"This book addresses the phenomenon of non-American rock and pop singers emulating an Americanized singing style for performance purposes. By taking a novel approach to this pop cultural trend and drawing attention to the audience, British and American students' perceptions of English rock and pop performances were elicited. Interviews guided by various music clips were conducted and analyzed through a detailed qualitative content analysis. The interviewees' responses provide important insights into social meanings attached to Americanized voices and local British accents in the respective genres and show how British and American attitudes toward these performance accents differ. These perceptions and attitudes are illustrated by developing associative fields which offer a fresh view on the notion of indexicalities. An engaging folk linguistic investigation of a relatable everyday pop culture phenomenon, this book makes complex sociolinguistic phenomena easily approachable and qualitative research accessible. It is suitable for intermediate students onward and inspires further research projects in the field of language performances"--.

• Title
• Copyright
• Table of contents
• List of figures and tables
• Acknowledgments
• chapter 1. Introduction
• chapter 2. Language performances as an object of sociolinguistic investigation
  • 2.1 Pop culture and language performances
  • 2.2 Language performances in the third wave of sociolinguistics
  • 2.3 The sociolinguistic significance of language performances
• chapter 3. Singing as language performance
  • 3.1 The performer: Motivations for singing styles
    • 3.1.1 The American role model: A classic case of referee design
    • 3.1.2 Two trends: Going mainstream and going local
    • 3.1.3 Further reasons for style-shifting in singing
    • 3.1.4 Revisiting theories on language performance in music
  • 3.2 The audience: Change of perspective
    • 3.2.1 Case I: Arctic Monkeys
    • 3.2.2 Case II: Joss Stone
    • 3.2.3 Case III: One Direction
    • 3.2.4 Case IV: Rihanna
    • 3.2.5 First insights into the audience’s perspective
  • 3.3 Making a case for folk-linguistic research into music performances
• chapter 4. Qualitative data and analysis
  • 4.1 Methodology and data collection
    • 4.1.1 Online survey
    • 4.1.2 Auditory stimuli
    • 4.1.3 Participants
    • 4.1.4 The guided interview: Procedure
  • 4.2 Data analysis and processing
  • 4.3 Reviewing indexical fields
• Chapter 5. Results I: Perception of stimuli
  • 5.1 Perception of rock stimuli
    • 5.1.1 The Subways: “Celebrity”
    • 5.1.2 Band of Skulls: “The Devil Takes Care of His Own”
    • 5.1.3 Bush: “The Heart of the Matter”
    • 5.1.4 The Subways: “It’s a Party”
    • 5.1.5 The Black Keys: “Little Black Submarines”
  • 5.2 Perception of pop stimuli
    • 5.2.1 Cheryl: “Girl in the Mirror”
    • 5.2.2 Jessie j: “It’s My Party”
    • 5.2.3 Olly Murs: “Hey You Beautiful”
    • 5.2.4 McFly: “End of the World”
    • 5.2.5 Taylor Swift: “Stay Stay Stay”
  • 5.3 Interim summary: Perception of stimuli
• chapter 6. Results II: The discussion phase
  • 6.1 Attitudes toward singing styles and genres
  • 6.2 Associative fields of singing styles and genres
    • 6.2.1 Associative field: American(ized) singing style and pop music
    • 6.2.2 Associative field: Going local and rock music
• chapter 7. Discussion
  • 7.1 Perception of linguistic and non-linguistic features in the stimuli
  • 7.2 British and American attitudes toward an American(ized) accent and local vernaculars in music
  • 7.3 Reflections on data and method
• Concluding remarks
• References
• Appendix I. Orthographic and phonetic transcriptions of the stimuli
  • Stimulus 1
  • Stimulus 2
  • Stimulus 3
  • Stimulus 4
  • Stimulus 5
  • Stimulus 6
  • Stimulus 7
  • Stimulus 8
  • Stimulus 9
  • Stimulus 10
• Appendix II. Codebook
• Index