Is Iggy Azalea's Use of African-American English Cultural Appropriation? Attitudes towards her 'Crossing' on Social Media

Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,7, University of Münster, language: English, abstract: Iggy Azalea, a white Australian hip-hop artist, uses African American Vernacular English when rapping. Whether this act of 'crossing' is cultural appropriation was debated on social media and in the news. The question this paper aims to answer is, if the wider audience on YouTube has a negative attitude towards Azalea's 'crossing'. Considering the extensive media coverage, of which a substantial part was critical of Azalea's language use during performance, the hypothesis is that the majority of the YouTube audience is negative towards this issue. But before the data can be analysed, there is essential information that requires to be provided. This information will be given in the next part and it includes Iggy Azalea's biographical background as well as relevant terms and concepts, namely African American English, the hip-hop nation and its language, and 'crossing'. Moreover, the study by Eberhardt and Freeman shall be presented in more detail. Before moving on to the empirical part of this paper, where comments below the music videos 'Work' and 'Fancy' are analysed, there shall be a short excursion on language attitudes and how to research them. Then, having presented and analysed the results of the study, the findings shall be discussed until finally some concluding remarks are made.