‘I don't know why man's calling me family all of a sudden’: Address and reference terms in grime music

This study examines address and reference terms in the lyrics of Grime artists to understand how they negotiate their interpersonal relationships. 589 nominal terms were extracted and coded from a corpus of 16 songs by six artists from London, Cardiff and North England. Results revealed that all artists displayed adherence to implicit rules of the address and reference system. This conformity suggests that their relationships are characterised by solidarity within an imagined community. The research highlights the value of (1) Grime music as a means of understanding emerging new multi-ethnic dialects, and (2) resistant music, more broadly, in exploring the social structure of marginalised adolescents in an increasingly globalised world.