From AAE to Hip Hop: a historical and linguistic analysis applied to Hip Hop Music.

The African American English language is considered nowadays one of the most important features of the African American culture in the United Stated. It is a real cultural treasure whose roots can be placed in the African Diaspora in America. In this dissertation, African American English is studied, at first, focusing on its historical origins, which are connected to the African diaspora, slavery, and the process of black segregation in the United States due to the white-supremacy doctrine. Subsequently, AAE is analyzed from a linguistic point of view, focusing on its specific lexicon, slang terms, rules of interaction and grammatical rules such as verbal markers, using documents and excerpts from literature as well as medias. In the final chapter, hip hop music is introduced as fundamental testimony of the African American oral tradition. The history of the musical genre, his social significance and impact will be discussed before proceeding to analyze some lyrics, detecting in the texts the sociohistorical and linguistic features presented in the previous chapters. The study aims to show how powerful rap music revealed to be, as a mean of representing the African American language, society, and culture worldwide. Furthermore, it demonstrates how African American English and culture have always been a weapon for fighting discrimination and racial oppression for the community.