Language variation in entertainment field has been an interesting study of sociolinguistics since this field is exposed by the society. In the era of 1960s, for example, one of the most famous and widespread fields in entertainment industry was
pop music. It was the era when British pop songs started to show prestigious achievement in the international music industry which had been dominated by American pop singers. The easy-listening songs of the British pop singers attracted
the music audience, but what attracted a sociolinguist is something else: their different pronunciations in singing and speaking. Trudgill (1983) interestingly examined the pop-song pronunciation of some famous British pop stars from 1960’s to 1970’s. Trudgill took the lyrics of the songs sung by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones as his data, and from them, he concluded six tendencies of pop song pronunciation that are generally used by the British pop singers when singing. His analysis was grounded on the theory of acts of identity by Le Page. |