In his article on ‘musical stylistics’, Morini demonstrates (with reference to a song by Kate Bush) that lyrical and musical content can work in harmony to produce consonant meanings and stylistic effects. Our article develops Morini’s musical-stylistic approach by employing cognitive theories to track how music and lyrics can work together in a different way. ‘Hey Ya!’ by OutKast (2003) employs a knowing dissonance between the song’s lyrical content and its rhythm and key, the reconciliation of which leads to a drastic and surprising re-reading of the song’s meaning, often documented in online articles and listener discussions. Combining a cognitive poetic approach with theories of ‘habituation’ and ‘fluency’ in music psychology, our analysis centres around the shifting position of the song’s lyrics within the Figure and Ground of the composition, in order to account for listener (in)attentiveness. This leads to a consideration of the attentiveness of readers to lyrical content in music more generally, and its implications for stylistic analysis of the genre.
Drone warfare disrupts the generally understood experience of war, and drone operators’ distance from the battlefield has called into question the authenticity of their experiences as participants in conflict. This article examines the autobiographies of three US military drone operators, analysing how the narration is discursively oriented to particular spatial and ideological perspectives. It argues that the linguistic construction of point of view in each text reflects a dynamic and sometimes paradoxical relationship between drone operators and their distance from the battlefield. Observing the position and shifting of deictic centres, the analysis draws parallels between spatial perspective, ideology, and the social identities of drone operators and victims of drone strikes. It concludes by reflecting on the variety of discursive strategies employed across these texts, and considers this variation itself to be an emerging trend in the discourse of drone warfare.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.