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English Rock and Pop Performances
A sociolinguistic investigation of British and American language perceptions and attitudes
This book addresses the phenomenon of non-American rock and pop singers emulating an Americanized singing style for performance purposes. By taking a novel approach to this pop cultural trend and drawing attention to the audience, British and American students’ perceptions of English rock and pop performances were elicited. Interviews guided by various music clips were conducted and analyzed through a detailed qualitative content analysis. The interviewees' responses provide important insights into social meanings attached to Americanized voices and local British accents in the respective genres and show how British and American attitudes toward these performance accents differ. These perceptions and attitudes are illustrated by developing associative fields which offer a fresh view on the notion of indexicalities.
An engaging folk linguistic investigation of a relatable everyday pop culture phenomenon, this book makes complex sociolinguistic phenomena easily approachable and qualitative research accessible. It is suitable for intermediate students onward and inspires further research projects in the field of language performances.
An engaging folk linguistic investigation of a relatable everyday pop culture phenomenon, this book makes complex sociolinguistic phenomena easily approachable and qualitative research accessible. It is suitable for intermediate students onward and inspires further research projects in the field of language performances.
[IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society, 51] 2022. ix, 191 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 16 February 2022
Published online on 16 February 2022
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- List of figures and tables | pp. vii–viii
- Acknowledgments | pp. ix–x
- Introduction | pp. 1–4
- Language performances as an object of sociolinguistic investigation | pp. 5–14
- Singing as language performance | pp. 15–40
- Qualitative data and analysis | pp. 41–68
- Results I: Perception of stimuli | pp. 69–98
- Results II: The discussion phase | pp. 99–116
- Discussion | pp. 117–132
- Concluding remarks | pp. 133–136
- References | pp. 137–146
- Appendix I. Orthographic and phonetic transcriptions of the stimuli | pp. 147–156
- Appendix II. Codebook | pp. 157–188
- Index | p. 191
“I do find there to be enormous value, and, true to the author’s goal, an acknowledged gap greatly filled in here, in measuring the effects of the audience and their comments to these pop/rock stimuli. [...] This is a book that is needed and will almost certainly be referred to frequently in the future of singing performance studies.”
Karen Duchaj, Northeastern Illinois University, on Linguist List 34.366 (30 January 2023)
“The notion of indexical fields applied in the collection-analysis methodology contributes to the understanding of the ideological processes of language and opens up various possibilities for future research; moreover, it invites a discussion of sociolinguistic concepts in a larger context of globalization, localization, and global localization (e.g., Blommaert 2010:23; Robertson, 1995). Moreover, this book's unique research perspective – the audience perspective – provides a nuanced viewpoint to the studies of sociolinguistics, particularly in the context of performance art, where the opinions of the audience (or users) are key to success as the voice of the audience becomes increasingly essential with the growing structure of online media participation. Members of the audience are actively involved in shaping the cultural values of the language. This study highlights the hermeneutic cycle of production and perception, giving the audience the attention it deserves.”
Weiwei Wu, Hangzhou City University, in Journal of Pragmatics 209 (2023).
“Jansen’s terminological breakdown effectively shifts the focus to the long under-researched—and often underrated—role of the audience in the creation and evaluation of stylistic practices. With its thorough literature review, detailed methodology, and interesting interview excerpts, this book would be appealing not only to scholars of the discipline but also to anyone familiar with and curious about the stylistic features of English rock and pop music.”
Jueun Lee, Harvard University, in Language in Society 53 (2024)
Cited by (10)
Cited by ten other publications
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Werner, Valentin, Mie Hiramoto & Paul Flanagan
Przemyslaw, Kanecki
Werner, Valentin & Anna Ledermann
Fernández de Molina Ortés, Elena
Montoro, Rocío & Valentin Werner
2023. Interdisciplinary approaches to the language of pop culture. English Text Construction 16:2 ► pp. 109 ff.
Marko, Karoline, Margit Reitbauer & Georg Pickl
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 march 2026. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.