Hip-hop, LPP and Globalization

Abstract

As previous chapters have outlined in detail, recent scholarship on language and globalization have looked to sites of popular culture to examine the complexities of the relationship between language and globalization. Global influences pervade everyday life and new forms of popular culture emerge that have the potential to re-shape social practices, including those linked to language. Hip-hop is a frequent theme in this research and I am interested in cultural and linguistic flows, not so much as processes of homogenization, but as part of a reorganization of local language practices and the role hip-hop plays in this regard. While the present chapter addresses how hip-hop has spread and become localized, it is principally concerned with what this may mean for LPP. The chapter is particularly interested in the dual capacity of the hip-hop genre to function both as a global and a local resource. More specifically it seeks to examine hip-hop as a genre in which to investigate language practices and ideologies. The focus is on two hip-hop artists and on how Irish-language resources are mobilized in this genre to raise questions about the language, both in terms of language ideologies and language practices. It also discusses how this up-scaling of Irish to the genre of hip-hop impacts on notions of identity and who counts as an Irish speaker.