Some of the most interesting outcomes of language contact happen in informal, unregulated spaces, as Sebba (2007) and other authors (e.g. Cutler & Royneland 2018, Lexander 2020) have noted. In this study, I examine a corpus of 50,000 comments taken from bilingual (and primarily West Coast Chicano) hip-hop videos on YouTube. In the comments for these videos, fans use creative orthographic practices as in <awebo> or <aguebo> for <a huevo>; these playful forms of writing draw on orthographic phonemic correspondences from multiple Spanish and English varieties. The study combines quantitative analysis of variant orthographic patterns emerging from the corpus alongside qualitative analysis of specific spelling
choices in context and showcases how multilingual resources contribute to orthographic stylization in hip-hop culture.
SPEAKER: Dr. Matt Garley
Matt Garley is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at York College and the Linguistics Program at the Graduate Center. In his research, he uses both qualitative and quantitative (corpus) methods to investigate the properties of varieties of English (particularly those in contact with other languages), the linguistics of hip-hop culture, the linguistics of computer-mediated communication, and writing systems.
RSVP: Here
