A Contrastive Analysis Of The Lyrics Of Encouragement Songs And Public Songs

Systemic-functional linguistics is a theory which explains language system by describinglanguage use or function, as a result, it has wide applicability. Many linguists have used systemicfunctional linguistics to analyze many kinds of discourses, such as analysis of teaching discourse,analysis of speech discourse, analysis of novel discourse, analysis of poetry discourse andanalysis of advertisement.Although systemic-functional linguistics has been used in many fields, it is not often used inanalysis of lyrics, especially the lyrics of English songs.This thesis is based on former research experience. It uses the way of combining quantitativemethod and qualitative method to make a contrastive analysis of English encouragement songsand public songs by using relative theories of systemic-functional linguistics. This researchmainly includes three aspects: first, the presentation of ideational function in the lyrics of Englishencouragement songs and public songs; second, the presentation of interpersonal function in thelyrics of English encouragement songs and public songs; third, the presentation of textualfunction in the lyrics of English encouragement songs and public songs.This paper means to find out the similarity and difference between these two kinds of songsto help the audience understand the meaning of songs more exactly and make the creating valueof songs more outstanding, at the same time, it also blazes new trails for the research of otherkinds of songs. To sum up, it means to exploit a new application field for systemic-functionallinguistics.After analysis, this study gets the following research of findings: first, transitivity oflanguage plays quite an important part in analyzing the lyrics of English encouragement songsand public songs; second, modality theory of interpersonal function can help people analyze thelyrics of English encouragement songs and public songs; third, there are more similaritiesbetween English encouragement songs and public songs.