The lexicon of Greek rap: a corpus-stylistic study

Abstract

Rap, as an integral component of hip-hop culture, is a layered art of orality where rhythmic speech meets musical patterning and social address. This article applies corpus-stylistic methods to the lexicon of Greek rap across three decades, namely the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, and sets the results against two Greek baselines, the general Corpus of Greek Texts and a Greek Song-Lyrics Corpus, as well as a decade-stratified English-language rap corpus. What is computed is keyness, concordances and collocations, then the interpretation of the signals with attention to interpersonal stance and performance vocables is what follows. Findings exhibit a stable addressive grammar with overt I/you reference, vocatives and directives, onto which changing stylistic resources are layered. The 1990s highlight craft and stage authority, the 2000s foreground particle-mediated stance and metapoetic talk, and the 2010s accelerate ad-libs, and brand or persona lexicon. Comparison with English rap locates convergences in address and craft and divergences in racialised and gendered inventories. Findings underscore rap’s role as a vehicle of self-expression and social critique, as well as a product of intensifying globalization and commodification. The study demonstrates how corpus stylistics supports Digital Literary Studies by scaling from lexical micro-inventories to cultural interpretation and by separating rap-specific signals from features shared with Greek song.