PАRADOXES OF RAP ARTISTS’ ROLE IDENTITY: SAGE, MAGICIAN OR TRICKSTER?
PАRADOXES OF RAP ARTISTS’ ROLE IDENTITY: SAGE, MAGICIAN OR TRICKSTER?

Summary/Abstract: The paper aims at analyzing the archetypal roles of Sage, Magician or Trickster, which manifest the unexpected aspects of the artists’ identity in modern rap discourse. Archetypal roles are characterized by symbolic, semantic, thematic, syntactical and pragmatic parameters, some of which are inter-archetypal. As the commonest role devices, we identified the means of ambiguity and incongruence of meanings, based on antithesis, oxymorons, metaphors, non sequitur, juxtaposition of disparate ideas, concepts and actions, accentuated by syntactical devices such as line break, ellipsis, parataxis, asyndeton, etc. From a pragmatic viewpoint, incongruence and ambiguity correspond to a violation of the cooperative maxims of relevance, manner and quantity of information, triggering discursive implicature. However, these implicatures are specific for each archetype as they depend on the archetypally-based ideas, motifs and themes: meanings associated with suppressed fears and feelings of the author-performer indicate Trickster- Shadow roles; sacralization and symbolization of reality is inherent in Sage roles; constructing an illusory world and filling it with supernatural powers is characteristic of Magician roles, and creating a ludic world of playing with forms and meanings corresponds to Trickster-Jester roles.

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