Song images and linguistic components in Japanese: analysis of the lyrics in AKB48 songs

Abstract

This thesis is about the song image and linguistic components of the popular female Japanese idol group AKB48. As a first step, six typical AKB48 songs that can be classed either as SOFT and HARD images according to the text were chosen. Thereafter a linguistic analysis was carried out using three parameters (1) yakuwarigo i.e. first and second person pronouns as well as sentence final elements as postulated by Kinsui (2003), (2) sentence type such as imperative, request, and confirmation form, and finally (3) the lexicon type such as, wago, kango, gairaigo, onomatopoeia, and English. The results showed a clearly separate use of yakuwarigo and sentence types but not lexicon types in accordance to the song image. SOFT image songs had 1st and 2nd person pronouns as watashi,anata/boku, kimi/-wa, -yo while HARD image songs had yakuwarigo as ore, omae/-ze, nee. SOFT image songs had sentence types of gentle request while HARD image songs had many direct imperatives like ike ‘go!’. Lexicons classification as NJ, SJ, FL was found to be inadequate to relate to the song image. Instead, it was the semantic (meaning) classification that seemed relevant. Thus, HARD songs had vocabularies such as baka ‘fool’, kenka ‘fight’, naguru ‘beat’ while SOFT songs have hatsukoi ‘first love’, hohoemu ‘smile’ omou ‘think of (you)’. In other words, the three linguistic parameters are clearly differentiated in a mutually exclusive way to create a SOFT vs. HARD image of a given song.