Hip-Hop Hamlet - Hybrid Interpretive Discourse in a Suburban High School English Class

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by dhado

This study investigates the collaborative composing processes of five high school seniors who constructed interpretations of each act of Shakespeare’s Hamlet through spoken word performances. Analysis identifies how students drew on spoken word conventions to phrase and perform their interpretations, showing that rap-mediated retelling both constrained and enabled narrative decisions. Students also clarified Shakespeare events in discussion and in condensed poetic rewriting, combining rap and pop culture conventions. The study concludes that spoken word interpretations function as hybrid discourse supporting exploratory interpretive talk and deeper drama understanding.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages29

Reading Time1 h 13 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Collaborative composing and interpretation

Rap medium constraints and affordances

Condensed poetic rewriting and interpretive talk

Hybrid discourse and implications

ISSN: 2325-3290 (online) Hip-Hop Hamlet: Hybrid Interpretive Discourse in a Suburban High School English Class Joanna L. Anglin Rockdale Career Academy Peter Smagorinsky The University of Georgia Abstract This study investigates the collaborative composing processes of a group of five high school seniors who constructed interpretations of each of the five acts of Shakespeare’s Hamlet through the medium of spoken word performances. The group composing processes were analyzed to identify how the students drew on conventions from the spoken word tradition to phrase and perform their interpretations. Findings indicate that across the five spoken word performances, the retelling of the Hamlet narrative involved a set of decisions that were both constrained and afforded by the rap medium. The students’discussion of how to rewrite the story in the condensed poetic form of arap required them to clarify events from Shakespeare’s version and both summarize them and interpret them both in their discussion and in their own text. Their interpretive work involved the incorporation of a variety of rap and other pop culture conventions such that their deliberation regarding word choice and accompanying performative elements necessitated careful consideration of the meaning that they found in Shakespeare’s version of the story, itself an adaptation from extant cultural narratives. The study concludes with a consideration of their spoken word interpretations as comprising a hybrid discourse that enabled exploratory interpretive talk that contributed to their understanding of the drama through the collaborative composition of their own representational text. Joanna L. Anglin is an English teacher (Rockdale Career Academy) and administrator in Rockdale County, Georgia, and a doctoral candidate in English Education at The University of Georgia. In 2011 she was awarded the Georgia Council of Teachers of English State Teacher of the Year and has been chosen as a STAR teacher three times in the past decade, an award in which the student at each highschool in Georgia with the highest SAT score is named the STAR student, and he or she then chooses the teacher who was most influential to him or her. She has also been chosen as an Honor Teacher several times, awarded when each student who is in the top 20 of his or her grade gets to choose a teacher to “honor” at Honor’s Night. In 2007, she was named the Rockdale County Technology Integrating Teacher of the Year. Anglin earned an Ed.S. from Piedmont College and her Master of Teaching and bachelor’s degrees from Georgia College and State University and is also certified to teach gifted students and AP English. Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal | [http://dpj.pitt.edu](http://dpj.pitt.edu) [DOI: 10.5195/dpj.2014.73 | Vol. 2](DOI: 10.5195/dpj.2014.73 | Vol. 2) (2014) A41 Hip-Hop Hamlet: Hybrid Interpretive Discourse in a Suburban High School English Class Joanna L. Anglin and Peter Smagorinsky Peter Smagorinsky is Distinguished Research Professor of English Education at The University of Georgia. He got his bachelor’s degree at Kenyon College (1974) and taught high school English in the Chicago area from 1976-1990 while earning his M.A.T (1977) and Ph. D. (1989) from the University of Chicago. His recent book, Vygotsky and Literacy Research: A Methodological Framework (2011, Sense) won the 2013 National Council of Teachers of English David H. Russell Research Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English and the 2014 Steve Witte Award from the Special Interest Group in Writing and Literacies of the American Educational Research Association. His newest book, the coedited (with Valerie Kinloch) volume from Information Age Publishing, Service-Learning in Literacy Education: Possibilities for Teaching and Learning, won the 2014 University of Georgia ServiceLearning Research Excellence Award. In 2014, Corwin will publish his edited volume, Teaching Dilemm

FAQs

How did the students create their interpretations of Hamlet?

They collaborated to compose interpretations of each act of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and performed them as spoken word pieces, using conventions from the spoken word tradition.

What role did the rap medium play in shaping the retelling?

Across the five performances, the rap medium both constrained and afforded students’ decisions, influencing how the Hamlet narrative was rephrased and performed.

Why does the study describe the students’ work as a hybrid discourse?

Because their spoken word interpretations blended spoken-word conventions with interpretive talk grounded in Shakespeare’s drama, enabling exploratory discussion that supported understanding of the play.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by dhado