The carnival of verbal dueling

AbstractIn this article I discuss an example of verbal dueling in Hip Hop culture from the perspective of Bakhtin's (1984) notion of the carnival. Both carnival and Hip Hop are subversive in that they seek to represent alternative realities to the dominant status quo. This is illustrated and embodied in a variety of ways in the datum: the discourse strategy of “Signifying” (a feature of duels within Hip Hop culture) is inherently carnivalesque in its focus on skillful, mocking uses of language; the alteration and patterning of the formal features of the language of the duel are representative of subversion on a larger social scale; manner of performance and display of one's linguistic skill and expertise are paramount and supersede propositional content in terms of importance; the identity of the performers is also altered. I argue that performance of verbal dueling within Hip Hop Culture bears close similarities to the ritual festivities, textual parodies, and Billingsgate language of carnival. Carnivalesque subversion, as embodied in the language of verbal dueling, is arguably a human universal.