Despite their increasing popularity, hip-hop and African American culture have rarely been regarded as a valuable source of pedagogical resources in Korean English education. The lack of academic discussion regarding this issue has led Korean English teachers and learners to overlook hip-hop and African American culture even though they can function as a counternarrative to the biased, Anglo-centric discourse and can be a motivator for the young generation that is interested in them. In this vein, this paper argues that the inclusion of hip-hop and African American cultural texts can be meaningful for English teachers and learners in Korea, especially with the aim of teaching about a significant segment of American culture. By performing a media content analysis of readily available hip-hop and African American videos that include real African American figures, this paper identifies pedagogically valuable themes to approach American culture from African American perspectives. Six themes are included: brute force, advocation of peace, the self-made man, an appreciative attitude toward the community, African American English and identity, and life-saving intervention. This paper calls for further discussion to expand the scope of teaching and learning about hip-hop and African American culture, which has been overlooked to date in cross-cultural and ESL/EFL education. |