The Phonological Process of Regressive and Progressive Assimilations on the Lyrics of the Rap Song, 'Rap God' by Eminem

摘要

Rapping as one of the musical genres essentially involves the speaking or chanting of rhyming lyrics, often set to a beat. The rhyming created by rappers is considered to be one of the most sophisticated styles of poetry. Themes often address provocative subjects such as violence, sex and socio-political issues. Rapping which first gained popularity in the U.S in the 1970s as a kind of street act especially among African-American teenagers now becomes very famous musical genre in the world. The main objectives of this descriptive qualitative research are to find out how the processes of regressive and progressive assimilation are taken place when a very well known rap singer, Eminem, is singing his famous song Rap God in his single album and to find out the determinant factor how they happen in terms of place and manner of articulations and voicing. Regressive assimilation happens when the following sound in a word influences the preceding sound as in light blue/lait blu:/pronounced rapidly as/laip blu:/whereas progressive assimilation happens when the preceding sound influences the following sound since the preceding sound is too dominant such as in the/in o{partial deriv}/which turns to be/in n{partial deriv}/. The result of the research show that based on the data found in the song, there are 21 data of phonological processes of regressive assimilation and 14 data of phonological processes of regressive assimilation and the factors such as place and manner of articulation as well as voicing play very important part in assimilation process.