| This dissertation argues that language and communicative practices are constantly evolving, especially in a world of rapid cultural and technological change, and that popular youth cultures both drive and reflect such changes. This examination of "spoken word" forms, in particular rap and slam poetry, interrogates the changing relationships youth establish in and with language, and what these do---formally, socially and culturally---to poetics and communication.; My theoretical framework is post-structural and assumes that while it is through language acquisition that humans become social subjects, "language" itself is inadequate as a means of expression, communication, and connection to others and the world. I introduce the notion of poetics as a possible response to the shortcomings of language.; My method is shaped by Glissant's (1990) "poetics of relation" and Mackey's (1994) "discrepant engagements." Both practices frame analytic readings across cultures and time, and contextualise case studies of contemporary cultural production. Juxtaposing Toronto rappers and New York slam poets with the poetics of indeterminacy of Gertrude Stein and William Melvin Kelley, performance and oral poetry movements, and jazz poetry and sound poetry, provides means for testing the limits of language and opens exploration for how else words might mean.; Spoken word forms challenge some of the central tenets of theories of literacy and communication. They defy binary notions of orality and writing, words and music, voice and body, and standard and vernacular language forms. They refigure concepts of technological literacy by enacting a poetics of technology.; This study offers English education a framework for making meaningful relations between youth culture and literature education. It sheds light on the evolution of communicative, literate, and aesthetic needs and practices within proliferating contexts of new information and communication technologies. And it opens up a critical space within which both teachers and youth can critically distance themselves from and explore their imaginative engagements with word and world. It is in such critical language engagements that the strengths and limitations of contemporary youth culture may find pedagogical resonances with future demands for multi-modal literacies. |
