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Volume 7, Issue 2
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Abstract

Abstract

The Malayalam Hip Hop genre of music has experienced an extraordinary surge in popularity in the past decade; a shift in the musical culture in India, particularly Kerala. Malayalam Hip Hop brings forth a heteroglossia in terms of the use of language(s), dialects and the identities indexed. As common in bilingual and multilingual Hip Hop contexts, extensive code-switching techniques are employed in Malayalam rap. In addition to Malayalam-English code-switching, the songs use and intersperse Malayalam dialects, including marginalized ones. The paper analyses select popular Malayalam Hip Hop songs, exploring the extent of language choice, code-switching and its linguistic, discursive, poetic, and sociopolitical functions. The use of English signals participation in a global genre, and the dialects localize the genre, negotiate identities, and reclaim certain values, artistic styles, and memory. While the multidialectal counter-public localizes the genre linguistically, rap in standard Malayalam addresses contextually relevant socio-political themes and this is an alternate strategy of localization.

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2026-02-20
2026-03-06

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/content/journals/10.1075/lcs.24049.kj
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Lyrical code-switching in Malayalam Hip Hop songs
Language, Culture and Society 7, 224 (2025); https://doi.org/10.1075/lcs.24049.kj
/content/journals/10.1075/lcs.24049.kj
/content/journals/10.1075/lcs.24049.kj
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): code-switching; dialects; genres; Hip Hop; identity; multilingualism

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