Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• S.A. Soltani
• Z. Karami

Abstract

Sociolinguistics is an interdisciplinary field that can provide a linguistic perspective of society and culture. One of the important domains of popular culture is popular songs which have not been seriously studied so far from a sociolinguistic viewpoint in Iran. The lyrics of these songs are reflections of  the folklore in every society which makes their study worthwhile. Although such songs may have different themes but love has always been one of the key concepts and recurring themes in these songs. This study tries to find out how concept of love has been defined and reflected in the songs in the course of history. And more specifically, it tries to discover the chains of equivalence and the differences that are made along with them in these songs. To meet this end, from the perspective of Ernesto Lacalua and Chantal Mouffe’s post-structural discourse theory, specifically through their two concpets, ie chain of equivalence and chain of difference, it focuses on 16 Iranian love songs which were randomly chosen from among those songs  performed by both male and female singers in between the years 1971 to 1979. The results show that the songs have availed from  “the presence of nature”, “reference to the past”, “immortalization” and “the use of different fields of discursivity”, specially religious and political discourses, as a means of meaning fixation.

Keywords

• sociolinguistics
• discourse analysis
• love
• Popular Songs
• Iran

Main Subjects

• The Social Stratification of Journalistic Material
• Discourse Analysis
• Language and Culture
• Linguistic Anthropology