Défense publique : Letizia Sassi

Postmigrant Rap : Language, Metaphor and Signifyin(g) Practices in British and Italian Rap. A Comparative Study of Debut Albums by Male artists (2017–2022) 

Abstract

This dissertation establishes a new model for a postmigrant analytical perspective designed to transcend purely thematic or sociological readings of minority cultural productions. By decoupling the postmigrant analytical lens from an essentialist obsession with authorship and origin, this work redefines postmigration not as a biological or demographic marker, but as an elastic, sovereign mode of interpretation that can be universally applied to any artistic phenomenon.

Empirically, the study operationalizes this new framework through a comparative textual and musicological analysis of a bilingual European rap corpus featuring Mahmood, Ghali, Baby Gang, J Hus, Dave, and Central Cee. The inquiry investigates how these artists formally and semiotically encode socio-political frictions within the mechanics of the musical text, moving from the structural aphasia of strategic silence and disruptive noise, through the subversion of traditional metaphors of linear movement, to the multi-layered linguistic practice of postmigrant signifyin(g).

Ultimately, the dissertation contributes directly to both popular music studies and Postmigration Studies by proving that the postmigrant generation does not merely adapt a global genre. Instead, by deploying this new analytical model, the research demonstrates how these creators actively renovate the dominant cultural library from within its own center, transforming the national fabric and asserting absolute discursive sovereignty as constitutive architects of a new, pluralistic European imaginary.

La soutenance publique aura lieu le mardi 1^er septembre 2026 à 14H00 à l’auditoire Socrate -242 et sur Teams. 

La soutenance est ouverte au public.