You Know What It Is: Learning Words through Listening to Hip-Hop

Abstract

Music listeners have difficulty correctly understanding and remembering song lyrics. However, results from the present study support the hypothesis that young adults can learn African-American English (AAE) vocabulary from listening to hip-hop music. Non-African-American participants first gave free-response definitions to AAE vocabulary items, after which they answered demographic questions as well as questions addressing their social networks, their musical preferences, and their knowledge of popular culture. Results from the survey show a positive association between the number of hip-hop artists listened to and AAE comprehension vocabulary scores. Additionally, participants were more likely to know an AAE vocabulary item if the hip-hop artists they listen to use the word in their song lyrics. Together, these results suggest that young adults can acquire vocabulary through exposure to hip-hop music, a finding relevant for research on vocabulary acquisition, the construction of adolescent and adult identities, and the adoption of lexical innovations.

An intervention using morphology to derive word meanings for English language learners

“…Accounting for the effects of phonemic awareness, word reading, and a morphological production task, the morphological analysis task accounted for significant variance in vocabulary (11.7% for fifth graders; 12.5% for eighth graders) and comprehension (6.8% for fifth graders; 5.4% for eighth graders). Results support Anglin's (1993) suggestion that growth in fifth grade vocabulary is due to use of morphological analysis.…”

Understanding the overlap between positive and negative involuntary cognitions using instrumental earworms.

“…Prior research suggests that familiarity, or repeated exposure, is required to recall song lyrics, and that recalling song lyrics is more difficult than recalling melodies (Chesley, 2011;Peynirciog ˘lu, Rabinovitz, & Thompson, 2008). Being able to recall song lyrics can be considered a prerequisite for "singing-along," which holds particular importance when the stimulus is absent, as is the definition of an earworm.…”

Music in the Dental Office – Preferences of Budapest Inhabitants

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