Abstract: Slam, as an emerging emblematic and multidimensional poetic form, can be characterized
by its openness and at the same time its refusal to be “de-fined” or imprisoned by
any strict or formal rules. It started as a thrust to democratize poetry, to free it from its
traditional constraints, and has been built up at the intersection of literature, song and rap,
where epic, lyric and dramatic genres converge, where written and oral expression overlap.
It is therefore a hybrid form, a situational discursive genre, and is performed on a slam
stage by means of declamation –the way the voice carries it legitimizes the way it is put
into words. The words are written to be spoken, it is a sample of “oraliterature”, to use a
blend created by a slam poet, and which echoes the blend of “orature” created by a famous
linguist. Slam is fundamentally expressive, characterized by a space-time unit –that of
the stage of slam session, which is open to free expression, and as such particularly apt to
stimulate the production of neologisms, a veritable explosion of different forms of lexical
creativity. What are the significant forms and the corresponding lexicogenic matrices? What effects are aimed at and what are the main functions of the neologisms identified? The
analysis for this study is drawn from two corpora: the texts of two albums of the French
slam artist Grand Corps Malade (2006, 2008), and three texts written or cowritten by slam
artists of the Rhône-Alpes region.
