Flip the Linguistics: Negotiating (trans)national identity

Day and time: Friday (March 20) · 13:15–14:45
Location: Info Center
Format: Talk

(Still) Negotiating Nationality, Cultural Diversification and Social Conviviality in Norwegian Drill

Presented by: Paal Fagerheim

This paper investigates how Norwegian drill music articulates and negotiates national identity, enacts cultural diversification, and conviviality through the case study of M4’s song Birken (2024). By recontextualising symbols from Norwegian nationalism – such as the historical ski race “Birken,” the Bunad, and references to nature and local food – within a multiethnic, urban drill aesthetic, the artists challenge traditional imaginaries of “Norwegian-ness.” Drawing on postcolonial theory (Gilroy, Loftsdóttir & Jensen, Bhabha), cultural anthropology (Bateson, Turner, Wagner), and popular music studies, the analysis explores how play, self-irony, and ritualisation are used as strategies for negotiating difference. The presentation is based on a study which situates Birken within local ethnographic contexts from Oslo East, where sociolinguistic hybridity (“Kebab-Norwegian”) and global hip-hop codes produce hybrid forms of belonging. From this perspective, Birken is interpreted as a liminal and performative in-between where cultural boundaries are suspended and re-imagined, enabling expressions of social conviviality across ethnic and class divisions. The song and music video ironic, playful and humorous inversions destabilise nationalist tropes while affirming plural, place-based identities. Ultimately, Norwegian drill exemplify how contemporary popular music in the Nordic region becomes a site for re-inventing culture, negotiating inclusion, and re-signifying the national imaginary in the fringe of postcolonial Europe.

Glocal Voices: Linguistic Hybridization in Contemporary Italian Trap

Presented by: Francesca Cozzitorto

In recent years, young trap artists have significantly transformed the linguistic features of Italian rap lyrics. They have expanded the rap linguistic repertoire by promoting the integration and diffusion of slang, neologisms, and borrowings. An increasing number of lyrics display a marked tendency toward linguistic hybridization, in which not only English but also French, Spanish, and Arabic play a prominent role. This evolution can be attributed to several factors: the growing presence of second-generation artists in the Italian music scene; the influence of social media and engagement with global trends; the popularity of other European trap scenes and Latin reggaeton; and collaborations with international artists. Overall, contemporary Italian trap embraces cross-genre productions characterized by a strong tendency toward linguistic hybridization. Through lyrical analysis of selected artists, this paper aims to provide an overview of linguistic innovations and trends, focusing on the emergence of a glocal vocabulary that reflects both local identities and global cultural flows.

Recontextualizing Musical and Verbal Creativities in Chinese Dialect Rap

Presented by: Fu Biwen

Localized Chinese rap is a significant emergent field regarding its local language use and verbal expression. However, the local language practices involved in Chinese rap are complex, not only in terms of the presentation of the native language per se, but also in the rendering of local languages in innovative ways during production and performance. The main purpose of this study is to show how Cantonese rap transforms “global Hip Hop” into “local sound,” reshaping musical, linguistic, cultural, and political identity in the process. I will attempt to outline how this mainly revolves around the following core questions: How can rhythm, rhyme, and tone become a new musical resource in unaccented languages in the Chinese context? How can the forms of Chinese traditional oral arts, such as shubailan (数白榄), be grafted with Hip Hop elements to generate an emerging sonic and music culture? And how has “flow,” as a cross-cultural concept, been localized by Chinese rappers and given new aesthetic-political meanings? Based on this analysis, we could better understand how the local Cantonese rap artists innovate while rapping in multiple languages and polyphonic voices in order to express their particular cultural identities through creative verbal expression.