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Prevalent Discourses in ESC Lyrics

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Language, Normativity and Europeanisation

Part of the book series: Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse ((PSDS))

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Abstract

Europeanisation centrally surfaces in the ritualisation of the use of certain concepts in ESC performances throughout the years. The present chapter therefore concentrates on the intertextual dimension of meaning negotiation and materialistion in the contest. The theoretical discussion of intertextuality has to a large extent been advanced outside linguistics (especially in literary studies, drawing on the work of Kristeva and Bakhtin; see e.g. Allen 2000 for a detailed overview), but the insights of these debates have been fruitfully incorporated into poststructuralist -minded linguistic research and critical discourse analysis (see e.g. Fairclough 2003; Solin 2004). One central tenet of this work is that every text is made up of traces of earlier texts—a phenomenon that often is not consciously realised by language users (Busch and Pfisterer 2011: 435). Viewing texts as parts of intertextual networks moves them away from the text-producing individual, seeing them rather as embedded in and discursively shaped by society at large. According to Solin (2004: 271), two basic types of intertextuality can be distinguished: (a) generic intertextuality (i.e. the citing of abstract genre conventions) and (b) referential intertextuality (i.e. the citing of concrete elements from earlier texts). Intertextual links may be observable on the surface of texts (through duplication or similarity of form, as in direct quotations , reported speech or repetition) or operate on deeper semantic levels (through duplication or similarity of the concepts expressed, as in semantic relations and isotopy).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The two concepts <geographical entity> and <celestial body> are special cases because they include relatively large subgroups. Due to this, the concepts <star> and <sun> were excluded from the category <celestial body> and listed separately. The same is true for <Europe> and <nation>, which are excluded from <geographical entity>.

  2. 2.

    Such forms were excluded from the category <male >, even if they were strongly socially male . Examples include Bandido (“bandit.MASC ”; ESP 1990) or Conquistador (“conqueror.MASC ”; POR 1989). To capture the language use in ESC performances, feminine French personal reference forms were only counted as female if they were distinctive in the spoken language. For example, even though the famous song title Merci Chérie (AUT 1966) is orthographically represented in the feminine form, the spoken (and sung) form is gender ambiguous .

  3. 3.

    In cases where two entries introduced a concept in the same year, both instances were counted.

  4. 4.

    Countries that have participated only once (AUS , MOR ) are excluded. Regions are categorised in the same way as in Sect. 6.4.

  5. 5.

    The data discussed in this chapter is taken from the following previously published study: Motschenbacher, Heiko (2016): “A corpus linguistic study of the situatedness of English pop song lyrics.” Corpora 11(2): 1–28.

  6. 6.

    In principle, Wmatrix could also have been used for the keyword analysis. However, as the text corpus has to be incorporated as a single text file in this tool, it does not allow the researcher to see across how many texts a certain form occurs, which is a necessary detail for the uncovering of key keywords (i.e. those that do not just occur in one or only few texts). In AntConc, by contrast, one can incorporate corpora consisting of a collection of text files, which allows the researcher to see in how many different texts within the corpus a certain form occurs.

  7. 7.

    Of the 50 forms with the highest keyness values, 23 do not show up in Table 8.6, which documents the most prominent key semantic categories.

  8. 8.

    Most first-person plural pronouns in ESC-ENG are addressee -inclusive .

  9. 9.

    Accuracy rates are 96–97% for CLAWS and 91% for USAS (Rayson 2008: 529).

  10. 10.

    The phrase our love can in principle be used to talk about love relationships between I and you and between I and he/she. However, love scenarios between the first and second person predominate in ESC-ENG .

  11. 11.

    Table 8.9 does not list all lexically gendered forms in the two corpora but only those that are members of the semantic fields “S2.1/2 – People: Female /Male ”. However, other groups of personal nouns that are particularly likely to contain female and male field members, such as kinship terms (e.g. mother, father, brother, sister), occur only infrequently in the lyrics corpora and are unlikely to be used to refer to participants in love scenarios.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt, Germany

    Heiko Motschenbacher

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  1. Heiko Motschenbacher
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Motschenbacher, H. (2016). Prevalent Discourses in ESC Lyrics. In: Language, Normativity and Europeanisation. Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56301-9_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56301-9_8

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-56300-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-56301-9

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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