Gender Construction in Rap Music: A Russian Case

This paper studies the features of linguistic performances that male and female performers reproduce in their texts in the genre of Russian rap. In the process of reproduction, performers identify themselves as «male» or «female» and thus construct their gender, creating and strengthening gender norms. As a theoretical framework, the theory of social construction of gender is used, namely, the construction of gender through linguistic practices in culture. The purpose of this work is to identify linguistic features and language practices in the texts of Russian-speaking rap artists. As an empirical base, a text corpus consisting of 5,999 song lyrics (5,466 male and 533 female texts) is used. The analysis uses frequency analysis and thematic modeling using LDA. The results showed that women use obscene language as often as men, while men are more likely to use obscene words that express their dominant position. There is no difference in the themes used in the lyrics. Thus, female performers in Russian rap copy the behavior of men, adhering to the norms of the genre, which include the norms of hegemonic masculinity.