Voicing sentiments of resilience: A corpus approach to 1980s conscious rappers in South Africa
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Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AOSIS
Abstract
The study of people�s response to adversity acquires substantially different connotations in
the South African context because of the heavy legacy of apartheid. This article explores the
construction of the notion of resilience through the oral narrative production of the most
prominent conscious rappers that emerged in the 1980s in South Africa, namely Prophets of Da
City and Black Noise. By means of a corpus approach, our analysis with AntConc revealed that
resilience is intrinsically connected to the historical sociopolitical struggle of the black group. In
building this notion, results show how the parallel emergence of an oppressive other, the white
group, plays a fundamental role. Relevant to our study, the affirmation of their black identity
appears to act as an effective way of underpinning their possibility of resurgence. Furthermore,
the objective analysis of rappers� linguistic choices in their lyrics underlines their strategic use
of personal pronouns, ethnic labels and other contextual-loaded terms whilst conveying their
messages and communicating with their audience. These results both demonstrate the
contribution of rap music in construction of a specific notion of resilience and highlight the
effectiveness of this methodological approach, opening the floor to comparative studies.
Description
Keywords
Resilience, Conscious rap, Corpus linguistics, South Africa, Oral narrative production
Citation
�lvarez-Mosquera, P. & Visagie, P.T., 2021, �Voicing sentiments of resilience: A corpus approach to 1980s conscious rappers in South Africa�, Literator 42(1), a1730. https://doi.org/10.4102/lit. v42i1.1730