The Asian American Voice : A Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) Approach to Rap Lyrics

Rap, as the origin of hip-hop culture, has long been used by people who are from the margins of society as a way to construct identity and ideology (Campbell, 2005; Ibrahim, 1999). Over the past few decades, there has been a considerable amount of research on rap and hip-hop, yet, little has employed the critical discourse approach, which is specifically designed to uncover the inter-relationship among language, identity and ideology. The present study employs a modified three-dimensional model of Fairclough’s (1989) to find out how an Asian American rapper constructs his identity and establishes his ideology through his lyrics, and how his construction of identity and ideology reflect the social and cultural values in American society.

As a member of the marginalized group and as the first and only Asian who claimed a seven-time victory on Freestyle Friday on Black Entertainment Television (BET), Jin Au-Yeung has received a noticeable amount of attention. At the same time, he has faced a lot of unfavourable experience as an Asian rapper in American society. In the study, fifteen songs, approximately 9,800 words, written by Jin are chosen for analysis according to the three interrelated stages in CDA: description, interpretation and explanation.

The preliminary results show that Jin constructs his personal identities as a professional rapper and as a Chinese American and establishes his ideology of having one human nation despite the difference in races through his rap lyrics. These are achieved through the co-occurrence of ‘I’ and ‘to be’, and promoted through the use of rhyming and code-switching. It is also found that Jin’s personal identities and ideology are shaped through the social ideology on Asian Americans, which is probably reflected through the social and cultural values in American society.