“O Negro No Poder -The Power in Black” : Language forms in lyrics from different Blocos Afro reflecting Afro-Brazilian identity work in the city of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil thematically connected to negritude.

Sammanfattning: The present study aims to test my hypothesis that the language forms found in the Blocos Afro discourses in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil can be seen as expressions of Afro-Brazilian and/or Blocos Afro identity work and can also be seen as being, at least thematically, connected to the negritude movement. The study is based on samples created of Blocos Afro lyrics. As a selection of Blocos Afro I chose Ilê Ayiê, Cortejo Afro and Olodum, which are all well recognized and with a long tradition presenting themselves in Salvador. In total the analysis was made from 31942 words and/or 250 lyrics. A pilot was used to create a framework to select and identify expressions and language forms attested to be associated with the Afro-Brazilian identity. I relied on quantitative and qualitative approaches to the analyses. First, I categorized the expressions from the different lyrics by using a word cloud application which provides an overview of word frequency in a given corpus and can be used to underpin qualitative analyses. By using word cloud the frequency of words in the total corpus of 250 lyrics and particular lyrics was analyzed. Based on this analysis of the frequency of use of expression and language forms, I carried out a thematic analysis of the discourses and compared the themes to salient themes of negritude. The results show that the Afro-Brazilian identity in Salvador is thematically connected to the negritude movement and that the Afro-Blocos lyrics analyzed show identity work a strong ingroup perspective.