The War Within: Mental Health Rhetoric in NF’s Rap Lyrics
Honors Program
University Honors
Date of Award
12-2019
Thesis Professor(s)
C. Wesley Buerkle
Thesis Professor Department
Communication
Thesis Reader(s)
Kelly A. Dorgan
Abstract
More celebrities have been opening up about the mental illness (MI) journey, despite its stigmatized status in society. This shift has become popular with some rap artists, including Kanye West, Logic, and NF. However, little research exists on mental health rhetoric in the rap industry. In this project, I contributed to filling this gap by looking at the lyrics of American rapper, NF. Because his music is rising popularity and heavily focused on MI experience, NF was a worthy rhetor to study. I used Fantasy Theme Analysis to discover the fantasy themes present in NF’s album The Search. These fantasy themes present bind together to create a rhetorical vision of how NF experiences an internal war because of his MI. NF’s experiences may be shared by his listeners that also deal with the complexities of MI and its associated stigma. By talking about his MI experiences openly and honestly, NF and other celebrities can use their public platform to increase feelings of belongingness and reduce feelings of self-stigma.
Publisher
East Tennessee State University
Document Type
Honors Thesis - Open Access
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Armstrong, Heidi, "The War Within: Mental Health Rhetoric in NF’s Rap Lyrics" (2019). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 516. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/516
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.