АУТОР(И) / AUTHOR(S): Maja M. Žarković Mccray
Е-АДРЕСА / E-MAIL: maja.zarkovicmccray@ff.ues.rs.ba
DOI: 10.46793/LIPAR82.197ZM
САЖЕТАК / ABSTRACT:
Popular music is an integral part of the cultural landscape of the modern world, and its influence on language and communication cannot be overstated. This paper examines the advantages of integrating popular music lyrics into foreign language classrooms, with a particular focus on sentence structures. Using a corpus of 802 songs with more than 200 million views on YouTube, the research aims to explore the accuracy of popular music lyrics with respect to different sentence structures and subject-verb agreement. The initial hypothesis suggested that popular music lyrics would predominantly contain grammatical errors, which our analysis revealed showing that 396 songs were grammatically correct (49.37%), while 406 songs contained errors (50.62%), resulting in a total of 1506 syntactic errors, 794 of them being related to sentence structure errors and 417 to the incorrect subject-verb agreement. The remaining errors (295) were related to double negatives, which we did not analyze in this paper. The most frequent sentence structure errors included the omission of auxiliary verbs (470 instances), auxiliary verbs that were used as main verbs (110), incorrect verb order (76), bare infinitives that were used as auxiliary verbs (77), and incorrect use of objective pronouns (61). The study utilized a combination of manual and descriptive analysis to investigate the potential benefits of incor- porating popular music lyrics into foreign language classrooms. The findings indicate that such integration can help students develop meta-language awareness and expose them to various language registers. Overall, the research demonstrates the pedagogical potential of popular music lyrics as a resource for foreign language instruction, particularly for teaching grammar and syntax. By using popular music lyrics in foreign language classrooms, educators can cre- ate an engaging and diverse learning environment that helps students comprehend and utilize language in various contexts, ultimately leading to more effective language learning outcomes.
КЉУЧНЕ РЕЧИ / KEYWORDS:
popular music lyrics, sentence structures, subject-verb agreement in English, meta- language awareness
ЛИТЕРАТУРА / REFERENCES:
- Alim 2006: S. Alim, Roc the Mic: The Language of Hip-Hop Culture, Amsterdam: Routledge.
- Beers Fägersten 2008: K. Beers Fägersten, A corpus approach to disservice construction of a hip-hop identity, In Ä. Annelie and R. Reppen (eds.), Corpora and Discourse: The Challenges of different settings, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 211–242.
- Cramer and Hallett 2010: J. Cramer and J. Hallett, From Chi-Town to the Dirty-Dirty: Regional Identity Markers in US Hip Hop, In M. Terkourafi (ed.), The Languages of Global Hip Hop, London: Continuum, 256–277.
- Dethier 2003: B. Dethier, From Dylan to Donne: Bridging English and music, Portsmouth: Heinemann.
- Eiter 2017: A. Eiter, ‘Haters gonna Hate’: A Corpus Linguistic Analysis of the Use of Non- Standard English in Pop Songs. Bachelor Thesis, Innsbruck: University of Innsbruck.
- Engh 2013: D. Engh, Effective use of music in language-learning: A needs analysis, Humanising Language Teaching, 15(5). http://old.hltmag.co.uk/oct13/mart03.htm 20.1.2023.
- Esser 2006: J. Esser, Presentation in Language: Rethinking Speech and Writing, Tübingen: Narr.
- Gravenall 1949: B. Gravenall, Music in language-teaching, English Language Teaching. 3(5), 123–127.
- Greenbaum and Quirk 1990: S. Greenbaum and R. Quirk, A Student’s Grammar of the English Language, Longman.
- Hancock 2013: M. Hancock, Singing Grammar: Teaching Grammar Through Songs, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Keskinen 2014: O. Keskinen, Use of music in English classrooms in lower and upper secondary schools and at university of applied sciences: A comparative study on teachers’ perceptions and practices. Graduate thesis, University of Jyväskylä.
- Kreyer and Mukherjee 2007: R. Kreyer and J. Mukherjee, The style of pop song lyrics: a corpus linguistic pilot study, Anglia. 125 (1), 31–58.
- Kreyer 2016: R. Kreyer, ‘Now niggas talk a lotta Bad Boy shit’: The register hip-hop from a corpus-linguistic perspective, In C. Schubert and C. Sanchez Stockhammer (eds.), Variational Text Linguistics: Revisiting Register in English, Berlin: De Gruyter, 87–109.
- Kurata 2011: N. Kurata, Foreign Language Learning and Use. Interaction in Informal Social Networks, London: Continuum International Publishing Group.
- Langland Dunsire 2013: A. S. Langland Dunsire, Action research into the use of popular music: A goldmine worth exploring in the ELT secondary-school classroom?, Nordic Journal of Modern Language Methodology. 2(1). https://journal.uia.no/index. php/NJMLM/article/view/88 20.1.2023.
- Leech 1994: G. Leech, Students’ grammar – teachers’ grammar – learners’ grammar, In M. Bygate, A. Tonkyn and E. Williams (eds.), Grammar and the language teacher, New York: Prentice Hall, 17–30.
- Lems 2005: K. Lems, Music works: Music for adult English language learners, New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 13–21. DOI:10.1002/ace.185
- Lyons 1981: J. Lyons, Language and Linguistics, Cambridge: CUP.
- Martínez-Flor 2007: A. Martínez-Flor, Analysing Request Modification Devices in Films: Implications for Pragmatic Learning in Instructed Foreign Language Contexts, In E. Alcón Soler and M. Pilar Safont Jordà (eds)., Intercultural Language Use and Language Learning, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 245–280.
- Motschenbacher 2016: H. Motschenbacher, A corpus linguistic study of the situatedness of English pop song lyrics, Corpora. 11(1), 1–28. https://doi. org/10.3366/cor.2016.0083
- Murphey 1990a: T. Murphey, Song and Music in Language Learning: An Analysis of Pop Song Lyrics and the Use of Song and Music in Teaching English to Speaker of Other Languages, Bern: Peter Lang.
- Murphey 1990b: T. Murphey, The song stuck in my head phenomenon: A melodic din in the LAD?, System 18 (1), 53–64. DOI:10.1016/0346-251X(90)90028-4
- Murphey 1992: T. Murphey, The Discourse of Pop Songs, TESOL Quarterly 26 (4), 770–774.
- Nielsen 2017: Nielsen. Time with tunes: How technology is driving music consumption. https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2017/time-with-tunes-how- technology-is-driving-music-consumption.htm 10.1.2023.
- Ochs 1979: E. Ochs, Planned and Unplanned Discourse, In T. Givón (ed.), Syntax and Semantics. Vol. 12: Discourse and Syntax, New York: Academic Press, 51–80.
- Omoniyi 2006: T. Omoniyi, Hip-hop through the world Englishes lens: a response to globalization, World Englishes 25 (2), 195–208. DOI:10.1111/j.0083- 2919.2006.00459.x
- Pinker 2014: S. Pinker, The Sense of Style: the Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, New York: Penguin.
- Quirk et al. 1985: R. QUIRK, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, Longman.
- Salcedo 2010: C.S. Salcedo, The Effects of Songs In Foreign Langauge Classroom On Text Recall, Delayed Text Recall and Involuntary Mental Rehearsal, Journal of College Teaching & Learning 7 (6), 19–30. DOI:10.19030/tlc.v7i6.126
- Smith 2003: G.P. Smith, Music and mondegreens: Extracting meaning from noise, ELT Journal. 57(2), 113–121. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/57.2.113
- Stocker 1923: C. Stocker, Teaching French through folk songs, The Modern Language Journal. 7(5), 285–288. https://doi.org/10.2307/313835
- Summer 2011: T. Summer, An evaluation of methodological options for grammar instruction in EFL textbooks: Are methods dead?, Heidelberg: Winter.
- Summer 2018: T. Summer, An analysis of pop songs for teaching English as a foreign language: Bridging the gap between corpus analysis and teaching practice, In V. Werner (ed.), The language of pop culture, New York: Routledge, 187–209. https:// doi.org/10.4324/9781315168210
- Tegge 2018: F. Tegge, Pop songs in the classroom: Time-filler or teaching tool?, ELT Journal. 72(3), 274–284. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccx071
- Trotta 2010: J. Trotta, Whose Rules Rule?: Grammar Controversies, Popular Culture and the Fear from English from Below, Nordic Journal of English Studies 9 (3), 41–65.
- Trotta 2013: J. Trotta, What Meatloaf won’t do for love: A catalog of mystery, imagination and linguistic rebellion in popular music, In G. Bergh, R. Bowen and M. Mobärg (eds.), Language, Football and All that Jazz: A Festschrift for Sölve Ohlander. Göteburg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 543–573.
- Werner 2012: V. Werner, Love is all around: a corpus-based study of pop lyrics, Corpora 2012, 7 (1), 19–50. DOI:10.3366/cor.2012.0016
- Werner 2019: V. Werner, Lyrics and language awareness, Nordic Journal of Modern Language Methodology. 7(1), 4–28.
- Žarković 2017: M.M. Žarković, Is Popular Music Linguistically Correct?, In M. Osmankadić, I. Čirić-Fazlija and N. Kalajdžisalihović (eds.), The First Inernational Conference on English Language, Literature, Teaching and Translation Studies. 1st CELLTTS. Word, Context, Time. Proceedings. (Sarajevo, 18-19 September 2015), Sarajevo: Dobra knjiga, 291–314.
- Žarković Mccray, Kujundžić and Gavrilović 2021: M. Žarković Mccray, M. Kujundžić and Ž. Gavrilović, Deviating From Linguistic Correctness in the Authentic Input Outside the Classroom, European Journal of Literature, Language and Linguistics Studies, Volume 5, Issue 3. DOI: 10.46827/ejlll.v5i3.292