Invectives as a linguistic manipulation in the song discourse (on the example of compositions from “Eurovision” song contest)

Abstract

The subject of this research is the abusive language (invectives) prohibited by the rules of the International Song Contest “Eurovision”. The goal consists in substantiating the role of obscene language as a linguistic manipulation in song discourse of “Eurovision” contest. The tabooed words and expressions represent a wide array of lexical units for research by modern linguistic science based on the materials of various voice compositions. Using the lyrics of songs that participated in “Eurovision” and made top 10 chart, the author determined those that contain invectives. The scientific novelty consists in the first ever analysis of song lyrics that contained the lexical units of abusive language prohibited by the rules of “Eurovision”. It was determined that the compositions of multimodal discourse contain various invectives in verbal component. The authors of songs for “Eurovision” apply different linguistic manipulations to influence the live voting and ensure a spot in the finals for their composition. This is directly related to increase in the number of participating countries; therefore, the structure and content of verbal component of a musical-poetic composition of Eurovision plays an important role. Despite the prohibition by rules of the context to use tabooed lexicon in song lyrics, the author was able to identify certain violations in the English-language and Italian-language compositions. The conclusion is made that invectives in the song discourse are effective linguistic manipulations that enhance suggestive semantics of speech act, since all compositions made it to the top 10.