A lexico-semantic analysis of Philippine indie song lyrics written in English

Abstract

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A lexico-semantic analysis of Philippine indie song lyrics written in English
Music’s ability to entertain and to affect people psychologically makes it a significant part of human society. Combined with lyrics, music can form songs – a form of media which many are exposed to. Music still serves as a ripe field for study: researches on its psychological and physiological effects on people, as well as the use of songs in teaching language have shown favorable results. However, there remains a lack of research concerning the meanings of songs. This study covered a gap between music and linguistics by conducting a lexico-semantic analysis of 30 indie songs written in English by three Filipino indie musicians. Using the Lexical Semantic Analysis framework by Schneider (2014), the present research examined the themes of these indie songs as well as their meanings. It is hypothesized that indie songs are difficult to understand and open to several interpretations in different contexts, particularly compared to pop songs. Although several cases of lexemes with multiple meanings, figures of speech, as well as idioms that made segments of the songs ambiguous in meaning were found in the corpus, the analysis revealed that indie music remains generally easy to understand and shared most of the same themes with pop songs.
Information about Author(s)*
Author 1
Author (Last name, First name)	Johann Christian V. Rivera
Affiliated institution (University)	University of Santo Tomas
Country	Philippines
Email address	[e-mail]
Department & Rank	Department of English
Corresponding author (Yes/No) Write only one corresponding author.	No
Author 2
Author (Last name, First name)	Bernardo,  Alejandro Sapıtan
Affiliated institution (University)	University of Santo Tomas
Country	Philippines
Email address	[e-mail]
Department & Rank	The Graduate School Faculty of Arts and Letters Department of English
Corresponding author (Yes/No)	Yes
Author 3
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Affiliated institution (University)
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Department & Rank
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Author 4
Author (Last name, First name)
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Keywords

• Original Philippine Music,indie music,lexical semantics,semantic analysis Original Philippine Music

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