Interactive Oral Composition: Resources, Strategies, and the Construction of Improvised Utterances in a Finnish Freestyle Rap Battle

The freestyle rap battle is a contemporary form of contest poetry introduced to Finland as part of the originally African and Latino American, but today globally spread, hip-hop youth culture. During the last decades, Finnish young people have dynamically developed the art of orally improvised rap and vernacular performance cultures. Contributing to the study of oral composition and argumentative forms of oral poetry, this paper examines the construction of improvised utterances in the competitive, interactive arena of the battle.