In February 2008 a YouTube user named “WeCan08” uploaded Yes, We Can, a video that is now considered a key example of the so-called ‘YouTube political endorsement’. It was a black and white collage-style music video that featured Senator Barack Obama pronouncing an electoral speech together with many celebrities and musicians echoing his words in a hip-hop manner. The video, produced by the rapper will.i.am, immediately went viral and helped the popularisation of the motto, which became a secondary slogan for Obama’s first presidential campaign. Combining functional linguistics and multimodal meaning-making decoding practices, the paper will analyse this complex multilayered/multicultural text where different remediations occur, starting from the lyrics of the song which are verbatim quotations from Obama’s New Hampshire concession speech. The essay will also explore the hip-hop rendering of the political speech as an example of interdiscursivity since it is deeply rooted in African-American musical and discursive practices.

When Music Meets Politics or the Remediation of Obama's New Hampshire Concession Speech / Ilaria Moschini. - STAMPA. - (2017), pp. 169-182.

When Music Meets Politics or the Remediation of Obama's New Hampshire Concession Speech

MOSCHINI, ILARIA
2017

Abstract

In February 2008 a YouTube user named “WeCan08” uploaded Yes, We Can, a video that is now considered a key example of the so-called ‘YouTube political endorsement’. It was a black and white collage-style music video that featured Senator Barack Obama pronouncing an electoral speech together with many celebrities and musicians echoing his words in a hip-hop manner. The video, produced by the rapper will.i.am, immediately went viral and helped the popularisation of the motto, which became a secondary slogan for Obama’s first presidential campaign. Combining functional linguistics and multimodal meaning-making decoding practices, the paper will analyse this complex multilayered/multicultural text where different remediations occur, starting from the lyrics of the song which are verbatim quotations from Obama’s New Hampshire concession speech. The essay will also explore the hip-hop rendering of the political speech as an example of interdiscursivity since it is deeply rooted in African-American musical and discursive practices.
2017
978-620-2-00373-5
The Many Facets of Remediation in Language Studies
169
182
Ilaria Moschini
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Utilizza questo identificatore per citare o creare un link a questa risorsa: https://hdl.handle.net/2158/1092564
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