José L. Magro

I analyze this volume departing from the privileged position that my wide experience as a glocal emcee grants me. Departing from this insider position, the following recurrent issues were identified in this volume: 1) a failure to offer a critical reflection of what the authors consider by Hip-Hop; 2) a lack of positionality towards Hip-Hop; 3) an over focus on, and legitimation of, mainstream music industry ideologies and practices; 4) erasure (Irvine & Gal, 2000) of Latinxs in the US context. To avoid repetition, I will analyze the first three of these recurrent issues that intersect many of the chapters after I offer a qualitative review of the strengths and weaknesses observed in every chapter. The recurrent issue of erasure of Latinxs in Hip-Hop, since is an issue limited to the US context, will be analyzed in its corresponding chapters within the next section.

The study focuses on the ways in which these Hispanic artists use linguistic and stylistic resources within a heteroglossic framework to perform resistance identities while highlighting the differences and similarities between first and second-generation immigrant participants. The speakers' linguistic and textual displays in Instagram are geared by and express translocal affective and sociocultural alignments and affinities while resisting hegemonic ideologies of racial categorization and stigmatization of Latinxs in the US. Theoretically and methodologically the investigationstudy draws on sociolinguistics, language ideologies, critical race theory, and discourse analysis. Special attention is given to aspects of translocality and Hip-Hop Nation Language (HHNL, Alim, 2009), agency, and the ways in which they themselves make sense of and account for their actions through linguistic awareness. Within a mixed-methodology framework, this study criticizes the use of Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS) and highlights the analytical usefulness of triangulation.

This article is anchored in Labov’s (1966) language stratification theories and builds on the work of several authorsto explain why heritage language speakers in New York City perceive their variety of Spanish as being lessprestigious compared with the Spanish varieties imposed in formal/academic contexts. The methodologyused included an innovative matched-guise technique with rap followed by an interview. In the contextof Hip-Hop, the results suggest that the stigmatized vernacular variety becomes the prestige variety. Thesocial and educational significance of these findings is discussed. Furthermore, reflection on the researchmethods adopted in the study lends support to qualitative approaches for studying language attitudes.