REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN’S SELF-IMAGE IN KOREAN POPULAR MUSIC THROUGH DISCOURSE

Danh Tran, Linh Bo

Abstract:

The images and messages expressed in popular music somewhat reflect the beliefs and values of society. In the past Korean popular songs, women were often described as passive, weak, and reliant. However, recently, amidst the rise of the feminist movement, the way
women are portrayed in popular music has undergone changes. We set out to explore the discourse prosodies in the representation of women’s self-image through the lyrics of Korean popular songs, using a specialised corpus consisting of 25,298 words, collected
from 105 songs performed by female solo artists or female groups. These songs are among the top 100 famous songs ranked by the online music streaming platform Melon in each year from 2020 to 2022. With the assistance of AntConc version 4.2.0, we conducted a
corpus-based discourse analysis using quantitative and qualitative methods, investigating frequency lists and concordances. The results show that the representation of women’s selfimage in the lyrics of popular songs is quite common, manifested through the frequent occurrence of self-referring words such as I, nae (내), me, nan (난), my. We further examined concordances of two words I and nan, which are both self-referencing words functioning as subjects. The analysis indicated two main patterns: representing women in
isolation and in romantic relationships. Individually, women are represented with independence, boldness, and sometimes with a certain level of violence. In addition, some negative feelings and personalities are also mentioned, especially when women are shown
as unable to control themselves. In romantic relationships, they are described with a range of emotions, from gentle to intense longing for love, with the desire to get attention from the other side and finally, in overcoming traumas after breaking up.

Keyword: Korea, popular music, women, corpus linguistics, discourse analysis