Reggae music, when it is played, performed and celebrated globally, brings Jamaican styles of speaking and singing into contact with local languages and dialects. In such linguistic contact zones, reggae musicians and audiences appropriate Jamaican language features (e.g. elements of its phonology, lexis, morphosyntax, orthography) to create unique translingual practices and to renegotiate global language ideologies connected to histories of colonialism, race, class and gender. In this paper, I will present an analysis of appropriations of Jamaican Patwa words (lexemes) among Indian and British reggae artists as they engage in musical and DJ performances, and when they speak on their social media video posts.

Yankov Wong Production, Hong Kong