Rap, Femmes, Méditerranée : une enquête sociolinguistique ethnographique à Marseille

This thesis explores the linguistic and socio-discursive practices of female rappers in Marseille, through a sociolinguistic approach and an ethnographic methodology. The main objective is to understand how these women, often relegated to the margins of a predominantly male music industry, construct their legitimacy as artists. In doing so, this research questions the power dynamics at play in rap production, particularly how women navigate this cultural and linguistic space to claim their artistic, social, and symbolic legitimacy. The field of this research focuses on the contemporary rap scene in Marseille, a Mediterranean city that, with its cultural diversity and social tensions, offers a unique and fertile environment for reflection on gender and power dynamics. After providing an overview of French-language research on language in rap, particularly from the perspective of urban sociolinguistics, the thesis highlights the specificities of the Marseille scene. It analyzes the trajectories of female rappers and the issues of visibility and invisibility they face. This work is part of a broader reflection on the representations of the city of Marseille in rap, addressing stereotypes associated with the popular, rebellious, and multicultural city that change over time. The fieldwork, conducted over one year in Marseille (2021-2022), is central to the development of this thesis. The corpus consists not only of 80 song lyrics from 30 identified female rappers but also of 14 semi-directive interviews and field notes from participant observation at 60 concerts. These data are organized around three main themes, which define the three analytical chapters: the representation of Marseille's identity in the artistic production of female rappers, the construction of their gender identity, and the staging of violence. Far from an essentialist approach to so-called "youth language" in rap, this thesis offers a nuanced view of the production of female rappers in Marseille, emphasizing their diversity of linguistic practices, discourses, voices, and positions thanks to the tools of discourse analysis. The thesis proposes going beyond reductive categories to consider rap as a space of plural and transformative expression, where artists reinvent their identities, their languages, and their powers, while shaping dominant discourses.