TPCS 16: ‘Bättre folk’ – Critical Sociolinguistic Commentary in Finnish Rap Music

By Elina Westinen  Abstract This paper discusses the ways in which rap music makes use of a range of resources to construct a critical sociolinguistic commentary. The specific case it focuses on is Finnish rap which takes issue with the official, but often tension-ridden Finnish-Swedish bilingualism in Finland. It shows how the resources used in this kind of rap are simultaneously discursive and linguistic and how they operate on several scale-levels, i.e. socio-temporal frames (Blommaert 2010), such as global, translocal and local. The findings of this paper will contribute to our understanding of (trans)local hip hop cultures and, more specifically, of the versatile nature of Finnish rap music. In my analysis, I will look into the ways in which a local rapper creates a sociolinguistic critique by making use of both discursive and linguistic resources. As data, I am using the lyrics of a rap song entitled ‘Bättre folk’ by Pyhimys. This example shows how rap can function as a form of language political and sociolinguistic critique: through his content and stylistic choices, the rapper carefully constructs his take on the traditional polarization of Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking Finns and on how the Finnish majority should relate to the Swedish-speaking minority....