Introduction
Language and pop culture
Setting the agenda
Article outline
- 1.The pop culture paradox
- 2.Defining pop culture
- 3.Defining pop cultural linguistics
- 4.Why a journal for the linguistic study of pop culture?
- 5.A look into the future
- Notes
-
References
This article is available free of charge.
References (109)
References
Adorno, T. W. (1941). On popular
music. Zeitschrift für
Sozialforschung,
9
(1), 7–48. 

Androutsopoulos, J., & Scholz, A. (2002). On
the recontextualization of hip-hop in European speech communities: A contrastive analysis of rap
lyrics. Philologie im
Netz,
19
1, 1–42. [URL]
Barnes, L., & van Heerden, C. (2006). Virtual
languages in science fiction and fantasy literature. Language
Matters,
37
(1), 1102–1117. 

Bates, S., & Ferri, A. J. (2010). What’s entertainment?
Notes toward a definition. Studies in Popular
Culture,
33
(1), 1–20. [URL]
Bauman, R. (2011). Foundations
in performance. Journal of
Sociolinguistics,
15
(5), 707–720. 

Bednarek, M. (2018a). Language
and television series: A linguistic approach to TV dialogue. Cambridge University Press. 

Bednarek, M. (2018b). Analyzing
popular culture. In V. Werner (Ed.), The
language of pop
culture (pp. 255–263). Routledge. 

Bednarek, M. (2020). The
Sydney Corpus of Television Dialogue: Designing and building a corpus of dialogue from US TV
series. Corpora,
15
(1), 107–119. 

Bell, A., & Gibson, A. (2011). Staging
language: An introduction to the sociolinguistics of performance. Journal of
Sociolinguistics,
15
(5), 555–572. 

Beers Fägersten, K. (Ed.). (2016). Watching
TV with a linguist. Syracuse University Press.
Bednarek, M., & Zago, R. (2024). Bibliography
of linguistic research on fictional (narrative, scripted) television series and
films/movies. Academia. [URL]
Bramlett, F. (Ed.). (2012). Linguistics
and the study of comics. Palgrave Macmillan. 

Browne, R. B. (1994). Popular culture: Medicine for
illiteracy and associated educational ills. In R. J. Ambrosetti, M. T. Marsden, M. F. Motz, & J. G. Nachbar (Eds.), Eye
on the future: Popular culture scholarship in the twenty-first
century (pp. 259–273). Bowling Green State University Popular Press.
Bubel, C. (2006).
The
linguistic construction of character relations in TV drama: Doing friendship in Sex and the
City (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Saarland University. [URL]
Callies, M., & Levin, M. (Eds.). (2019). Corpus
approaches to the language of sports: Texts, media,
modalities. Bloomsbury. 

Centonze, L., & Taronna, A. (2022). A
multimodal analysis of gender representations in British and Italian TV
advertisements. mediAzioni,
34
1, A116–A141. 

Chen, L.-C. (2023). Humour
and teasing in gay Taiwanese men’s mediatised interaction on an LGBTQ-oriented YouTube entertainment variety
show. Gender and
Language,
16
(4), 408–434. 

Coupland, N. (2016). Five
Ms for sociolinguistic change. In N. Coupland (Ed.), Sociolinguistics:
Theoretical
debates (pp. 433–454). Cambridge University Press. 

Cutler, C. A. (2018). “Pink Chess Gring Gous”:
Discursive and orthographic resistance among Mexican-American rap fans on
YouTube. In C. A. Cutler & U. Røyneland (Eds.), Multilingual
youth practices in computer mediated
communication (pp. 127–144). Cambridge University Press. 

Cutler, C. A. (2023). New York City dialect, speech
acts, and anti-blackness in Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in
Slumberland
. In C. Schubert & V. Werner (Eds.), Stylistic
approaches to pop
culture (pp. 205–226). Routledge. 

Dixon, D. H. (2024b). Introducing the Single Player
Offline Game Corpus (SPOC): A corpus of seven registers from digital role-playing
games. Corpora,
19
(1), 107–122. 

Ensslin, A., & Balteiro, I. (Eds.). (2019). Approaches
to videogame discourse: Lexis, interaction,
textuality. Bloomsbury. 

Fisher, M. L., & Salmon, C. (2012). Human
nature and pop culture. Review of General
Psychology,
16
(2), 104–108. 

Fiske, J. (2011). Understanding
popular culture. Routledge. 

Flanagan, P. J. (2019). “A Certain Romance”: Style
shifting in the language of Alex Turner in Arctic Monkeys songs 2006–2018. Language and
Literature,
28
(1), 82–98. 

Forchini, P. (2012). Movie
language revisited: Evidence from multi-dimensional analysis and
corpora. Lang. 

Forchini, P. (2021). The
American Movie Corpus: A tool for the development of spoken lexico-grammatical
competence. EDUCatt.
Franzon, J., Klungervik Greenall, A., Kvam, S., & Parianou, A. (Eds.). (2021). Song
translation: Lyrics in context. Frank & Timme.
Gagné, I. (2008). Urban
princesses: Performance and “women’s language” in Japan’s Gothic/Lolita subculture. Journal of
Linguistic
Anthropology,
18
(1), 130–150. 

Gerfer, A. (2025). Jamaican
Creole in global reggae and dancehall performances: Language use, perceptions,
attitudes. Edinburgh University Press.
Gibson, A. (2019). Sociophonetics
of popular music: Insights from corpus analysis and speech perception experiments (Unpublished
doctoral dissertation). University of Canterbury. 
Gracyk, T. (2022). Making
meaning in popular song: Philosophical essays. Bloomsbury. 

Gregori-Signes, C., Fuster-Márquez, M., & Maruenda-Bataller, S. (Eds.). (2021). Discourse,
dialogue and characterization in TV series. Comares.
Heritage, F. (2020). Applying
corpus linguistics to videogame data: Exploring the representation of gender in videogames at a lexical
level. Game
Studies,
20
(3). [URL]
Hiramoto, M. (2012). Don’t
think, feel: Mediatization of Chinese masculinities through martial arts films. Language &
Communication,
32
(4), 386–399. 

Knappe, G. (2022). The
magic of telecinematic neo-Old English in university
teaching. In R. Fletcher, T. Porck, & O. M. Traxel (Eds.), Old
English medievalism: Reception and recreation in the 20th and 21st
centuries, 243–264. Boydell & Brewer. 

Kreyer, R. (2016). “Now
niggas talk a lotta bad boy shit”: The register hip-hop from a corpus-linguistic
perspective. In C. Schubert & C. Sanchez-Stockhammer (Eds.), Variational
text linguistics: Revisiting register in
English (pp. 87–110). Mouton de Gruyter. 

Kubrak, T. (2020). Impact
of films: Changes in young people’s attitudes after watching a movie. Behavioral
Sciences,
10
(5), 86. 

Larroque, P. (2023). An
introduction to linguistics through popular music. Palgrave Macmillan. 

Lee, K. K.-H. (2021). Language and character identity: A
study of first-person pronouns in a corpus of science fiction anime dialogue (Unpublished doctoral
dissertation). University of Sydney. [URL]
Levisen, C., & Fernández, S. S. (2021). Words, people and
place: Linguistics meets popular geopolitics. Journal of Postcolonial
Linguistics,
5
1, 1–11. [URL]
Li, X., & Hiramoto, M. (2025). Address
terms in Chinese popular music fandom: Exploring stancetaking in social media
discourses. Discourse, Context &
Media 631, 100837. 

Locher, M. A., & Jucker, A. H. (Eds.). (2017). Pragmatics
of fiction. Mouton de Gruyter. 

Locher, M. A., & Jucker, A. H. (2021). The pragmatics of fiction:
Literature, stage and screen discourse. Edinburgh University Press. 

Maudlin, J. G., & Sandlin, J. A. (2015). Pop culture
pedagogies: Process and praxis. Educational
Studies,
51
(5), 368–384. 

McKee, A. (2022). “Popular
culture” in popular culture: Academic and vernacular usage. Annals of the International
Communication
Association,
46
(1), 19–29. 

Merskin, D. (2008). Popular
culture. In W. Donsbach (Ed.), The
international encyclopedia of communication. Wiley-Blackwell. 

Montoro, R. (2013). Chick
lit: The stylistics of Cappuccino
Fiction. Bloomsbury.
Motschenbacher, H. (2016). Language,
normativity and Europeanisation: Discursive evidence from the Eurovision Song
Contest. Palgrave Macmillan. 

Mukerji, C., & Schudson, M. (1991). Introduction:
Rethinking popular culture. In C. Mukerji & M. Schudson (Eds.), Rethinking
popular culture: Contemporary perspectives in cultural
studies (pp. 1–62). University of California Press.
Nuessel, F. (2009). Pop(ular)
culture and language: A semiotic analysis. In J. Deely & L. G. Sbrocch (Eds.), Specialization,
semiosis,
semiotics (pp. 252–261). Legas.
O’Sullivan, J. (2020). Corpus
linguistics and the analysis of sociolinguistic change: Language variety and ideology in
advertising. Routledge. 

Page, R., Barton, D., Lee, C., Unger, J. W., & Zappavigna, M. (2022). Researching
language and social media. Routledge. 

Peirson-Smith, A., & Hancock, J. H. (2018). Transglobal fashion
narratives. Intellect. 

Pennycook, A. (2010). Nationalism,
identity, and popular culture. In N. H. Hornberger & S. L. McKay (Eds.), Sociolinguistics
and language
education (pp. 62–86). Multilingual Matters. 

Phillipov, M. (2013). In
defense of textual analysis: Resisting methodological hegemony in media and cultural
studies. Critical Studies in Media
Communication,
30
(3), 209–223. 

Pua, P., & Hiramoto, M. (2020). White
hot heroes: Semiotics of race and sexuality in Hollywood ninja films. Language &
Communication,
72
1, 56–67. 

Queen, R. (2018). Working
with performed language: Movies, television, and music. In C. Mallinson, B. Childs, & G. Van Herk (Eds.), Data
collection in sociolinguistics: Methods and
applications (pp. 218–226). Routledge. 

Ranzato, I., & Valleriani, L. (Eds.). (2025). English
classics in audiovisual translation. Routledge. 

Ranzato, I., & Zabalbeascoa, P. (Eds.). (2024). The
Palgrave handbook of multilingualism and language varieties on screen. Palgrave Macmillan. 

Reichelt, S. (2018). The
sociolinguistic construction of character diversity in fictional television series (Unpublished
doctoral dissertation). Cardiff University. [URL]
Rennick, S., & Roberts, S. (2024). The
Video Game Dialogue
Corpus. Corpora,
19
(1), 93–106. 

Saisuwan, P. (2024). Male
product endorsers and the embodiment of modern Thai masculinities in skincare
advertisements. Gender and
Language,
18
(1), 48–72. 

Sanders, N., & Schreyer, C. (2020). The
interdisciplinarity of conlangs: Moving beyond linguistics. In J. Punske, N. Sanders, & A. V. Fountain (Eds.), Language
invention in linguistics
pedagogy (pp. 169–185). Oxford University Press. 

Schneider, R. (2020). A
corpus linguistic perspective on contemporary German pop lyrics with the multi-layer annotated
“Songkorpus”. In N. Calzolari, F. Béchet, P. Blache, K. Choukri, C. Cieri, T. Declerck, S. Goggi, H. Isahara, B. Maegaard, J. Mariani, H. Mazo, A. Moreno, J. Odijk, & S. Piperidis (Eds.), Proceedings
of the 12th Language Resources and Evaluation
Conference (pp. 842–848). ELRA. [URL]
Schubert, C., & Werner, V. (Eds.). (2023). Stylistic
approaches to pop culture. Routledge. 

Seargeant, P., & Tagg, C. (2014). The
language of social media: Identity and community on the Internet. Palgrave Macmillan. 

Sippola, E., Schneider, B., & Levisen, C. (Eds.). (2017). Language
ideologies in music: Emergent socialities in the age of transnationalism. Special issue
of Language & Communication,
52
1. [URL]
Soukop, C., & Foust, C. R. (2024). Popular culture in everyday
life. Routledge. 

Stamou, A. (2018). Sociolinguistics
of fiction. Special issue of Discourse, Context &
Media, 231. [URL]. 
Storey, J. (2003). Inventing
popular culture: From folklore to
globalization. Blackwell.
Storey, J. (2010). Cultural
studies and the study of popular culture. Edinburgh University Press. 

Storey, J. (2021). Cultural
theory and popular culture: An introduction. Routledge. 

Suzuki, S. (2022). Asian
masculinity celebrated and otherised: Representations of Chinese and Korean men in Japanese written
media. Gender and
Language,
16
(2), 173–194. 

Takacs, S. (2015). Interrogating
popular culture: Key questions. Routledge. 

Traxel, O. M. (2019). Middle English in the modern
world. In M. Stenroos, M. Mäkinen, K. Thengs, & O. M. Traxel (Eds.), Current
explorations in Middle
English (pp. 309–332). Lang.
Trotta, J. (2018). Pop
culture and linguistics — is that, like, a thing now? In V. Werner (Ed.), The
language of pop
culture (pp. 27–45). Routledge. 

Trotta, J. (2020). A
corpus-informed study of apocalyptic/dystopian texts. In J. Trotta, Z. Filipovic, & H. Sadri (Eds.), Broken
mirrors: Representations of apocalypses and dystopias in popular
culture (pp. 179–201). Routledge. 

van Venrooj, A., & Schmutz, V. (2018). Categorical
ambiguity in cultural fields: The effects of genre fuzziness in popular
music. Poetics,
66
1, 1–18. 

Walsh, J., Caldwell, D., & Jureidini, J. (2024). Evaluative
language in sports: Crowds, coaches and
commentators. Routledge. 

Watanabe, A. (2022). Americanization
in British popular music 1953–2009: A sociolinguistic approach (Unpublished doctoral
dissertation). University of Sheffield. [URL]
Weinstock, J. A. (2022). Pop culture for
beginners. Broadview Press.
Werner, V. (2018). Linguistics
and pop culture: Setting the scene(s). In V. Werner (Ed.), The
language of pop
culture (pp. 3–26). Routledge. 

Werner, V. (2019). Assessing
hip-hop discourse: Linguistic realness and styling. Text &
Talk,
39
(5), 671–698. 

Werner, V. (2021a). Text-linguistic
analysis of performed language: Revisiting and remodeling Koch &
Oesterreicher. Linguistics,
59
(3), 541–575. 

Werner, V. (2021b). Catchy
and conversational? A register analysis of pop
lyrics. Corpora,
16
(2), 237–270. 

Werner, V. (2022a). Pop
cultural linguistics. In M. Aronoff (Ed.), The
Oxford research encyclopedia of linguistics. Oxford University Press. 

Werner, V. (2023). English
and German pop song lyrics: Towards a contrastive textology. Journal for Language Technology
and Computational
Linguistics,
36
(1), 1–20. 

Werner, V. (forthcoming). Performed
language. In V. Werner, A. Moody, & C. A. Cutler (Eds.), Handbook
of language and pop culture. Mouton de Gruyter.
Werner, V., Cutler, C. A., & Moody, A. (Eds.). (2024). Indexicality
and enregisterment in pop culture. Special issue of English Language and
Linguistics,
29
(4).
Werner, V., Moody, A., & Cutler, C. A. (Eds.). (Forthcoming). The
handbook of language and pop culture. Mouton de Gruyter.
Werner, V., & Schubert, C. (2023). Zooming
in: Stylistic approaches to pop culture. In C. Schubert & V. Werner (Eds.), Stylistic
approaches to pop
culture (pp. 1–19). Routledge. 

Werner, V., & Tegge, F. (Eds.). (2021). Pop
culture in language education: Theory, research,
practice. Routledge. 

West, D. (Ed.). (2019). The
challenges of the song lyric. Special issue of Language and
Literature,
28
(1). [URL]
Williams, R. (1985). Keywords:
A vocabulary of culture and society. Oxford University Press.
Willis, C. (2023). Sôshokukei
kara asuparabêkon made (‘From herbivores to bacon-wrapped asparagus’): Binary gender taxonomies and neoliberal self-making in
modern Japan. Gender and
Language,
17
(3), 223–249. 

Wong, A. D. (2023). “Gangpu is too funny!” The
mediatization of Hong Kong Mandarin as a jocular register. Language in
Society,
53
(4), 707–730. 

Yu, Y., & Nartey, M. (2021). Constructing
the myth of protest masculinity in Chinese English language news media: A critical discourse analysis of the representation of
“leftover men”. Gender and
Language,
15
(2), 184–206. 

Zago, R. (2021). Film
discourse. In E. Friginal & J. A. Hardy (Eds.), The
Routledge handbook of corpus approaches to discourse
analysis (pp. 168–182). Routledge. 
