Show me the monolingualism: Korean hip-hop and the discourse of difference

Abstract

Today, the ubiquitousness of Korean hip-hop is evident in the popularity of the reality show Show Me the Money (henceforth referred to as SMTM), a musical competition featuring aspiring Korean and Korean American hip-hop artists. While the show has always been a platform for linguistic hybridity, as Korean hip-hop has never been truly “monolingual,” the recent evolution of the show to include Korean American artists has focalized the linguistic and cultural hybridity that inheres global hip-hop more generally and Korean hip-hop more specifically. Undoubtedly, these two matrices of difference, linguistic and cultural, are invariably intertwined, particularly in the Korean context, where being “authentically” Korean itself hinges on proficiency in the Korean language. The analysis develops what Gramling (2016. The Invention of Monolingualism. London: Bloomsbury) terms the “invention of monolingualism,” in particular with SMTM in relation to questions of verbal hygiene and the discourse of authenticity and emulation. We argue that SMTM should not be understood as a mere space for the documentation of various acts of transgressing monolingualism through linguistic and cultural hybridity. Instead, it unveils the social and geopolitical conditions by which the very commitment to, along with the presumed precarity of, “monolingualism” is afforded an ideological platform in the first place.