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The stylistics of popular song lyrics Rebecca Wilson (3904525) PUREID: 688347767 stylistics linguistics corpus linguistics corpus stylistics popular song lyrics popular music Antconc Wmatrix keywords semantic domains themes metaphors figurative language repetition repetitive discourse structure discourse situation UK number ones official chart company part of speech musical stylistics Based on a specifically designed 1291-song corpus of every English-language UK number one single between January 1960 and December 2019, this thesis explores the linguistic style of popular song lyrics (PSL) by reference to previous research and cultural intuitions about the register. Using Antconc and Wmatrix corpus tools, it aims to provide a deeper understanding of the style of PSL, looking at repetition (Chapter 4), discourse structure (Chapter 5) and themes and figurative language (Chapter 6) which recur across the corpus. As well as identifying consistent patterns across the corpus which appear to typify PSL generally, this thesis highlights the features which vary across PSL, typifying individual genres and decades via two sets of six sub-corpora based on the six decades and six most common genres in the corpus.<br><br>The findings include proposed categories and terminology of repetition, intended to provide a more nuanced perspective on repetition in PSL for future analysts to build on. In Chapter 5 I propose a typology of discourse structures which the songs in the corpus adhere to, based on Leech and Short’s (2013) discourse situations and a three-part quantitative-qualitative-quantitative analysis through which I have identified linguistic indicators of each song-type. The findings of Chapter 6 demonstrate that the themes explored in PSL are often dependent on genre, time-period and even the society they are released in and gender of their performer. This chapter also presents trends in the use of semantically empty vocal fillers and bad language in the corpus results. The thesis’s findings are relevant not only to academia – particularly music studies, musical stylistics and popular culture stylistics – but are also relevant to creative practice and music industry professionals, such as songwriters, producers, artists, artist development, record labels and music marketing. 2026-10-01T16:13:09Z Text Thesis 10.17034/32805776.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/The_stylistics_of_popular_song_lyrics/32805776 All Rights Reserved