My paper questions the degree to which the hip hop subculture is oppositional to mainstream American society and its ideals. Toward that end, I examine the structure of the hip hop industry and its subculture. While the hip hop subculture in America consistently has projected images of rebellion and resistance to many of the mores, constraints and values of dominant society, the actual structure and organization of the hip hop subculture have mirrored, supported and promoted the values of the dominant culture in the United States. I begin by examining the structure of the main elements of the hip hop subculture: deejaying, breakdancing, emceeing and graffiti art, and the practices within each to demonstrate that the hip hop subculture has a structure which supports capitalistic practices. The interactions between hip hop industry participants, their fans, and the marketplace are an embracing of the values of mainstream American society and capitalism. From its inception, the structure of the hip hop subculture and the actions of the artists within the structure essentially has made hip hop music capitalism set to a beat.

Contemporary Hip-Hop scholarship has revealed that Hip-Hop is a racially diverse, youth-driven culture, and is intimately connected to prior and on-going social justice movements (Chang, 2004; Kitwana, 2002). This study explores its Afro-Diasporic and activist origins, as well as the theoretical impact of Hip-Hop culture on the identity and pedagogy of educators belonging to the Hip-Hop generation(s). This qualitative study also examines how Hip-Hop culture impacts educators’ identity, politics and personal pedagogy, while seeking to create a new model of Social Justice Hip-Hop Pedagogy. This study was produced through twenty-three in-depth interviews with influential Hip-Hop educators (Aberbach & Rockman, 2002) from diverse backgrounds and geographic locations. There are currently limited theoretical and conceptual frameworks in the literature supporting the use of Hip-Hop as Social Justice Pedagogy, yet is currently being used in K- 16 educational contexts throughout the United States and abroad (Akom, 2009; Duncan- Andrade & Morrell, 2008). The results of this study reveal the foundational basis consisting of four primary core functions and seven practical tenets, necessary to negotiate and implement a new and innovative model for Social Justice Hip-Hop Pedagogy.

This thesis enters the developing conversation in the linguistic domain about the culture and struggles of the Black community. It explores the collectivist perspective of the Black community in the 20th and 21st century through the umbrella of Linguistics and its subfields. Collectively, the literary and musical works in this study demonstrates the frustrations of the Black community—including its correlation to antebellum slavery—the lamentations of oppression, which showcases in a collection of poems and their syntactical aspects, and the Black pride emulating from the societies. Despite the clear correlation between Hip-Hop culture and literary works from the early 20th century, a lack of connection between the two remains. This thesis explores the linguistic connections between narratives of art, specifically Harlem Renaissance literary works (i.e., poetry, novels, etc.) and Hip-Hip culture. The bridge between Harlem Renaissance poetry and Hip-Hop music is nuanced in the Linguistics field and it warrants further research.

Since its conception, hip hop has assumed an increasingly important role in today's media society. Today, many swedish hip hop artists often find themselves at the intersection of bottom-up and top-down representations. Despite the genre's many positive features of self-expression and social reflection, artists are constantly faced with a complex challenge. Hip hop artists must constantly navigate prejudice, stereotypes, and sometimes one-sided media representations while trying to convey their voices and perspectives. Through a case study of five Instagram images each of five different Swedish rap artists, a total of 25 images (Yasin, Asme, ADAAM, Z.E and Silvana Imam), a thematic content analysis and a social semiotic analysis, this study aims to investigate and analyze bottom-up representations of Swedish rap artists in social media. The study also aims to contribute to the discussion and problematization of whether, and if so how, rap artists themselves can challenge or reproduce prevailing top-down representations of them. The theoretical framework consists of representation, social semiotics, active choice theory, multimodality, intersectionality and norms. The empirical material has been interpreted and analyzed through the theoretical framework along with a denotative and connotative analysis and the analysis categories camera angle, poses and attributes in order to uncover the underlying meanings of the empirical material. The analysis suggests four identified themes in the empirical material which are power and status, glamorous and exclusive lifestyle, criminality and intimacy. The analysis shows that rap artists use different types of semiotic resources to emphasize and represent different aspects of themselves. For example, camera angles are used in a frog’s-eye view to represent the artists as authoritarian and rich of status, which is linked to norms of status. Expensive and exclusive designer clothes are used to give the appearance of a glamorous and exclusive lifestyle, while black clothes and threatening poses accentuates a criminal image linked with the lifestyle of a Swedish rap artist. Through semiotic resources related to norms of intimacy, the artists help to represent themselves as intimate. The analysis suggests that rap artists can both challenge and reproduce top-down representations of themselves, but that they in most cases only reproduce the perception of them.

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