Speaking Rap: Claves sociolingüísticas y etnográficas desde el modelo de Hymes en el rap social español (1994-2021)

Abstract

Esta investigación tiene por objetivo general constituir un conocimiento relevante en torno a una de las manifestaciones artístico-discursivas más significativas en el contexto urbano internacional de las últimas décadas: el rap de vocación crítica así como la matriz cultural que lo engloba, el Hip Hop, en su contexto de nacimiento y desarrollo profesional en España (1994-2021). Surgido como movimiento subcultural y marginal en la periferia neoyorquina a principios de los años 70 y rápidamente convertido en fenómeno de masas en la comunidad norteamericana, su influjo se empieza a notar en nuestro país a partir de la década de los años 80, en una sociedad recién salida del oscurantismo franquista y anhelante de nuevas vías de escape cultural. El rap se ha consolidado a lo largo de estas casi tres décadas como una herramienta clave para comprender las diversas transformaciones culturales y políticas del país. Su discurso se relaciona e involucra con asuntos de calado social y se construye en oposición a una configuración identitaria (y por tanto lingüística e ideológica) hegemónica en el seno de la sociedad española. La irrupción del rap y el Hip Hop en Estados Unidos coincide en tiempo con el cambio de paradigma académico en los hasta entonces estructuralistas y asociales estudios lingüísticos. Una importante nómina de autores comienza a teorizar sobre el lenguaje bajo premisas que iban más allá de sus aspectos formales para enfatizar los contextos y las variables sociológicas (sexo, edad, lugar de procedencia, clase social o nivel educativo) que dan sentido a las diversas maneras de ser y estar en el mundo. Estas se reflejan a través de determinados usos lingüísticos, como los que definen al rap social, a menudo alejados de lo estándar e ignorados o estigmatizados por los organismos que regulan y mantienen ese poder de la norma. La investigación se ancla así, en este enfoque epistemológico multidisciplinar que entrelaza preceptos de la sociología, la lingüística, la etnografía de la comunicación así como de la crítica literaria, cultural y mediática desde diferentes focos de irradiación científica para definir esta compleja relación que se establece entre rap, lenguaje y sociedad. Para esta caracterización del fenómeno se hace uso del modelo metodológico SPEAKING propuesto por Dell Hymes (1974) donde se recogen todos los elementos necesarios para comprender el intercambio comunicativo. A continuación, se preseleccionó un corpus de mil veintitrés canciones, de las cuales ciento veinte (pertenecientes a casi cincuenta raperos y raperas) pasaron a ser debidamente analizadas bajo el paraguas del modelo SPEAKING. A través de sus categorías analíticas, se presentan y discuten los resultados obtenidos. Se define así desde la escena (física y sociológica) desde donde el rap se construye y proyecta, la relación que se establece entre todos los participantes de la comunidad que incurren en este intercambio comunicativo, los ejes temáticos y discursivos más acusados del género, cómo se estructuran y distribuyen estos en un texto-canción de rap, el mecanismo de la interdiscursividad (ID) como recurso clave para identificar los patrones ideológicos y referenciales de su mensaje así como los fenómenos (socio)lingüísticos de los que estos se valen en función de los distintos niveles de análisis de la lengua (y que conformarían lo que se ha denominado como Lenguaje del Hip Hop, LHH) que nos permitan identificar tanto la competencia comunicativa concreta que define a los raperos en España, como las convenciones sociales en las que este género se adscribe.

The main objective of this research is to generate a relevant knowledge about one of the most significant artistic and discursive manifestations in the international urban context of recent decades: critical perspective’s rap and the cultural matrix that encompasses it, Hip Hop, in the context of its birth and professional development in Spain (1994-2021). Emerging as a subcultural and marginal movement in the periphery of New York in the early 1970s and rapidly became into a mass phenomenon in the North American community, its influence began to be felt in our country in the 1980s, in a society that had recently emerged from Franco's obscurantism and yearned for new ways of cultural escape. Throughout these almost three decades, rap has consolidated itself as a key tool for understanding the different country's cultural and political transformations. Its discourse is related to and involved with issues of social significance and is constructed in opposition to a hegemonic identity configuration (and therefore linguistic and ideological) within Spanish society. The irruption of rap and Hip Hop in the United States coincides in time with the change of academic paradigm in the so far structuralist and asocial linguistic studies. An important number of authors began to theorize about language under premises that went beyond its formal aspects to emphasize the contexts and sociological variables (sex, age, place of origin, social class, or educational level) that provide meaning to the different ways of inhabiting the world. These are reflected through specific linguistic uses, such as those that define social rap, often far from the standard and ignored or stigmatized by the bodies that regulate and maintain that power of the norm. The research is thus anchored in this multidisciplinary epistemological approach that interweaves precepts from sociology, linguistics, ethnography of communication as well as literary, cultural and media critique from different focuses of scientific irradiation to define this complex relationship established between rap, language, and society. For this characterization of the phenomenon, we start from the SPEAKING methodological model proposed by Dell Hymes (1974) where all the elements necessary to understand the communicative exchange are gathered. A corpus of a thousand and twenty-three songs was then pre-selected, of which one hundred and twenty (belonging to almost fifty rappers) were duly analyzed under this SPEAKING model. Through its analytical categories, we define the scene (physical and sociological) from where rap is constructed and projected, the relationship that is established between all the participants of the community that incur in this communicative exchange, its most marked thematic and discursive axes, how these are structured and distributed in a rap text-song, the mechanism of interdiscursivity (ID) as a key resource for identifying the ideological and referential patterns of their discourse, as well as the (socio)linguistic phenomena they make use of according to the different levels of language analysis (and which make up what has been called the Hip Hop Language, HHL) that allow us to identify both the specific communicative competence that defines rappers in Spain, and the social conventions to which this genre is attached.

The main objective of this research is to generate a relevant knowledge about one of the most significant artistic and discursive manifestations in the international urban context of recent decades: critical perspective’s rap and the cultural matrix that encompasses it, Hip Hop, in the context of its birth and professional development in Spain (1994-2021). Emerging as a subcultural and marginal movement in the periphery of New York in the early 1970s and rapidly became into a mass phenomenon in the North American community, its influence began to be felt in our country in the 1980s, in a society that had recently emerged from Franco's obscurantism and yearned for new ways of cultural escape. Throughout these almost three decades, rap has consolidated itself as a key tool for understanding the different country's cultural and political transformations. Its discourse is related to and involved with issues of social significance and is constructed in opposition to a hegemonic identity configuration (and therefore linguistic and ideological) within Spanish society. The irruption of rap and Hip Hop in the United States coincides in time with the change of academic paradigm in the so far structuralist and asocial linguistic studies. An important number of authors began to theorize about language under premises that went beyond its formal aspects to emphasize the contexts and sociological variables (sex, age, place of origin, social class, or educational level) that provide meaning to the different ways of inhabiting the world. These are reflected through specific linguistic uses, such as those that define social rap, often far from the standard and ignored or stigmatized by the bodies that regulate and maintain that power of the norm. The research is thus anchored in this multidisciplinary epistemological approach that interweaves precepts from sociology, linguistics, ethnography of communication as well as literary, cultural and media critique from different focuses of scientific irradiation to define this complex relationship established between rap, language, and society. For this characterization of the phenomenon, we start from the SPEAKING methodological model proposed by Dell Hymes (1974) where all the elements necessary to understand the communicative exchange are gathered. A corpus of a thousand and twenty-three songs was then pre-selected, of which one hundred and twenty (belonging to almost fifty rappers) were duly analyzed under this SPEAKING model. Through its analytical categories, we define the scene (physical and sociological) from where rap is constructed and projected, the relationship that is established between all the participants of the community that incur in this communicative exchange, its most marked thematic and discursive axes, how these are structured and distributed in a rap text-song, the mechanism of interdiscursivity (ID) as a key resource for identifying the ideological and referential patterns of their discourse, as well as the (socio)linguistic phenomena they make use of according to the different levels of language analysis (and which make up what has been called the Hip Hop Language, HHL) that allow us to identify both the specific communicative competence that defines rappers in Spain, and the social conventions to which this genre is attached.