Unisia
Vol. 39 No. 2 (2021)

A Corpus-Based Pilot Study of the Pop Lyrics on Billboard

Chen Yang (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong)



Article Info

Publish Date
30 Dec 2021

Abstract

Although pop music is endorsed as one of the most leisure activities to express feelings and emotions in people’s daily life, song lyrics are usually neglected by linguists and excluded in any of English corpora (e.g., BNC and ANC) that are currently adopted. The current study focuses on an analysis of lyrics based on a Billboard music chart corpus mainly containing American pop lyrics, via both qualitative and quantitative methods, and aims to investigate to what extent the lexico-grammatical features of the words and expressions used in lyrics enable those songs widely accepted by audience. Results reveal that conversational contexts in the lyrics mark a story-telling feature, and help audience easily realize artists’ attitudes and the implications to some events and scenarios.

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Journal Info

Abbrev

Unisia

Publisher

Subject

Religion Humanities Economics, Econometrics & Finance Education Social Sciences

Description

Unisia publishes research articles devoted to social sciences and humanities. The journal publishes current research on a broad range of topics, including religion, law, political science, sociology, psychology, economics, history, language, social work, geography, international studies, and women ...