THE USE OF STYLISTIC DEVICES IN THE SONG LYRICS OF THE AMERICAN RAPPER EMINEM

Abstract

The article analyzes the use of stylistic tropes in the song rap lyrics of the famous American rapper, music producer and actor Eminem. The article demonstrates the linguistic study results of the frequency for using tropes in the song lyrics of rap songs that embody the hip-hop subculture style, using the example of two studio albums by a popular contemporary author and performer of rap songs, winner of the 2015 Grammy Award for Best Rap album Eminem. The hypothesis for scientific research was the assumption that in the author’s song lyrics of the rap genre Eminem there are some stylistic devices like tropes that are often used by rappers, such as: metaphor, allegory, comparison, hyperbole, irony, oxymoron, litotes, personification, etc., and therefore, the purpose of the study was to find out the correctness of such an assumption and to identify the presence or absence of certain tropes in the texts of Eminem’s work. The article contains lines of lyrics from the two studio albums of the author of rap lyrics Eminem, which were first presented in 2017 (“Revival”) and 2018 (“Kamikaze”). The conducted research proved that such stylistic techniques as tropes, namely metaphor, allegory, comparison, hyperbole, irony, oxymoron, litotes, personification, etc., are widely used by the authors of song lyrics of the rap genre, which is clearly visible from the song lyrics analysis of modern studio albums of the popular rapper Eminem. It should be noted that the study was conducted exclusively on the example of one performer’s creativity and the author of the rap genre song lyrics, and therefore, it can be logically assumed that the use of stylistic tropes is characteristic of this rapper’s creativity. Therefore, the linguistic study upon the presence of the phenomenon of stylistic devices tropes in the rap genre song lyrics as a whole requires further study on the example of rap song lyrics by other popular rappers. However, after the conducted research, it can be stated that the use of tropes is at least possible in the song lyrics of the rap genre.