学范畴。但在众多音乐流派的歌词中，说唱乐歌词在文体特征方面和语言学联系最为紧密。因此，本文从语音、句法、语篇三个方面探讨了非裔美国黑人说唱乐歌词的文体特征。首先本文探讨了非裔美国黑人英语与说唱乐歌词的关系，而后通过例证阐明其语音特征主要体现在韵律、连读、省略和拟声等方面；其句法特征在句长、省略、祈使语气、平行结构等方面展现出来；其语篇特征则表现在语法衔接、词汇衔接等方面。本文通过分析非裔美国黑人说唱乐歌词的文体特征，发现其在体现这些文体特征的同时，达到了简洁、明确、新颖、富有韵律感等目的，从而获得了大众的认可与欣赏。

关键词：说唱乐歌词；非裔美国黑人英语；文体学特征

Abstract

As a kind of special art performance based on plenty of language expressions, Rap music has cut an impressive figure in Grammy Awards in these years. Therefore, research on Rap music often falls into musical art category rather than linguistic literature category. However, among numerous music styles, the lyrics of Rap music have the closest relationship with linguistics in terms of their stylistic features. Thus, this paper discusses three stylistic features of African American Rap song lyrics: phonetic features, syntactic features and discourse features. Firstly this paper probes into the relationship between African American Vernacular English and Rap song lyrics. Secondly this paper illustrates with examples that the phonetic features are mainly manifested in rhyme, liaison, ellipsis and onomatopoeia; the syntactic ones are mostly manifested in the length of sentences, elliptical construction, imperative voice and parallelism; the discourse features can be found in grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion. Through the analysis of stylistic features of African American Rap song lyrics, this paper finds that African American Rap song lyrics achieve simplicity, explicitness, novelty and rhythm with manifestation of these stylistic features and gain admiration and popularity from the public.

Key Words: Rap song lyrics; African American Vernacular English; stylistic features

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Literature Review 3

2.1 African American Vernacular English and Rap Music 3

2.2 Study abroad and at Home 5

3 Stylistic Features in Rap Song Lyrics 8

3.1 Phonetic Features 8

3.2 Syntactic Features 11

3.3 Discourse Features 14

4 Conclusion 17

References 18

Acknowledgements 20

Stylistic Research on African American Rap Song Lyrics

1 Introduction

The word “Rap” firstly appeared in Britain in the 16^th century and meant “to say” in the 18^th century, later denoted “to converse” in African American dialect and now it refers to a kind of music art combining wordplay, rhythm and quick speaking. The interesting thing was that its meaning as “quick speech” predated the one as “to hit”, which by coincidence predicted the developing direction of Rap. The word “Rap” was regarded as the abbreviation of “Rhythm and Poetry” and now it can be further interpreted as “Strong Rhythm and Fast Poetry”.

Black English, now gradually acknowledged as African American Vernacular English (hereinafter referred to as AAVE), is a special kind of English created by African Americans in early time. At that time, the British and other colonists were in their process of spreading their territories. So African Americans were deprived of human rights. They were commonly treated as animals and were forced to serve as slaves of these colonists. Giant barriers in communication between the slaves and the colonists gave birth to the special language system applying to the slaves. The slaves picked up some simple English and developed some of their own through daily communication. That was AAVE in its early stage. As African Americans began to realize the importance of human rights, more civil rights movements in favor of African Americans were launched. As a result, AAVE has been more profound in both meanings and usages on its track of development, thus acquiring typical stylistic features of its own. Basically speaking, AAVE represents the African Americans’ spirits and culture they have cultivated during the continuous fight against discrimination, such as resistance, struggle, exploitation, righteousness and creativity.

Before the complete formation of AAVE, Rap had been just regarded as the rhythmical hit without lyrics. Later with the evolvement of the special language system, Rap became abundant in contents because AAVE grew comprehensive enough to enrich Rap as its lyrics. Then Rap music came into being with the same spirits mentioned above.

Moreover, as every mature language system has its stylistic features, AAVE brought features of its own to Rap song lyrics. This paper aims at exploring the stylistic features of the Rap song lyrics through analyzing the phonetic features, syntactical features and discourse features. Thus, this paper will reveal the influence of the Rap songs on American society and the pragmatic functions of such stylistic features in lyric discourses.

This paper is divided into four chapters. The first chapter is the introduction to Rap and the influence of AAVE upon Rap. The next chapter briefly introduces the origin and development of AAVE and Rap music and then presents the literature review. Chapter Three discusses the stylistic features of Rap song lyrics at phonetic, syntactic and discourse levels. Chapter Four concludes the relationship between AAVE and Rap song lyrics and the social influence of the Rap songs with their lyrics.

2 Literature Review

2.1 African American Vernacular English and Rap Music

Ancestors of most African Americans stepped on the continent of North America as slaves, the majority of whom suffered a lot as war prisoners. The existing slavery market was expanded by Europeans seeking labor for colonization. These slaves somehow avoided coming into tribal conflicts in the new continent and started a new form of culture, a distinct language and history, which manifested the features of creolization (Chambers, 2015). They learned some primary English from their colonists, in the meantime, they created some of their own language. That was the early AAVE, which was quite simple and practical. With the development of African American history, AAVE has experienced decreolization and attained more characteristics from African American community. So as a linguistic heritage from slave trade, AAVE reflects the social and cultural changes among African Americans.

Some famous slave liberation movements need to be noted while this paper is dealing with the development of AAVE, among which is the American Civil War. To some extent it directly changed the status of African Americans in society. After the declaration, slavery was abolished and African American groups gained the rights to establish their own churches, towns and businesses during the Great Migration starting in 1910 (Moody amp; Mia amp; Scott, 2015). The Second Great Migration from 1941 to the 1970s created more jobs requiring practical skills and it brought more opportunities of education for African Americans. With more and more African Americans rushing into urban areas and engaging in various types of business, AAVE converged with Standard English rapidly (Jamison, 2006). As AAVE became more widely accepted across the nation, the increasing popularity of AAVE in African American communities seemed inevitable.

Later achievements after other African American civil right movements, including the famous speech I Have a Dream and the Civil Rights Act, won African Americans a lot of public dignity and drew the public attention towards AAVE (Pinn, 2003). Several linguists began to study AAVE after those movements. The establishment should, in fact, be attributed to the Ann Arbor Decision, a famous case dealing with some African American rights of equal protection of the law.

In 2008, Barack Obama was elected as the 44th President of the United States, which marked another elevation of African Americans’ status in the mainstream. The rise of African Americans’ status has well indicated the decreolization of the AAVE and explained the increasing acceptance of AAVE in other ethical groups in the United States.