Journal of Language, Identity, and Education

ISSN: 1534-8458 (Print) 1532-7701 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hlie20

Glocal Linguistic Flows: Hip-Hop Culture(s),

Identities, and the Politics of Language Education

H. Samy Alim & Alastair Pennycook

To cite this article: H. Samy Alim & Alastair Pennycook (2007) Glocal Linguistic Flows: Hip-Hop
Culture(s), Identities, and the Politics of Language Education, Journal of Language, Identity, and
Education, 6:2, 89-100, DOI: 10.1080/15348450701341238

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15348450701341238

Published online: 05 Dec 2007.

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JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE, IDENTITY, AND EDUCATION, 6(2), 89–100
Copyright © 2007, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE

Glocal Linguistic Flows: Hip-Hop

Culture(s), Identities, and the Politics
of Language Education
H. Samy Alim
University of California, Los Angeles

Alastair Pennycook
University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

“THE LANGUAGES ARE ALL PART OF HIP-HOP

CULTURE”: HIP-HOP CULTURE(S) AND THE LOCAL
AND LIMITLESS HORIZONS OF SIGNIFICANCE

People have to understand what you mean when you talk about Hip-Hop. Hip-Hop
means the whole culture of the movement. When you talk about rap, you have to
understand that rap is part of the Hip-Hop Culture. That means that emceeing is
part of the Hip-Hop Culture. The Deejaying is part of the Hip-Hop Culture. The
dressing, the languages are all part of Hip-Hop Culture. So is the break dancing,
the b-boys and b-girls. How you act, walk, look and talk is all part of Hip Hop
Culture. And the music is    from whatever music that gives that grunt, that funk,
that groove, that beat. That’s all part of Hip Hop. (Afrika Bambaataa, interviewed
by Davey D [1996])

This special issue brings together issues of language, identity, and education
in relation to “hip-hop culture.” To be clear from the outset, hip-hop culture is
often defined in popular discourse as having four elements: MC’ing (rappin),

Correspondence should be sent to H. Samy Alim, University of California, Los Angeles.

90 ALIM AND PENNYCOOK

DJ’ing (spinnin), breakdancing (streetdancing), and graffiti art (writing). To

these, hip-hop pioneer KRS-One adds knowledge as a fifth element, and Afrika
Bambaataa, a founder of the hip-hop cultural movement, adds “overstanding”
(deeper and more critical than understanding). As we read in the opening
quotation, Bambaataa, in an interview with noted hip-hop journalist Davey D,
provides a more comprehensive definition of hip-hop, one that is congruent with
many practitioners’ belief that hip-hop is more than music; it’s a “way of life.”
Rappin, one aspect of hip-hop culture, consists of the aesthetic placement of
verbal rhymes over musical beats, and it is this element that has dominated hip-
hop cultural activity in recent years. Thus, as noted in Alim (2004a), language is
perhaps the most useful means with which to read the various cultural activities
of the Hip-Hop Nation (HHN). Accordingly, it is “the languages” that Bambaataa
speaks of that are the central focus of analysis in this issue.
There are significant reasons for addressing this particular constellation of
concerns. First, hip-hop is an important site of cultural production and youth
identification both in North America and elsewhere. As Tony Mitchell (2001)
comments in the global context, hip-hop “has become a vehicle for global
youth affiliations and a tool for reworking local identity all over the world”
(p. 2). Second, many studies of hip-hop are based in a cultural studies tradition,
where the central focus is on understanding the history and formation of popular
cultural forms. While drawing on this work, the articles in this special issue,
by contrast, make language central to their inquiry, drawing on sociolinguistic
and applied linguistic modes of analysis. Putting language at the center of the
analysis opens up levels of significance in terms of language choice, style, and
discrimination. Third, hip-hop is an important site of educational practice. As
a form of popular culture it is inevitably part of school culture and becomes,
either formally or informally, part of the school curriculum. It is also in itself
a significant pedagogical site. Indeed, an argument can be made that a better
description of the 5th element of hip-hop might be not so much knowledge as the
process by which knowledge is gained, namely education (broadly understood;
see Pennycook, 2007).
We begin with views of language from within the multiethnic, multilingual
global HHN, a postmodern “nation” with an international reach, a fluid capacity
to cross borders, and a reluctance to adhere to the geopolitical givens of the
present. Although much of the public (and some of the scholarly) discourse on
hip-hop culture is quick to point to hip-hop’s “illiteracy,” “hip-hop headz” (and a
growing number of scholars) are even quicker to point to hip-hop’s “ill literacy”
(see Richardson’s Hiphop Literacies, 2006). The semantic inversion involved in
such a phrase does not refer to anything sickly; rather, it refers quite ironically to
a healthy respect for linguistic creativity. The politics of language and education
are at the center of such proclamations and are continuously debated within the
HHN. The current sociopolitical climate in the United States—with attacks on
 GLOCAL LINGUISTIC FLOWS 91

Ebonics, bilingual education, immigration, and linguistic diversity in general—

and the broader sociopolitical climate in many parts of the world—with an
emphasis on national languages and standard codes and a denigration of diversity
and urban vernaculars (see Makoni & Pennycook, 2007)—reflect and perpetuate
dominant ideologies of monolingualism and monoculturalism. As an alternative,
Jubwa of Soul Plantation (based for years in Sunnyside, California; see Alim, this
issue), provides a hip-hop centered perspective on what it means to speak “limited
English.” As we will see, Jubwa’s move takes the burden of the communicative
work off of the speakers of marginalized languages and puts it squarely onto
those of dominating languages. Sounding a lot like Toni Morrison, who spoke
about the Black child who suffers the “cruel fallout of racism” (Rickford &
Rickford, 2000) in school because he possesses more present tenses than the
school’s language, Jubwa described the language education process for Black
Americans as one of learning a “limited version” of language:

You have to teach them that in everything there’s limits. You have to teach
their mind limits. To grammar. To everything. Because it’s structure. They want
the words to come in this order. If the words don’t come in this order, these
people [speakers of “limited English”] that live by this language and thrive by
this language, won’t understand what you’re talking about. So, you have to get
the word order in the way they want it to be in cuz they’re limited. (Unpublished
interview with Alim, 2000)

Positioning speakers of “standard English” as “limited” and speakers of

“Black Language” as “limitless” is a prime example of the common Black
American hip-hop practice of flippin the script, or what Scott (1992) would
call “contesting the dominant transcript” (p. 36) through and about language.
“Standard English,” in Jubwa’s words, is not the “elaborated code” that students
need to learn in order to get beyond the “restricted code” of their own upbringing
(as in Bernstein’s [1972] infelicitous terms), but rather is limited by its own
prescriptivism: “You’re only right when you do it the way that the rules
prescribe.” Although recognizing that Black Language is a rule-governed system
of speech (“It’s the speech pattern and stuff like that”), Jubwa states:
But it’s not defined at any state in time, and it’s not in a permanent state. It’s
sorta like—and this is just my opinion—it seems to be limitless.    So, I feel
that there’s no limit and there’s no real rules of structure, because they can be
broken and changed at any time. And then a new consensus comes in, and then
a new one will come in. And it will always change, and it will always be ever
free-forming and flowing and it’ll be reflected in the art form. (Unpublished
interview with Alim, 2000).
Touching on this “ever free-forming and flowing” quality of language, Sarkar
and Allen (this issue) draw on interviews with rappers of Haitian, Dominican,
and African origin to write about the complex multiethnic and multilingual
92 ALIM AND PENNYCOOK

speech communities of hip-hop practice in Montreal, Canada. Sarkar and Allen

show that—through continual linguistic borrowing—these youth are carving out
a place for themselves in the public (yet underground) sphere while creating a
community “based on a mixture of French and English as a common language,
but with an ever-present and constantly changing admixture of words and phrases
from other sources as its defining feature,” reflecting and referencing the presence
of diverse Afro-diasporic communities in Canada. These rappers describe this
language—much like their U.S. counterparts—as “la langue du people” and as
“the language we used in the street.” Despite the government’s imposition of
French as a dominant and common language in Quebec public schools, Rapper
SolValdez of BlackSunz (who identifies as a Dominican-Quebecois) echoes
Jubwa’s comments above and sees hip-hop’s linguistic diversity as a socially
and pedagogically valuable expansion, rather than a limitation: “Well it’s kind of
a way to slowly teach people, you know. If somebody doesn’t know [Spanish],
I’m pretty sure that somebody knows somebody that’s Spanish and if they’re
really intrigued they’ll ask. Some people might see it as a limitation, you know,
that’s one side of it. But if you look at it on the other side, it’s more of an
expansion.” (Sarkar & Allen, this issue)
These rappers’ comments point to the interrelatedness of global hip-hop
culture(s), youth identities, and the politics of language education. Here, we
pluralize “hip-hop culture” to indicate a need to expand the discourse in hip-hop
studies to include studies of broader, global hip-hop cultures, as well as much-
needed ethnographic explorations of hip-hop cultures as they are manifested
in embodied, locally occasioned practices. This “expansion” allows us to view
hip-hop culture, as Alim (2006) writes, as “cultural practice embedded in the
lived experiences of Hip Hop-conscious beings existing in a home, street, hood,
city, state, country, continent, hemisphere near you” (p. 12). This is crucial for a
number of reasons. First, as Pennycook’s (this issue) and Sarkar & Allen’s (this
issue) articles demonstrate, hip-hop is always both local and global, yet it gains
particular relevance to the lives of youth worldwide in the process of becoming
local, that is, it is through hip-hop’s localization that we can begin to see the
limitless, yet local, horizons of significance for these diverse youth communities
of practice. Second, viewing hip-hop cultures in this way allows us to explore
how, as Pennycook (this issue) argues, “the use of one language or another
depends very much on the local configuration of culture, language, and politics.”
Language use in any context is subject to the interpretation of those languages
through local language ideologies. This takes us beyond a vision of “language
choice” and opens up instead an understanding of the relations between diverse
language practices and local realities. Localization forces us to contend with the
“on-the-ground” realities, the specific ethnographic contexts, and the sociopo-
litical arrangement of the relations between language use, identities, power, and
pedagogy.
 GLOCAL LINGUISTIC FLOWS 93

Finally, ethnographic research on global hip-hop cultures has just recently

begun, including several book-length ethnographies that explore particular
communities in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania (Remes, 1998), Berlin, Germany
(Kaya, 2001), Sydney, Australia (Maxwell, 2003), New York (Rivera, 2003), and
Tokyo (Condry, 2006), as well as one volume based on ethnographic interviews
with artists from the United States, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe (Spady,
Alim,. & Meghelli, 2006). In our quest to understand what is arguably the most
profound, global popular cultural movement of the late 20th/early 21st century,
we look forward to the maturation and expansion of “glocal” studies from all
over the world, including work currently looking at predominantly White scenes
in Minnesota; Arab and Israeli scenes in the Middle East; the Chicano/Latino
hip-hop communities in Los Angeles; African, Indian, and Colored scenes in
South Africa; and predominantly Black scenes in North Carolina, to name a few.
The complex arrangement of language varieties, ethnicities, and identities in all
of these scenes is bound to be central to our understanding of them.

“IN THE DEPTHNESS OF BLACK:” HIP-HOP,

IDENTITY, AND DIFFERENCE

As is very clear from the articles in this issue, hip-hop is a site of identity
formation and contestation. As Low (this issue) asks in relation to the use
of nigger (“the N-word”): Who can use this term, and what are the cultural
and political implications of doing so? Low’s study points to the dilemma that
this term of both abuse and identification is one that White teachers, among
others, feel constrained about using, bringing the relationship between Black
popular culture and schools into crisis. Like Mos Def’s “Mr. Nigga” (where
White fans ask for autographs and slip in racial epithets), the tension inherent
in the White consumption of Black popular cultural forms resonates with Low’s
discussion of the tensions inherent in the introduction of Black popular culture
into what are predominantly White public spaces. Even with racially diverse
teachers, Newman’s (this issue) study points in a different way to some of these
tensions as students of mixed Black (Jamaican and African American) and Latino
backgrounds opt for ideological messages at odds with those of the educational
institution. For these urban minority MCs (rappers), the values of “hard-core
rap” are more compelling than those of “conscious rap” because it provides a
more hopeful outlook to them. Newman then goes on to explore the question
that underlies so much of the study of social (race, class, gender) disparity:
Why do those who are palpably disadvantaged in many ways often nevertheless
identify with those values that, at least from the outside, appear to be central to
the maintenance of their disadvantage?
Those who are disadvantaged sometimes develop political stances that resist
their silencing as well. Sarkar and Allen (this issue) show that hip-hop in Quebec
94 ALIM AND PENNYCOOK

not only reflects its multilingual, multiethnic base, but also constitutes an active
and dynamic site for the development of an oppositional community, which
encourages the formation of new, hybrid identities for youth. These youth,
engaged in “a constant dialogue with the discourses in which they are embedded,”
publicly challenge racism and social oppression by positioning themselves as a
critical community, one that interrogates the sociopolitical structures of historic
and contemporary Quebec. Rather than accepting the dominant construction of
“difference” as “deficient,” these youth of color empower themselves through the
development of a “glocal consciousness.” While identifying with Black American
hip-hop resistance movements and the political consciousness of Black American
activists (such as Malcolm X), these artists emphasize very local expressions
of global theories of racialized oppression. As Congolese-Belgian hip-hop artist
Pitcho describes his engagement with hip-hop culture, it is not so much an end
point as a starting point, a springboard (un tremplin) for exploring a much wider
world. The openness of hip-hop culture led him to other musical genres (jazz,
funk, traditional music), the multiple influences of martial arts and African dances
in breakdancing, and the writings of Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X, “That’s
what hip hop is all about, open-mindedness (l’ouverture d’esprit [Pennycook
translation]; Africultures, 2004). As rapper Mizery rhymes in “Black on Black:”
“In the depthness of Black/We devise our attack on tracks/To counter-react the
madness    .”

“HIP-HOP NATION LANGUAGE VARIETIES”: THE

STUDY OF “EVER FREE-FORMING AND FLOWING”
LANGUAGES

Although language and ideologies of language are central to the notion of an

HHN, the language of hip-hop culture remains underexamined. As a crucial
domain of inquiry, the study of the language of hip-hop can shed light on
our understanding of hip-hop culture as well as expand our critical theoretical
approach to globalization, cultural flows, and the notions of performance and
performativity in relation to identity and culture. Pennycook’s (2003, 2005, this
issue), explorations, for example, of the relations between transcultural flows
of popular culture, the localization of hip-hop and English, and the mixing of
other languages, suggest that hip-hop is a site where languages and identities are
refashioned, where new dynamics of language use and identity are produced in
the performance. As Sarkar and Allen (this issue) and Pennycook (2007) show,
this is not only the case in relation to English but also in relation to languages
such as French, which produces a multifaceted set of linguistic and identity
relations from multilingual French urban contexts, in North and West Africa and
Quebec. As hip-hop artists engage with these flows of language and culture,
 GLOCAL LINGUISTIC FLOWS 95

and the multimodal world of hip-hop (music, dance, paint, lyrics), they often
reengage with the local practices of their own communities. As Joel Wenitong
of the indigenous Australian group Local Knowledge puts it,
In our communities it’s the only form of communication; storytelling, music,
dance, creative arts. All that sort of thing is the way we’ve communicated and
passed our knowledge, and that’s one of the big reasons why Hip Hop is huge in
aboriginal communities. There isn’t one aboriginal kid who doesn’t like Hip Hop
because it’s that oral communication that we’re so used to over the thousands
and thousands of years.” (Local Noise Project, 2005).
Alim’s (2004a) concept of HHN language varieties (HHNLVs) refers both to
the sociolinguistic variation found within the diverse regions of Black America
(the Bay Area, New Orleans, and Philadelphia, for example, have fashioned
different ways of speaking HHNL) and to the syncretization of Black American
HHNL with local street language varieties across the globe where hip-hop is
taken up by youth as a site of identity formation. The global spread of English
in concert with the global flow of hip-hop culture leads to verses like this one
from Malaysian rapper, Too Phat (almost certainly a play on Bay Area rapper
Too Short): “Hip Hop be connectin’ Kuala Lumpur with LB/Hip Hop be rockin’
up towns laced wit’ LV/Ain’t necessary to roll in ice rimmed M3’s and be
blingin’/Hip Hop be bringin’ together emcees” (Pennycook, this issue). The de-
and recontextualization of Black Language in hip-hop scenes around the world
presents us with new insights and challenges. As Perullo and Fenn write (cited
in Pennycook, this issue) about language use in hip-hop culture in Malawi,
Black Language in the United States is “radically recontextualized,” (as cited
in Pennycook, this issue) with words taking on “new sets of meanings” based
on local interpretations of American gang culture and “contemporary social
experiences of Malawian youth.” The concept of HHNLVs is important in that,
until recently, the study of the relationship between language and identity in
hip-hop culture has centered solely around the (mis)use of the language of Black
Americans.
The global hip-hop cultural explosion of the 21st century demands an inter-
disciplinary area concerned primarily with the exploration of language use in
hip-hop communities worldwide (see Alim, 2006 for more on the “Hip-Hop
Linguistics” agenda). This special issue suggests that the relationship between
language, identity, and hip-hop culture can take on a more complicated set of
social meanings in multilingual and multiethnic contexts. How do we begin
analyzing Palestinian hip-hop and its trilingual “lyrical intifada” (uprising) in
Arabic, Hebrew, and a localized HHNLV? How have Algerian youth in Paris
rappin in Arabic, French, and a localized HHNLV encoded their sociopolitical
dissent in narratives about life in the banlieues [oppressed suburbs] (Meghelli,
2005)? What do we make of South African rappers who kick it in five different
languages (Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, Tsotsi-taal—itself a hybrid urban vernacular—
96 ALIM AND PENNYCOOK

and a localized HHNLV), or the codeswitching and codemixing that takes

place in Canada when Haitain, Dominican, and African youth form new social
discourses and hybrid identities through their practice of hip-hop culture (Sarkar
& Allen, this issue)? The global HHN’s expressive richness and diversity—not
its limitations—demand an equally diverse group of scholars to engage in this
international project.

“DANGEROUS LANGUAGE”: HIP-HOP,

SOCIOLINGUISTICS, AND EDUCATIONAL
PRACTICES

Ethnographic approaches to the study of hip-hop culture can help us arrive

at understandings of these complex sociolinguistic and sociopolitical situations
(which the Rza and Afu-Ra, US rappers, capture in the phrase dangerous
language). Whereas work from a cultural studies perspective may deal with the
meanings of rap lyrics or a broader interpretation of hip-hop cultural practices,
closer sociolinguistic work on the implications of language choices and styles
reveals many important insights, both linguistic and educational. Several of the
studies here take disadvantaged urban schools as their context. Alim (2004b;
this issue), for example, turned his 9th- and 11th-grade students into “hipho-
pographers” capable of documenting the linguistic practices of the expressive
hip-hop culture of their local community. By placing language squarely in the
middle of his critical hip-hop language pedagogies (CHHLPs), Alim makes
visible the language ideologies that mediate youth’s everyday practices, enabling
these students and their teachers to see how their communicative practices and
those of the school are at odds.
These hiphopographies allowed students to become far more aware of local
language use, which was often gravely misunderstood by their teachers. Low’s
(this issue) close study of “the N-word” also shows how the language of students
and teachers is one that needs bridging if a critical pedagogy of language is
to become possible. Of importance, what Low’s and Alim’s studies show is
that even well-meaning teachers may not be well-informed enough to utilize
the linguistic and cultural resources of their culturally and linguistically diverse
students. Further, in both situations, the students become the teacher, educating
others about their language use. In Low’s case, students’ use of “the N-word”
represents a case of Black youth’s ability to marginalize “Others,” notably Whites
and White adults, who are often symbols of their hierarchical and continued
marginalization (as we see in Alim, this issue). Low’s article is particularly
important in that it does what few other studies of Black popular culture and
education do—it problematizes the use of hip-hop culture, specifically, in the
classroom by focusing on (rather than ignoring) the tensions caused by its
 GLOCAL LINGUISTIC FLOWS 97

inclusion. What promises and challenges arise when students’ language and
culture (even “taboo” aspects) are no longer “checked at the door,” but are
viewed as resources and become the central focus of learning possibilities? This
issue raises these very difficult and often ignored questions.
From an understanding of the need to engage with popular culture in educa-
tional contexts, to the use of hip-hop culture as a means to raise awareness of
language, culture and context, hip-hop is intimately tied to educational practices
and possibilities. Michael Newman (this issue) uses genre analysis—a form
of ethnography of communication in which textual patterns and norms are
examined as part of genre users’ lifeworlds—to explore the ways in which
students resist the ideological stances of their teachers. Specifically, he looks
at the tensions that emerge when the gap between vernacular and academic
genres is addressed through the incorporation of popular culture in schools. As
he shows, the teachers’ efforts to teach conscious rap is resisted by the students,
who prefer instead the hard-core style. This analysis reveals potential hurdles to
the employment of vernacular genres in school settings, and also points to the
dilemma that it is not enough merely to introduce popular culture into educa-
tional contexts in an attempt to use it for pedagogical ends; rather, educators
need to understand more fully the ways in which students’ engagement with
popular cultural forms is deeply bound up with their own desires, preferences,
and worldviews.
For Low (this issue) the context is an urban high school classroom where
rap is being used as a form of oral poetry to help make a connection for
students between a cultural form they engage with and the use of language in
education. As she suggests, turning the issue of who can use “the N-word” from
a domain of silence into a forum for class discussion is both a risky business
and a fruitful engagement. Low’s work is especially important because it is
one of the first articles to address “the N-word” in educational contexts, where
most teachers consider it taboo. In her piece, Low considers the idea that “the
N-word” presents a potential “pedagogical limit-case” for the inclusion of Black
popular cultural forms in the classroom, suggesting that teaching with hip-hop
culture obligates us also to contend with the politics of its representation within
mainstream institutions. Given their critical engagement with language, Low’s
and Newman’s students are ripe for a locally relevant and constantly negotiated
version of Alim’s CHHLPs.
Alim’s work is also set in communities where deep and meaningful learning
is too often reserved for more privileged others. In his article, he addresses
two longstanding tensions in the language learning experiences of linguistically
profiled and marginalized youth. The first is the cultural tension, or cultural
combat, that such students engage in as they form their linguistic identities in
creative and often unexpected (by teachers) ways. And the second is between
the development of critical language pedagogies and the lack of their broader
98 ALIM AND PENNYCOOK

implementation due to disinterested, and yes, sometimes discriminatory teachers

and school systems. His CHHLPs link issues of language use, culture, education,
and power and aim to inform teachers of nondominant students who struggle with
the contradictions emerging from their own ideological positions, training, lived
experiences, and suffocating, antidemocratic, and racialized school cultures and
practices. Critically, Alim’s students and teachers are engaged in a consciousness-
raising effort to learn both about how language is used and how language can
be used against us.
Sarkar and Allen’s hip-hop youth are engaged in their own, local, organic
efforts at consciousness-raising. Sarkar and Allen draw on interviews with
rappers of Haitian, Dominican, and African origin and analysis of rap lyrics to
show how hip-hop not only reflects the multilingual context of urban Montreal
but is also a site of production of new, hybrid identities. This is an important
insight because it opens up an understanding of rap lyrics as a driving force for
change rather than only a representation of diversity. As they write, “Through
these performed identities, these Quebec hip-hop artists are participating in
the creation of a new social discourse, one that offers Montreal youth subject
positions/identity options that embrace pluralism, challenge monolingual and
monocultural norms, and take a stand against racial inequalities and other forms
of socioeconomic oppression” (this issue). From the perspective of dominating
groups, when language and language education perform these consciousness-
raising efforts, they can indeed be viewed as “dangerous.”

“EVERYDAY THE SLANG CHANGE”: HIP-HOP

CULTURES, LANGUAGES, IDENTITIES AND
PEDAGOGIES

What these studies all have in common is a view that popular culture, and
particularly hip-hop, is a major site of engagement for students that has serious
implications for language, identity and education. While the relationship between
education and popular culture has received fairly extensive treatment, this has
rarely been done with a more explicit focus on language; and while language and
education have been widely discussed, far less attention has been given to the
relations among language, identity, popular culture and education. The papers in
this special issue, both individually and collectively, bring to the fore some key
concerns for research across these domains. One key theme that emerges is the
gulf between the languages, cultures, and ideologies of schools and the students
they hope to educate. At one level, of course, this is not a new insight: As
Giroux and Simon (1989) put it some years ago, “teachers need to find ways of
creating a space for mutual engagement of lived difference that does not require
the silencing of a multiplicity of voices by a single dominant discourse” (p. 24).
 GLOCAL LINGUISTIC FLOWS 99

More recently, Willis (2003) has remarked that: “Educators and researchers
should utilize the cultural experiences and embedded bodily knowledge of their
students as starting points, not for bemoaning the failures and inadequacies of
their charges, but to render more conscious for them what is unconsciously
rendered in their cultural practices” (p. 413).
The papers in this special issue take these insights further, however, by
showing both the very specific issues of language and identity that hip-hop
cultures present us with, and some potential ways of moving forward. As several
of these papers also suggest, nonetheless, bridging this gap is no easy task, since
students may resist the liberal ideologies of critical pedagogies, and pedagogies
of hip-hop—just as glocal constructions of the real (as Pennycook writes)—must
be locally-relevant and constantly-negotiated: students are often the authorities
in this cultural-linguistic domain. Sarkar and Allen’s view of the fast-changing
language practices of hip-hop in Quebec also points to the educational difficulty
of staying in touch: The moment that most educators latch on to some aspect of
hip-hop as educationally usable is the precise moment that it falls out of fashion
with the students that they are trying to reach, since things ain’t hip no more
when “outsiders” (through age, race, class, etc.) know about them. Or as some
Bay Area rappers say, “Everyday the slang change.” One thing is certain: More
researchers from the hip-hop generation are needed to keep up with the lightning-
fast linguistic innovation of hip-hop and to develop pedagogies that make sense
“on the ground,” from the Bay Area to Beirut. Perhaps Alim’s coinvestigation
with his students is one way of “keeping our ear to the street.” At the very least,
we hope that the articles in this special issue point in a direction that educators
may need to start looking to come to terms with the complex issues of language
and identity that hip-hop brings to the ever-diversifying table.

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revue_affiche_article&no=3312&section=cahier
Alim, H. S. (2004a). Hip Hop Nation Language. In E. Finegan & J. Rickford (Eds.), Language
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