Oma Persaud

ENC1102 - 0044

Professor Megan Lambert

1 March 2020

Moody-Ramirez, Mia, and Lakia M Scott. “Rap Music Literacy: A Case Study of Millennial

Audience Reception to Rap Lyrics Depicting Independent Women.”

DigitalCommons@URI​, digitalcommons.uri.edu/jmle/vol7/iss3/5/.

The purpose of this article is to see how lyrics in music affect people today and how they see

themselves when they listen to music that enhances society’s stereotypes. The conversation

which this article falls the most into is “Writing helps people make meaning, but has

constraints.” To conduct their research, they interviewed people of all ages and from different

backgrounds. The questions asked if they had heard a set of songs and recorded their responses

and as another research method, they reviewed the history of rap music. This article is useful to

me because it has research from college students about how they make meaning from the songs

and what they take away from them. Also helpful because they explain how this genre of writing

affects the meanings people take from it within the constraints of the 3 to 4 minutes of music.

The authors from Baylor University conducted their surveys and research from the student body

at Baylor University.

Sprankle, Eric L, et al. “Sexually Degrading Music Videos and Lyrics Their Effects on Males’

Aggression and Endorsement of Rape Myths and Sexual Stereotypes.” ​Journal of Media

Psychology​, vol. 24, no. 1, 2012, pp. 31–39., doi:10.1027/1864-1105/a000060.

The purpose of this article is to see the effects of sexually degrading music videos and lyrics on

males’ aggression and endorsement of rape myths and sexual stereotypes. This is part of the

conversation of how writing makes meaning because it focuses on how the two aspects of visual

versus auditory of the song affects males. The author sources from BET, Associated Press, and

several other studies who have studied the social aspect of this concept. The author conducts two

studies with 187 male students of different backgrounds. The students were given a grading

scale of how degrading the music video was and how degrading the lyrics were. The author’s

main arguments are rooted in the studies that they conducted. Some were affected greater than

others, but others were not significant;y impacted in terms of their aggression or how they

viewed women as sexual objects. The author believes that the overly sexual music and lyrics do

not have a significant effect on the participants’ aggression towards women or endorsements of

rape myths and sexual stereotypes. The use of lyrics in this study shows that there is an impact

that lyrics have and helps readers and listeners make meaning even if the impact is smaller than

predicted.

Volz, Edward J. “You Can't Play That: A Selective Chronology of Banned Music: 1850-1991.”

School Library Journal,​ 1 Jan. 1991, pp. 16–18.,

web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=6&sid=cfcae1ad-cda7-4b8b-b2ed-

12644559b748%40pdc-v-sessmgr05.

This is an article written in 1991. The purpose of this article is to see what types of music are

banned or exempted from the radio because of their lyrics. This article is part of the conversation
of making meaning from writing because there was an entire organization made to handle

censorship on the radios (FCC) based on what meaning was made from what the lyrics said. The

author goes through decades and based on what popular music was censored, they took the lyrics

that were “bleeped” out and explained why it was unnecessary to censor it. They give the

different ways it could be interpreted and why it was generally alright to be on the radio. The

author concludes that since we are America and we have something called the First Amendment,

libraries, radios, and music stores should be able to sell, play, and display whatever music they

want because we have freedom of expression. It helps my research because it takes a look at

several genres of music and it shows how lyrics make meaning to people. So much so, that they

censor the lyrics.

Wardle, Elizabeth, and Doug Downs. ​Writing about Writing​. Bedford Books St. Martin's, 2020.

The purpose of this essay is to clarify and clearly define the aspects of rhetorical situations and to

develop a scheme for ways to analyze rhetorical situations. By examining other authors who

have defined what “rhetorical situations” are and how they are responded to and how they come

about in the first place, the author builds on the previous ideas by adding in the how the

constraints affect the writing, audience, and the response to these rhetorical situations.This is

useful to my research because the author goes over multiple examples of writing and how they

make meaning for people, but also in the ways they are constrained, but how rhetors get around

their constraints to ensure the audience gets their meaning. This source basically defines the
threshold concept of how writing makes meaning into three categories of what it’s about, what

it’s supposed to accomplish, and the definitions created from the rhetorical situations.

White, Cameron, and Susan McCormack. “The Message in the Music: Popular Culture and

Teaching in Social Studies.” ​Heldref Publications,​ May 2006, pp. 122–127.

The purpose of the article is to show how music and the lyrics can affect students and how music

could be used as a tool to teach. I believe this article is part of the “Prior experiences affect

writing.” The authors are 8th-grade history teachers who used the methods given to them by the

school. However, they realized it wasn’t working for all the students. As a result, they started

using popular music but changed the lyrics to reflect the topic they were studying. The teachers

used their own classes as their study and data collection from test scores and how well the

students remember the information with the new strategies of using popular songs. Lyrics as a

form of writing can be transformed to help one learn and remember information better. Writing

makes meaning here for students to help them remember social studies topics. The constraints

are the rhythm of the music and the syllables to the lyrics.