Peaze Up! Adaptation, Innovation, and Variation in German Hip Hop Discourse

In this study, I investigate the stylistic use of various forms of the hip hop leave-taking peace in a 12.5-million-word corpus (2000-2011) of German-language Internet hip hop discussions. The English orthography is compared with a number of hybrid variants including, e.g., , , and . I analyze the distribution of these variants over time by comparison to use of the form in an American hip hop forum. I complement these results with a qualitative analysis of peace and its variants as situated in discourse, drawing a connection between linguistic features, discursive use, and corpus distribution. The discourse of German hip hop fans in new media forms is characterized by hybridity and heterogeneity, and is thus best investigated using similarly diverse methodologies. Through the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, I find that stylization is not the sole motivation for the alternative forms of peace; linguistic-orthographic considerations are also paramount