“I be da reel gansta”—A Finnish footballer’s Twitter writing and metapragmatic evaluations of authenticity

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which 'gangsta' English features are deployed, evaluated and adopted in two types of social media, the web forum and Twitter, within the domains of hip hop culture and football (soccer) culture, from the dual perspective of authenticity and normativity. Empirically, we aim to break new ground by investigating the intricate interconnections between two social media formats and combining two highly popular but previously seldom connected cultural forms-football and hip hop. Our theoretical aim is to contribute to the current debate on authenticity, normativity, popular culture and social media, and the complex ways in which they are connected. We focus, first, on the Twitter writing of the Finnish footballer Mikael Forssell, specifically his uses of non-Standard English and references to hip hop culture and rap music, and second, on the ways in which Forssell's stylized writing elicits normatively oriented metapragmatic commentaries, i.e., meta-level discussion, on a major Finnish football discussion forum. Of particular interest here is the emically emerging category of 'gangsta' English and its perceived (in)authenticity-when used by Forssell and two other ('White') middle-class Finnish footballers. Drawing on the frameworks of authenticity and sociolinguistic superdiversity, we foreground the tension between purist normativity and playful appropriation online. Our discussion highlights the unpredictability of the connections between language use, (popular) cultural forms, ethnicity, country of origin, and the complexity of mediation across online and offline sites of social action.

‘Cash me ousside’: A citizen sociolinguistic analysis of online metalinguistic commentary

“…It is clear that at least some segments of the networked public on YouTube considered the teen's linguistic performance to be a case of (inauthentic) movement across ethnic/social boundaries. This is similar to the mixed online reactions to a white Finnish footballer's appropriation of features of AAVE, as described by Kytölä and Westinen (). As these authors illustrated, the athlete's strategic appropriation of AAVE features in the construction of an online ‘gangsta’ persona was normatively regulated by numerous participants in an online forum, including many who evaluated his linguistic performance as inauthentic.…”

“…’ Interestingly, while related terms such as ‘ gangsta ’ may have racial connotations (e.g. see Kytölä and Westinen's discussion of ‘gangsta English,’ for example), one YouTube commenter traced the origin of ‘ gangsta ’ to ‘ gangster ’ – and suggested that the ‘real gangsters’ existed around 100 years ago:

i love how people who act all gangsta tink its cool a f to talk with a speech impediment like they got brain damage lmfaooooo lemme tell you something that you already know, if Capone ran up on and some… self proclaimed gangsta, what yo wussup mayyn? you think the fake ass gangster will make it 10 feet?

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“…Similar social processes appear to be happening in this case, but on a different platform, YouTube . Such metapragmatic debates of (in)authenticity on participatory online platforms demonstrate how citizen sociolinguists judge, evaluate, group, and police others’ language use via indexical associations variably made by different users (Hachimi ; Kytölä and Westinen ).…”

“…The discursive engagement of Internet users in online spaces as they make sense of such mediatized events and related linguistic performances can reveal important affiliations, stances, and perspectives about users’ communicative repertoires, as well as how they make sense of representations of language. More specifically, mediatized linguistic performances can lead audiences to actively participate in public online discussions, as they examine, question, or judge the authenticity of speech based on their ideas of legitimacy, acceptability, and credibility (Bucholtz ; Coupland ; Kytölä and Westinen ).…”

“…While digital discourses expressing metalinguistic judgments reveal personal attitudes, cultural beliefs, and prejudices, they also create and/or reproduce levels of hierarchy, inequality, and stigmatization of certain groups (Thurlow ). Furthermore, as Kytölä and Westinen () have shown, evaluations regarding the authenticity of an individual's language use are often normatively regulated by online collectives. That is, when a person is perceived as using a variety or code that is regarded as somehow inconsistent with their ‘authentic’ identity, their language may fall under public scrutiny, becoming the target of judgment, policing, or disciplining, by users of social media.…”