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Hiphop Literacies

Elaine Richardson
Spring Panel, Language and Literacies
April 17, 2008
George Wells Knight House
Ohio State University

Seminal work in studies of literacy by scholars such as Goody and Watt (1968) and Ong (1982) focused on a "great divide" that exists between literates and those who have been untouched by literate culture. In this view, literacy restructures thought and is a print bound, autonomous, private, mental, context-free activity. Over the past few decades, the field of literacy studies has taken a social multi-modal turn as is exemplified in The New Literacy Studies (NLS), which promote the idea that literacy must be conceived of more broadly, as ideological, more than print bound, and socially constructed. As Ong himself argues, literacy cannot be divorced from orality and oral memory, and knowledge making systems are connected to literate ones. Another school of thought in the New Literacy Studies explores the many types of literacy, visual and sonic, to name just two. Within visual literacy there are different ways to read, for example, music videos on MTV, video games, websites, or billboards. Further, print, visual imagery, and sound (multiple modalities) are combined and juxtaposed to carry meaning. Meanings are tied to different discourses and semiotic domains. As Gee asserts, "If we think first in terms of semiotic domains and not in terms of reading and writing as traditionally conceived, we can say that people are (or are not) literate (partially or fully) in a domain if they can recognize (the equivalent of 'reading') and/or produce (the equivalent of 'writing') meanings in the domain." (Gee, 2003:18) By semiotic domain I mean any set of practices that recruits one or more modalities (e.g., oral or written language, images, equations, symbols, sounds, gestures, graphs, artifacts) to communicate distinctive types of meanings."(Gee, 2003:18) Semiotics refers to things that can stand for ideas and take on meanings, "…not just words. All of these things are signs… that 'stand for' (take on) different meanings in different situations, contexts, practices, cultures, and historical periods." (Gee, 2003:17)

In my work, like Brian Street, I use the term literacies to signify opposition to the concept of monolithic autonomous literacy. In African American literacies, I seek to sketch the social construction of Black identities and how these coupled with one's social positioning influences Black people's special knowledge, special ways of (inter)acting, representing, performing, and being (Richardson, 2003). African American literacies refers to the constellation of African American cultural identities, social locations, and social practices that influence the ways that members of this discourse group make meaning and assert themselves sociopolitically in private/subordinate as well as public/official contexts. African American literacies include vernacular resistance arts and cultural productions that are created to carve out free spaces in oppressive locations such as the streets, the workplace, or the airwaves to name a few (Richardson, 2008). African American literacies also refers to "ways of reading and writing and using written texts that are bound up in social processes which locate individual action within social and cultural processes" (Martin-Jones and Jones, 2000: 4-5) By referring to African Americans as a discourse group, we emphasize social histories, practices, and ideas that influence ways of "behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, speaking, and performing that are accepted as instantiations of [Black manhood or womanhood]…by [Black people]… [Black people's] Discourses are ways of being 'people like us.' (adapted from Gee, 1996: viii) This does not mean that all Black people think or feel the same way on all issues. Age, social position/ing, education, environment, experience, ethnicity, sexuality, and a host of other social inputs are influential. However, the social language or discourse of the group is shaped fundamentally by the circumstances of the contexts that have shaped their development as human beings. Following Fairclough, I understand discourse to be socially shaped and socially shaping. I am interested in the way situations produce and reproduce institutions and are in turn sustained by them. Thus, the situation of African Americans is that to a degree greater than that of many Anglo American males and females, we are socialized to realize ourselves as racial and sexual objects and as the embodiment of "not good enough." Black youth meaning making resources and discourse practices reveal a confrontation with these hegemonic ideologies, which control definitions of reality. This dynamic is at the heart of my work on the literacy practices of Black people.

I conceive Hiphop discourse is a genre system of AAV/Black discourse. I prefer AAV to encompass the other genres within the African American discourse communities because in relation to dominant discourse the total genre system is Vernacular or counterlinguistic. I want to emphasize here that this counter reality is reflective of constant engagement with dominant notions of reality. As a starting point, we may see Hiphop discourse as a subsystem in relation to African American and other discourses, as in Figure 1.4.

Street language and street knowledge and the signifying traditions of Black cultural repertoires, especially, are central in an investigation of Hiphop literacies because one of the basic principles of Hiphop's ideology is to confront officially prescribed or received knowledge with local knowledge. (Morgan, 2001) I use the term Hiphop literacies to foreground the ways in which Hiphoppas manipulate as well as read and produce language, gestures, images, material possessions, and people, to position, protect and project themselves advantageously.

Hiphop is a rich site of cultural production that has pervaded and been pervaded by almost every American institution and has made an extensive global impact. Hiphop discourse no matter how commodified or "blaxploited" offers an interesting view of the human freedom struggle and aspects of the knowledge that people have about the world. As discussed most eloquently by Houston Baker (1984) in Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory: All Afro American narrative can be traced (in part) to an "economics of slavery" and is tied to a bill of sale. Thus, like "traditional" African American language data, Hiphop discourse tells us a lot about socioeconomic stratification and the struggle between culture and capital. Hiphop discourse, like previous Afro American expressive forms is a Black creative response to absence and desire and a site of epistemological development. Though it is often seen as mere corporate orchestration, Hiphop is a site of identity negotiation. Unlike "traditional" African American language data, commercial Hiphop discourse is wholly centered within the new capitalism. An aspect of the new capitalism that pertains to its study is "knowledge work." That is, the insider's knowledge business and industry uses to design products to tap certain values and create consumer identities by manipulating symbols and markets. This knowledge is recontextualized and recycled in the space of commercial Hiphop performances promoting stereotypical "common sense" ideas about African Americans and deflects attention away from the poor social and racial conditions that make certain occupations or preoccupations a welcome means of survival. As such Hiphop is both associated with ethnic (Black consciousness) and national (general American) consciousness. (Discuss Figure 1.5—Model viewing Societal discourse embedded in Hiphop)

This being the case, many would argue that there is no authentic culture to study in rap music or Hiphop discourse for mass consumption, since rap has long become a global industry removed from its primary audience. However, study of folk culture is not constrained to isolated groups untouched by contemporary postindustrial society. Folk are "the people who know," who have a special knowledge from their vantage point of the world, from their routine social experiences. The discourses in which they participate are always already hybrid. From this perspective, any group can be a folk group. The study of folk groups in the contemporary world involves studying their hybridity, an aspect of which can be examined through studying the impact of technologies on the interaction of discourses, between audience, performer, and the making of meaning. (Kelley, 1992)

In my work in Hiphop Literacies, I locate rap/Hiphop discourse, particularly, its pop culture forms, within a trajectory of Black discourses, relating them to the lived experiences of Black people, emanating from their quest for self-realization, their engagement in a discursive dialectic between various vernacular and dominant discourses and semiotic systems. (Discuss Figure 1.6 Diasporas of Black Discourse)

Though many argue that Black popular culture, especially rap, is corporately orchestrated, and therefore a product representing debased market values, I do not exclude from study commercial Hiphop/rap discourse, precisely because it is the "hardest" case. It is easier to prove that overtly socially conscious Hiphop/rap forms involve Black critical literacy and intelligence, if only because they may promote stronger Afrocentric messages, more traditional formulations of Black lifestyles. I am interested in how Black social actors read the world they inhabit and use available resources to struggle against forces that would annihilate them.

I also examine African American Hiphop in secondary oral contexts. The primary oral practices from which Hiphop emanates are largely forged from existing African ideologies and social practices and those that the people of Black African descent encountered, developed and/or appropriated in the context of negotiating life in Anglo dominant societies. The secondary orality comes into being in today's highly technological societies, "in which a new orality is sustained by telephone, radio, television, and other electronic devices that depend for their existence and functioning on writing and print." (Ong 1982/2002: 11) So, in my work, I look at rap music and song lyrics, electronic and digital media, including video games, music videos, telecommunication devices, magazines, "Hiphop" novels, oral performances, and cinema. These sites are explored to uncover the distinct oral and semiotic forms that contribute to the universe of Black discourse, the influence of this diffusion of Black discourse throughout our contemporary global society. In attempting to do this work, I enlist issues and concepts that are explored in disciplines of folklore, ethnomusicology, sociolinguistics, discourse studies, and New Literacies Studies. Ultimately, I think that knowledge making systems of Black youth are worthy of exploration. Our youth and students have a wealth of knowledge about the world in which they live. Popular culture and issues that interest students is a great way to engage them in critical thinking, reading, writing, and other social practices and educational endeavors that are necessary in social transformation. I think students have a lot to contribute and their perspectives and intelligence as whole persons must be considered. In these ways, I use Hiphop as a theoretical and pedagogical tool.