"We Shall Overcome" A Humanity Song by Roger Waters: Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Language is an essential feature of communication for all poeple. It is utilized through various tools and media, and singing songs is one of the traditional forms of communication. Songs are usually written for particular reasons, messages, and purposes, and sometimes targeted for specific audience or listeners. Song lyrics usually contain various themes such as social and current issues and problems which the songwriter strives to share through expressions of his or her ideology, thoughts and feelings. This paper is aimed to find out the text analysis, social cognition and social context in the humanity song entitled We Shall Overcome through Teun A. van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis model. This model shows that the choice of words or the diction is cohesive and coherent and is able to communicate the general meaning of this humanity song. Furthermore, the social cognition in this humanity song is related with the current social context which involves the recent situation in Palestinine, where there is still in conflict with Israel.

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Àyìnlá Ọmọwúrà‟s IléAyé n Yí lọS’ópin

“…Song is one of the media of expression used to express one"s thoughts or critical analysis about particular subject (Putri and Triyono, 2018). When a songwriter creates a song, he or she tends to have special meanings and thoughts attached to it, which he or she aims to be understood and accepted by the audience and listeners.…”

“…A lot of songwriter use figurative language in their works to five rise to the aesthetic function in the song lyrics. What makes a good songwriter is the one that manages to convey the feelings and invokes the intended emotions of the listeners and audience, while having their songs rich in moral values (Putri and Triyono, 2018).…”

“…There are many types of discourse such as novels, books, articles, speeches, and song lyrics. Song lyric is a part of the discourse (Putri and Triyono, 2018). Based on the amount of the speaker, narrator or writer, the song lyric includes monologue discourse, which is a part of the discourse analysis conveyed by one person.…”

“…Discourse is considered as the strongest purpose that will be reached. Sometimes, the discourse analysis represents the social problems and current issues (Putri and Triyono, 2018). From these phenomena, it can be concluded that critical discourse analysis is a discourse which analyses the use of language in discourse and the environment of language such as the social cognition and social context.…”

Satanism as Reflected in Alan Walker’s Selected Song Lyrics

“…The second is social cognition, which is focused on how the text is produced. This dimension is Van Dijk's model's point because it shows the text's hidden meaning so that the purpose of creating it is known [18]. The last is the social context, which analyses how the discourse could be accepted by social life [5] [19].…”