the discourse of pop songs

Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)

The Discourse of Pop SongsAuthor(s): Tim MurpheySource: TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Winter, 1992), pp. 770-774Published by: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3586887 .

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The results of Experiment 2 indicate that repetition facilitates comprehension. This adds more evidence to previous studies addressing this question. It is also important to notice that there was no significant differ- ence between the groups hearing the syntactically simplified version and the groups hearing the complex version with repetition. This finding has important implications for teaching methodology and materials design.

Listening texts are often syntactically simplified to aid comprehension. Although this may aid comprehension, this modification may not be neces- sary if other modifications, such as repetition, are employed. This is espe- cially interesting in light of the fact that repetition is not frequently used in texts to facilitate comprehension; in fact, it seems to be intentionally avoided in order to give materials an "authentic" quality. It is still too early to make definitive statements, and further research is needed; however, it is clear that designers of listening materials and instructors of listening comprehension need to reevaluate their assumptions in light of the find- ings of this study and other empirical evidence.

REFERENCES

Cervantes, R. (1983). Say it again Sam: The effect of exact repetition on listening comprehension. Unpublished manuscript. University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu.

Chaudron, C. (1983). Simplification of input: Topic reinstatements and their effects on L2 learners' recognition and recall. TESOL Quarterly, 17(3), 437-458.

Chaudron, C. (1985). Intake: On models and methods for discovering learners' processing of input. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 7, 1-14.

Fujimoto, D., Lubin, J., Sasaki, Y., & Long, M. (1987). The effect of linguistic and conversational adjustments on the comprehensibility of spoken second language discourse. Unpublished manuscript. University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu.

Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. New York: Pergamon Press.

Long, M. H. (1985). A role for instruction in second language acquisition: Task- based language training. In K. Hyltenstam & M. Pienemann (Eds.), Modelling and assessing second language acquisition. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.

Pica, T., Young, R., & Doughty, D. (1987). The impact of interaction on comprehension. TESOL Quarterly, 21(4), 737-758.

Authors' Address: c/o Raoul Cervantes, Department of Educational Psychology, Education Building, University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign 61801

The Discourse of Pop Songs TIM MURPHEY Nanzan University

0 Murphey and Alber (1985) postulated a pop song (PS) register and described it as the "motherese of adolescents" and as "affective foreigner

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talk" because of the simple and affective language. The PS register was further characterized as a "teddy-bear-in-the-ear" to capture its riskless communicative qualities. More detailed analyses of a larger corpus (Mur- phey, 1989, 1990a) have now been done which support the earlier descrip- tion and further show PSs to be repetitive, conversationlike and about half the speed of spoken discourse. This simplicity, their highly affective and dialogic features, and their vague references (ghost discourse), allow listeners to use them in personally associative ways. These discourse features and the song-stuck-in-my-head phenomenon (discussed below) make them potentially rich learning materials in and out of the classroom.

THE STUDY

The Corpus The top 50 spngs in English were taken from the September 12, 1987

edition of Music & Media's Hot 100 Chart. This date had been designated 4 months in advance in order to be nonbiased in the selection, following Gerbner's (1985) model of message systems analysis and Brooks's (1982) plea that we be "tasteless" in our research.

Word Count A word-frequency count revealed a type-token ratio (TTR) of .09 with

a total of 13,161 words. The average TTR per song is .29, which implies that each word is repeated about three times in an average song of 263 tokens. Actually 25% of the corpus is composed of just 10 different words: 4 pronouns (you, I, me, my), 4 function words (the, to, a, and), the future auxiliary gonna, and the noun/verb love.

Content Analysis: You and Me

In the corpus, 86% of the songs contain unspecified you-referents. Al- though our logic tells us that it is not possible that we are being addressed directly, subconsciously (and perhaps illogically) we may receive the mes- sages as directed toward us. This type of unspecified addressing may be compared to the phenomenon of someone shouting hey you on the street and everybody turning to look, thinking perhaps they are being addressed. Whatever the ways we might choose to use songs, they are never chal- lenged. Advertisers, of course, know this all too well (see Rotzoll, 1985).

As for I, 94% of the songs had unspecified first person referents. Songs apparently say what some listeners want to say anyway, literally putting the words into their mouths as they sing along. The fact that the I in the song has no name makes it easier for the listener to appropriate the words. The word count revealed that the total referents in first person (my, mine, etc.) amounted to 10% of the total words, whereas second person referents contributed 5%. Thus, 15% of the words in these songs referred to me and

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you. Additionally, imperatives and questions totaled 25% of the sentences in the corpus. These features make the discourse highly conversationlike.

Time, Place, and Gender

Ninety-four percent of the songs have no time of enunciation whatso- ever, and 80% have no place mentioned. In no song are precise dates or hours given, and in only one is there a named place. It seems songs happen when and where they are heard. A further indication of the vagueness of PSs is the lack of gender referents in the lyrics. Lyrically, only 4 songs designate both the sex of the enunciator and addressee. No gender reference is given in 62% of the songs and thus could be sung by either sex without changing the words. Only 12% are definitely written to be sung by one sex to another. Of course, the androgynous characteristics of many voices and the "image" of many singers plays upon this ambiguous possi- bility.

Words per Minute The words-per-minute mean speed, 75.49, is about half that of normal

speech. It is not so much that songs are slow, although some are, but rather that they have frequent pauses. The pause structure would seem to invite listeners to respond, if not with their own words, then at least with an echo of what they just heard. The frequent calling to you also encourages audience participation in the enunciation, contexualization, and meaning making of the song. The pauses and a slow rate may allow listeners to search for referents in their own contexts, internally or externally, an activity that deepens appropriation.

Readability and Human Interest

Using Flesch's (1974) readability formula and a similar one by Fry (1977), the PS register finds itself at the level of the simplest graded EFL readers (e.g., those published by Collins, Heinemann, Longman, and Macmillan), having only 300 to 500 words, or at the reading level of a native-speaker child after 5 years of schooling. Using Flesch's human interest formula, PS could be described as highly dramatic and of high human interest.

To summarize: (a) The words of PSs are short, repetitive, and have a low TTR. (b) The sentences are short. (c) Both the sentences and the words contain many personal references. (d) These personal references have practically no precise referents. (e) Gender, time, and place referents are absent or, at most, vague. (f) The rate of speech of PSs is half that of normal speech.

Typifying Pop Song Discourse Further

I applied an interactive typology approach to classifying texts, devel- oped by Bronckart (1985), to the PS corpus. According to their extralin-

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guistic parameters, PSs belong to his narration category, but when the language of the PS corpus was computer analyzed using his 27-item grid, it fell within the situational discourse (SD) category, that is, conversation. Looking more closely at the definition of SD, we find that several psycho- logically salient features of song are revealed which are not superficially accessible. First, SD is "text produced in direct relation with the context ... with a precise moment and place of production, and which is organized by constant reference to this context" (p. 63). As noted, any traces of precise moments and places, and references to them, are remarkably absent from the texts of PSs. It is precisely this lack of referents that allows songs to happen whenever and wherever they are heard. For this listener, the song text, if received as relevant, takes on meaning in and for that context.

The definition of SD also stipulates that there are "identifiable interlocu- tors." As was noted, the identification of participants was not textually traceable in 90% of the songs. However, one of the salient characteristics of the songs is the large number of first and second person pronouns, albeit with no precise referents. Again, to understand this phenomenon I think one needs to look at the listener's world. This hypothesized psycho- logical processing of PS content and other characteristics suggests a certain isomorphism with Vygotsky's (1962) inner speech which may help to ex- plain song's attraction (Murphey 1990a, 1990b).

The Din of Song and the LAD

Research on the din, the involuntary rehearsal of language in one's mind after a period of contact with a foreign language, has shown it to be a phenomenon worthy of consideration, as it may be a manifestation of Chomsky's hypothesized language acquisition device (LAD; see de Guer- rero, 1987; Krashen, 1983; Parr & Krashen, 1986). A very similar phenomenon is what I call the song-stuck-in-my-head phenomenon (SSIMHP); the repeating of a song in one's head, also something commonly experienced, usually occurring when audition is followed by relative quiet, as with the last song you hear before leaving your home or car (Murphey, 1990a, 1990b). The SSIMHP might even be capable of tricking, or activating, the LAD into involuntary rehearsal. Oliver Sachs writes "[concerning] 'tricking' the LAD into operation via music and song . . . one sees again and again how Parkinsonians tho unable to walk, may be able to dance; and though unable to talk, may be able to sing" (personal communication, March 30, 1988). The L2 research question is whether music and song can trick the LAD into a din mode that would process more communicative speech.

CONCLUSION, DISCUSSION, AND IMPLICATIONS For TESOL, PSs offer short, affective, simple, native texts with a lot of

familiar vocabulary recycled, yet vague. They are dialogic and engaging auditorily but, because of our narrative expectations, they are probably

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not very interesting as reading material. Nevertheless, their written forms can be used to reinforce what is heard auditorily and promote a deeper activation of the SSIMHP. Their vague references allow learners to fill them with their own content. They also allow teachers to use them in very different methodologies for very different reasons (Murphey, 1990a).

If involuntary rehearsal is the humming of the efficient LAD, music and song may initially play an associative facilitating role in engaging and stimulating it. Studying the SSIMH phenomenon may allow us to use it more advantageously for things we want to stick in students' minds.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This article reports the results of the first half of my doctoral dissertation (Uni- versite de Neuchaitel, Switzerland; Murphey, 1990a). The second half surveyed the literature to discover the uses that teachers made of music and song in their classes.

REFERENCES

Bronckart, J. P. (1985). La fonction du discours. Paris: Delachaux & Niestl&. Brooks, W. (1982). On being tasteless. Popular Music, 2, 9-18. de Guerrero, M. C. M. (1987). The din phenomenon: Mental rehearsal in the

second language. Foreign Language Annals, 20, 537-548. Flesch, R. (1974). The art of readable writing. New York: Harper & Row. Fry, E. (1977). Fry's readability graph. Journal of Reading, 20, 242-252. Gerbner, G. (1985). Mass media discourse: Message system analysis as a component

of cultural indicators. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse and communication: New approaches to the analyses of mass media discourse and communication (pp. 13-25). Berlin: de Gruyter.

Krashen, S. D. (1983). The din in the head, input, and the language acquisition device. Foreign Language Annals, 16, 41-44.

Murphey, T. (1989). The where, when and who of pop song lyrics: The listener's prerogative. Popular Music, 8, 58-70.

Murphey, T. (1990a). Music and song in language learning: An analysis of pop song lyrics and the use of music and song in teaching English to speakers of other languages. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang Verlag.

Murphey, T. (1990b). The song stuck in my head phenomenon: A melodic din in the LAD? System, 18, 53-64.

Murphey, T., & Alber, J. L. (1985). A pop song register: The motherese of adolescents as affective foreigner talk. TESOL Quarterly, 19(4), 793-795.

Parr, P. C., & Krashen, S. D. (1986). Involuntary rehearsal of second language in beginning and advanced performers. System, 14, 275-278.

Rotzoll, K. B. (1985). Advertisements. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse and communication: New approaches to the analyses of mass media discourse and communication (pp. 94-105). Berlin: de Gruyter.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Original work published 1934)

Author's Address: Nanzan University, Faculty of Foreign Languages, 18 Yamazato-cho, Nagoya 466, Japan

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the discourse of pop songs

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