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“I Used to Love Him”: Exploring the Miseducation About Black Love and Sex

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 27; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/15295030903583531

1529-5036

Ebony A. Utley,

Language, Metaphor, and Cognition

This paper analyzes the rhetorical function of the tropes of love and sex in the quintessential break up song, “I Used to Love Him,” from Lauryn Hill's multi-platinum 1998 album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Through a textual analysis that emphasizes the recurrent tropes of synecdoche and metaphor, I argue that, despite the song's seemingly liberating and empowering message, its conception of love is rooted in movements towards new forms of domination as opposed to self-actualization. This critical examination of a black love relationship within hip hop's myriad mediated representations of loveless black sex contributes to the resurgent interest in discourses on love.