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A Linguo-Cultural Approach to the Integration of Hip-hop Culture with Chinese Culture---Taking Rap Music as an Example

Received: 8 November 2019     Accepted: 27 November 2019     Published: 6 December 2019
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Abstract

Cultural integration is an inevitable trend of the development of cultural globalization. With the rapid development of mass media and frequent communication among people from various cultural backgrounds, hip-hop culture with its exotic musical form and its unique themes, interacts with other cultures by confronting, adapting and integrating different worldviews and lifestyles. This paper attempts to explore how the hip-hop culture (rap music in particular), which originated from American-African people, realized cultural integration in China, and what manifestations this integration had. Drawing on Cultural Acculturation Theory and making detailed textual analysis, we found that the integration of rap music with Chinese culture takes three approaches, i.e., transmission, localization and adaptation, and transformation. The integration mainly manifests itself in four aspects: form of lyrics, content of lyrics, language use of rap and dress-up of rappers, all of which are illustrated with concrete examples. Further discussions reveal that hip-hop culture is largely accepted by the majority of Chinese teenagers, for it is constantly mitigating and even discarding the violent and negative characteristics during the integration with China’s mainstream values. This study is believed to shed light on the nature of cultural integration, musical integration in particular, and to convince people that taking advantage of hip-hop culture critically to inject new vitality into Chinese traditional culture will promote the further development of Chinese culture in new era.

Published in International Journal of Literature and Arts (Volume 7, Issue 6)
DOI 10.11648/j.ijla.20190706.16
Page(s) 165-171
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2019. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Cultural Integration, Hip-Hop Culture, Rap Music

References
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[5] Jaspal, S. & Ethiraj, D. (2016). Cultural Intervention: Repositioning hip hop education in India [J]. Linguistics and Education, 55-64.
[6] Matt, G. (2014). Seen and not heard: The relationship of orthography, morphology, and phonology in loanword adaptation in the German hip hop community [J]. Discourse, Context & Media, (3) 27-36.
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[13] Ping C. (2014). Chinese and American Hip-hop Culture and Educational Strategies from the Perspective of Youth Sub-culture [J]. Overseas English (09): 197-198+203.
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[16] Li, J. & Guan, B. G. (2019). An Analysis of the Success or Failure of Double Hip-hop——In 2018, the FLY Cheerleading Team at Serayshan Normal College is an Example [J]. Education Teaching Forum, (20) 242-243.
[17] Wang, L. and Zhu, X. L. (2018). The Analysis of the Youth Values behind the Phenomenon of “Chinese Hip Hop” [J]. Contemporary Youth Research, (02): 12-17.
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[19] Terry, F., Mark R. & Chunmeizi S. (2019). Culture, Communication and merica [M]. New York.
[20] Jin, L. (2014). Alternative Voice and Local Youth Identity in Chinese Local-Language Rap Music [J]. Positions: Asia Critique, 22 (1).
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Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Zhanghong Xu, Xiaolin Liu. (2019). A Linguo-Cultural Approach to the Integration of Hip-hop Culture with Chinese Culture---Taking Rap Music as an Example. International Journal of Literature and Arts, 7(6), 165-171. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20190706.16

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    ACS Style

    Zhanghong Xu; Xiaolin Liu. A Linguo-Cultural Approach to the Integration of Hip-hop Culture with Chinese Culture---Taking Rap Music as an Example. Int. J. Lit. Arts 2019, 7(6), 165-171. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20190706.16

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    AMA Style

    Zhanghong Xu, Xiaolin Liu. A Linguo-Cultural Approach to the Integration of Hip-hop Culture with Chinese Culture---Taking Rap Music as an Example. Int J Lit Arts. 2019;7(6):165-171. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20190706.16

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ijla.20190706.16,
      author = {Zhanghong Xu and Xiaolin Liu},
      title = {A Linguo-Cultural Approach to the Integration of Hip-hop Culture with Chinese Culture---Taking Rap Music as an Example},
      journal = {International Journal of Literature and Arts},
      volume = {7},
      number = {6},
      pages = {165-171},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ijla.20190706.16},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20190706.16},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijla.20190706.16},
      abstract = {Cultural integration is an inevitable trend of the development of cultural globalization. With the rapid development of mass media and frequent communication among people from various cultural backgrounds, hip-hop culture with its exotic musical form and its unique themes, interacts with other cultures by confronting, adapting and integrating different worldviews and lifestyles. This paper attempts to explore how the hip-hop culture (rap music in particular), which originated from American-African people, realized cultural integration in China, and what manifestations this integration had. Drawing on Cultural Acculturation Theory and making detailed textual analysis, we found that the integration of rap music with Chinese culture takes three approaches, i.e., transmission, localization and adaptation, and transformation. The integration mainly manifests itself in four aspects: form of lyrics, content of lyrics, language use of rap and dress-up of rappers, all of which are illustrated with concrete examples. Further discussions reveal that hip-hop culture is largely accepted by the majority of Chinese teenagers, for it is constantly mitigating and even discarding the violent and negative characteristics during the integration with China’s mainstream values. This study is believed to shed light on the nature of cultural integration, musical integration in particular, and to convince people that taking advantage of hip-hop culture critically to inject new vitality into Chinese traditional culture will promote the further development of Chinese culture in new era.},
     year = {2019}
    }
    

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    AB  - Cultural integration is an inevitable trend of the development of cultural globalization. With the rapid development of mass media and frequent communication among people from various cultural backgrounds, hip-hop culture with its exotic musical form and its unique themes, interacts with other cultures by confronting, adapting and integrating different worldviews and lifestyles. This paper attempts to explore how the hip-hop culture (rap music in particular), which originated from American-African people, realized cultural integration in China, and what manifestations this integration had. Drawing on Cultural Acculturation Theory and making detailed textual analysis, we found that the integration of rap music with Chinese culture takes three approaches, i.e., transmission, localization and adaptation, and transformation. The integration mainly manifests itself in four aspects: form of lyrics, content of lyrics, language use of rap and dress-up of rappers, all of which are illustrated with concrete examples. Further discussions reveal that hip-hop culture is largely accepted by the majority of Chinese teenagers, for it is constantly mitigating and even discarding the violent and negative characteristics during the integration with China’s mainstream values. This study is believed to shed light on the nature of cultural integration, musical integration in particular, and to convince people that taking advantage of hip-hop culture critically to inject new vitality into Chinese traditional culture will promote the further development of Chinese culture in new era.
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Author Information
  • Department of English for Law, School of English for International Business, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China

  • Department of English for Law, School of English for International Business, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China

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