ABSTRACT
Since the mid-1990s, there has been a surge of academic manuscripts and books about Hip Hop coming out of cultural studies, musicology, urban studies, and sociology. The focus of most of this work is on Hip Hop as a form of cultural practice with implications for understanding popular music, subcultures, social change, and identity formation. The focus of this book, by contrast, is upon the language and identity practices of white American youth who affiliate with Hip Hop culture—a group that has not received a great deal of attention in studies of US Hip Hop or in the field of sociolinguistics in the US. As such, it provides a uniquely American perspective into the role of language in the construction of adolescent identity. Understanding the complicated role of language and its use among white Hip Hop youth in the US can provide insights for meaningful comparisons with similar processes in numerous countries and localities now that Hip Hop culture has gone global and is becoming indigenized and adapted to the needs of young people in local communities around the world.
