Lyrics and language awareness

Abstract

Commercially successful pop lyrics are an important part of students’ lives, represent authentic language material, are easily accessible, and may thus constitute a helpful starting point for various aspects of foreign language education. Despite this, they seem to be underexploited,especially when topics such as grammar instruction are tackled. This may be due to their (traditionally ascribed) “low culture” status and the undesired presence of allegedly ungrammatical content, notably in terms of non-standard features. Based on a corpus of c. 550,000 words, this paper will present an analysis of the salience of such features in Englishpop lyrics. The results suggest that the material studied actually features a rich array of nonstandard grammatical phenomena, such as multiple negation, ain’t as auxiliary, me instead of I, copula deletion, etc. (as commonly proscribed in English language education). From a pedagogical perspective, it is therefore argued that using lyrics in the classroom may offer students a welcome opportunity to engage with various types of grammaticality, introducing them to authentic language in a naturalistic way. More specific issues to be addressed with the eventual aim of raising students’ language awareness through working with pop lyrics are that assessments of grammaticality are (i) very much context-dependent, for instance in terms of acceptability of certain structures and variants in different registers (e.g. lyrics vs. conversation vs. formal writing) and (ii) may also differ across varieties of English represented in the lyrics (e.g. various British dialects and sociolects, African American English as represented in rap, Jamaican Creoleas represented in reggae, etc.).

Supporting EFL Listening Ability and Vocabulary Acquisition with Lyrics Training App

“…Authentic materials can make learning more engaging and relevant. The importance of authentic lyrics is further substantiated by Werner (2019), who emphasized that they enhance students' language awareness by naturally introducing the language in engaging grammatical contexts, underscoring their significance.…”

When “grass was greener”*: Longplay Album Covers and Learning English. A Retrospection

“…Since pop music and song lyrics play such an important role in young people's lives, they can be used to as a springboard for variuos language learning activities (Werner, 2019). Song lyrics include authentic language put in a specific text genre that can enhance learning motivation and reduce language anxiety.…”

“Song-advantage” or “Cost of Singing”? : A Research Synthesis of Classroom-based Intervention Studies Applying Lyrics-based Language Teaching (1972–2019)

“…Finally, from an applied linguistic perspective, an important issue is that using lyrics in the classroom may offer students the opportunity to engage with both standard (as commonly represented in textbooks and teaching material) and non-standard language (Werner, 2012). This opens opportunities for introducing them to actual language use in a naturalistic way and simultaneously raising their critical awareness for varieties and registers (Duff & Zappa-Hollman, 2013;Werner, 2019Werner, , 2021. In addition, it has been recognized that lyrics-based teaching may develop multiple skills/competencies, including listening comprehension, vocabulary, literacy as well as cultural understanding at the same time (Ludke, 2020).…”