Blow my whistle & eat my poison - A pedagogical study of ideologies and language in music lyrics

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate how students perceive English authentic material, ideologically and linguistically, outside of school and whether it is possible to find clear connections to what is or is not taught as part of the English subject in school. This study is based on investigating how pupils perceive music lyrics, as a vast majority of them listen to music on an everyday basis. Three lyrics were chosen as material for a qualitative interview with four pupils. The semi-structured interview was inspired by the methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The results of the interview are compared with the values in the curriculum for the Swedish compulsory school (Lgr11) and the syllabus for the English language. The results show that students have a superficial knowledge of what it means to know a word and that their interpretation of the meaning follows the same pattern when it comes to underlying ideologies. As a superficial knowledge of vocabulary and values may affect pupils negatively, I believe language education should aim to unravel actual and possible meanings of a text. With this study I propose using a ‘tool’ called CDA, when working with authentic material in order to enhance pupils’ understanding of the English language.