Watanabe, Ayano (2022) Americanization in British popular music 1953-2009: A sociolinguistic approach. PhD thesis, University of Sheffield.
Abstract
There has long been linguistic and sociological interest in Americanization in British
popular music. Previous studies (e.g., Trudgill 1983; Cooper and Cooper 1993) have
attempted to investigate how Americanization is manifested in singing as well as
possible motivations to adopt American styles. However, their focus is heavily skewed
towards perceptually salient phonological variables. Thus, in this thesis, I seek to
examine Americanization through examining less perceptually salient variables, i.e.,
grammatical variables. For analysis, I first established an analytical model for the textual measurement of
“Americanness.” Following exemplar theory, grammatical forms that are more frequent
in American English speech than in British English speech were used as evidence of
“Americanness.” Through keyword analysis, spoken variables including ain’t, multiple
negation, third person don’t, and the intensifier so were chosen as research objects.
The frequency of the grammatical variables in British popular music was then calculated
in the variable framework. The main material was drawn from a 1,400,000 word-corpus
which was specifically made for this project. The effects of musical genres, the period of
the appearance on music charts (1953-2009), and the singer’s and the songwriter’s
home region were also examined. The patterns were then contrasted with predictions
of five possible referees, i.e., American popular music, popularity of American acts,
speech of American consumers, the size of the American music market, and singability
of linguistic (grammatical) items. This thesis demonstrates that, in a similar fashion to phonological and non-linguistic
variation, referees of grammatical variation are most likely American popular music and
popularity of American acts as well as singability of linguistic items. However, I also
found that the same variation is affected by the home region of British singers and
songwriters. This means that American styles co-exist with British styles in British
popular music.
Metadata
Supervisors: | Montgomery, Chris |
---|---|
Keywords: | British popular music, Americanization, ain't, third person don't, multiple negation, intensifiers |
Awarding institution: | University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > School of English (Sheffield) |
Identification Number/EthosID: | uk.bl.ethos.890329 |
Depositing User: | Ms Ayano Watanabe |
Date Deposited: | 23 Aug 2023 08:34 |
Last Modified: | 01 Oct 2023 09:53 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:etheses.whiterose.ac.uk:33290 |
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