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The Style of Pop Song Lyrics: A Corpus-linguistic Pilot Study

  • Rolf Kreyer and Joybrato Mukherjee
Published/Copyright: February 3, 2009
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From the journal Volume 125 Issue 1

Abstract

In the present paper, we discuss the analytic potential of corpus-linguistic research into the genre of pop song lyrics. More specifically, we are interested in a corpus-based description of the general style of and, potentially, the stylistic variation within the genre of pop song lyrics. To this end, we envisage the compilation, annotation and analysis of a large and representative corpus of pop song lyrics, the Giessen-Bonn Corpus of Popular Music (GBoP). In the present paper, we report on general findings from a pilot investigation of the pilot version of GBoP. The focus here is on the identification of style markers of pop song lyrics in general and on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the vocabulary and of lexicogrammatical routines in the corpus. Finally, we will also discuss the extent to which GBoP may help to shed light on metaphors that are typical of pop song lyrics.

Published Online: 2009-02-03
Published in Print: 2007-August

© Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2007

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