Affiliations: Department of Spanish and Portuguese/SLLC, University of Maryland, JMZ 3121, 4125 N Library Ln, College Park, MD 20742, USA | E-mail: magro@umd.edu
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Department of Spanish and Portuguese/SLLC, University of Maryland, JMZ 3121, 4125 N Library Ln, College Park, MD 20742, USA. E-mail: magro@umd.edu.
Abstract: The aim of this article is to shed light on the particularities of language choice (Spanish, English, and hybridity) and identity performance among urban music (UM) affiliated individuals from Hispanic immigrant backgrounds interacting through Instagram. The participants reside in Da DMV, an emic term used to refer to the Washington DC (DC) metropolitan area. 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 study 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.
Keywords: Sociolinguistics, language and identity, big data, Hip-Hop studies, race studies
