Chapter 5

“Truth is ugly”

In this chapter I analyse the lyrics to “Swansong”, a relatively obscure song by the comedy duo Kit Hesketh-Harvey (1957–2023) and Richard Sissons, known professionally as Kit and the Widow. “Swansong” is a sombre reflection on the impact of humans on the natural world, and ends with a challenge to the reader/listener to consider their own culpability for the environmental damage described in the text. It is, then, a text driven by a clear purpose, albeit one that was produced as entertainment. In this respect, the text does not simply prioritise the poetic function of language (as is often the case in poetry), wherein the focus is on the message for its own sake. “Swansong” also exploits the conative function of language, which is aimed at directing behavior and action (it is aimed both at entertaining the reader/listener and at spurring them into some kind of action). I argue that the text does this by creating tonal discrepancies between the structure and propositional content of the lyrics, and between the propositional content and the music (Part XIII of Camille Saint-Saëns’s orchestral suite Le Carnaval des Animaux). The stylistic analysis that I present aims to describe the means by which this is achieved. Ultimately, I argue that a greater understanding of the means by which the text functions offers insights into the nature of Roman Jakobson’s six functions of language, thereby demonstrating the utility of linguistic stylistics.