ABSTRACT
Song lyrics have not yet received the rightful attention from linguistic studies, despite the increasing interest from a variety of areas, including musicology and sociology. This chapter addresses song lyrics from two specific perspectives—namely, (i) corpus linguistics and (ii) the development of activities for teaching and learning English. Seven dimensions of linguistic variation found in a corpus of over 6,000 lyrics in English are interpreted according to Biber’s (1988) approach for Multi-Dimensional Analysis of English. It is also argued that that pop song lyrics express a number of key communicative functions present in other registers. This insight is exploited for the design of activities demonstrating both how language and popular culture meet as well as their application to teaching and learning English as a Foreign Language. In addition, two content activities designed for pre-service English teachers’ classes are provided.
