Cover not available
Article published In:
Interdisciplinary approaches to the language of pop culture
Edited by Rocío Montoro and Valentin Werner
[English Text Construction 16:2] 2023
► pp. 169–196

Mental health songs

Corpus-based analysis and implications for EFL education

| University of Bamberg
| University of Bamberg
This study explores how mental health is represented and discussed in English-language pop song lyrics. To this end, a specialized corpus of mental health songs, understood as songs that explicitly mention or refer to issues related to mental health and resilience, is analyzed through a combined linguistic/language-educational lens. The aim is to describe these songs linguistically in order to discuss opportunities as well as limitations for the development of mental health literacy in EFL classes. It emerges that relevant lyrics possess the potential to familiarize learners with the relevant discourse of mental health and mental disorders, and several practical language-educational suggestions are offered. On a general note, it is argued that lyrics not only offer starting points for the development of linguistic and literary competencies, but also for a critical examination of a complex, highly relevant, and timely topic.
Keywords: lyrics, media, music, pop culture, Sustainable Development Goals
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Music, song lyrics, and mental health
  • 3.Data and methodology
  • 4.Analysis of mental health songs
    • 4.1Keywords
    • 4.2N-grams
    • 4.3Key semantic domains
    • 4.4Themes
  • 5.Implications for EFL education
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 29 February 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.00059.wer
References (63)
References
Anthony, Laurence. 2022. AntConc (Version 4.0.10). Tokyo: Waseda University. [URL] (27 May 2022).
Appel, Nadav. 2014. “Ga, ga, ooh-la-la”: The childlike use of language in pop-rock music. Popular Music 33(1). 91–108. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Archer, Dawn, Andrew Wilson & Paul Rayson. 2002. Introduction to the USAS category system. [URL] (14 May 2022).
Baker, Felicity & Tony Wigram (eds.). 2005. Songwriting: Methods, techniques and clinical applications for music therapy. London: Kingsley.Google Scholar
Barradas, Gonçalo T. & Laura S. Sakka. 2022. When words matter: A cross-cultural perspective on lyrics and their relationship to musical emotions. Psychology of Music 50(2). 650–669. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Becker, Daniel. 2021. Let’s (not) address the monster: Zum Thema der Depression im Englischunterricht – Eine curriculare Perspektive [On the issue of depression in EFL education – a curricular perspective]. Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 461. 139–157. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas. 1993. Representativeness in corpus design. Literary and Linguistic Computing 8(4). 243–257. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bitmann, Anna & Oriana Uhl. 2022. Surviving in a ‘Mad World’: A music-based tool for monitoring students’ emotional well-being in the ELT classroom. Teacher Development Academic Journal 2(2). 57–74. [URL]
Braselmann, Silke. 2023. “I’m not a racist!” Addressing racism in predominantly white classrooms with cooperatively designed multimodal text ensembles. In Christian Ludwig & Theresa Summer (eds.), 168–180. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cheung, Joyce Oiwun & Dezheng Feng. 2021. Attitudinal meaning and social struggle in heavy metal song lyrics: A corpus-based analysis. Social Semiotics 31(2). 230–247. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Christie, Deborah & Russell Viner. 2005. Adolescent development. British Medical Journal 3301. 301–304. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Council of Europe. 2018. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment – Companion volume with new descriptors. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. [URL] (01 July 2022).
Culpeper, Jonathan. 2009. Keyness: Words, parts-of-speech and semantic categories in the character-talk of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet . International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 14(1). 29–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Denscombe, Martyn. 2021. The good research guide: Research methods for small-scale social research projects. London: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Elicker, Martina. 1997. Semiotics of popular music: The theme of loneliness in mainstream pop and rock songs. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Gee, Kate A., Vanessa Hawes & Nicolas Alexander Cox. 2019. Blue notes: Using songwriting to improve student mental health and wellbeing – A pilot randomised controlled trial. Frontiers in Psychology 101. 423. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gustavson, Daniel E., Peyton L. Coleman, John R. Iversen, Hermine H. Maes, Reyna L. Gordon & Miriam D. Lense. 2021. Mental health and music engagement: Review, framework, and guidelines for future studies. Translational Psychiatry 111. 370. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hallam, Susan & Evangelos Himonides. 2022. The power of music: An exploration of the evidence. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hames, Anette & Ian Inglis. 1999. “And I will lose my mind...”: Images of mental illness in the songs of the Beatles. International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 30(2). 173–188. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hampl, Stefan. 2017. Videoanalysen von Fernsehshows und Musikvideos [Video analysis of TV shows and music videos]. Opladen: Budrich.Google Scholar
Hogan-Gibbons, Claire, Alison E. Short & Sophie Isobel. 2020. Mental health inpatient experiences of song-writing: A qualitative study. Australian Journal of Music Therapy 311. [URL]
Jorm, Anthony F. 2000. Mental health literacy: Public knowledge and beliefs about mental disorders. British Journal of Psychiatry 1777. 396–401. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jorm, Anthony F., Alisa E. Korten, Patricia A. Jacomb, Helen Christensen, Bryan Rodgers & Penelope Pollitt. 1997. Mental health literacy: A survey of the public’s ability to recognize mental disorders and their beliefs about the effectiveness of treatment. The Medical Journal of Australia 166(4). 182–186. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Judaschke, Manuel & Michelle Zirkel. 2022. “This will get better”: Mithilfe des Songs I beg to differ von Billy Talent das Thema mentale Gesundheit in den Fokus rücken [“This will get better“: Using Billy Talent’s song I beg to differ to focus on the topic of mental health]. Englisch 5–10 581. 10–13.Google Scholar
Koester, Almut. 2022. Building small specialized corpora. In Anne O’Keeffe & Michael J. McCarthy (eds.), The Routledge handbook of corpus linguistics, 48–61. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kresovich, Alex, Meredith K. Reffner Collins, Daniel Riffe & Francesca R. Dillman Carpentier. 2021. A content analysis of mental health discourse in popular rap music. JAMA Pediatrics 175(3). 286–292. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kutcher, Stan, Yifeng Wei, Alan McLuckie & Lance Bullock. 2013. Educator mental health literacy: A programme evaluation of the teacher training education on the mental health & high school curriculum guide. Advances in School Mental Health Promotion 6(2). 83–92. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kutcher, Stan, Yifeng Wei & Connie Coniglio. 2016. Mental health literacy: Past, present and future. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 61(3). 154–158. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kwon, Lois, Daniela Medina, Fady Ghattas & Lilia Reyes. 2021. Trends in positive, negative, and neutral themes of popular music from 1998 to 2018: Observational study. JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting 4(2). e26475. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Little Fenimore, Wanda. 2012. Bad girls: From Eve to Britney. In Lawrence C. Rubin (ed.), Mental illness in popular media: Essays on the representation of disorders, 146–164. London: McFarland & Company.Google Scholar
López de Torre Chávez, Silvia. 2021. Incorporating songs in the EFL classroom to discuss mental health: What are the effects on students’ engagement and perceptions when songs are incorporated in first-Baccalaureate EFL speaking lessons addressing emotional competence? Barcelona: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona MA thesis. [URL]
Ludwig, Christian & Theresa Summer (eds.). 2023. Taboos and challenging issues in foreign language education: Critical language pedagogy in theory, research and practice. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lütge, Christiane (ed.). 2015. Global education: Perspectives for English language teaching. Münster: LIT.Google Scholar
MacDonald, Raymond. 2021. The social functions of music: Communication, wellbeing, art, ritual, identity and social networks. In Andrea Creech, Donald A. Hodges & Susan Hallam (eds.), Routledge international handbook of music psychology in education and the community, 5–20. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Madigan, Stephen. 2019. Narrative therapy. Washington: American Psychological Association. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McFerran, Katrina S., Cherry Hense, Asami Koike & Debra Rickwood. 2018. Intentional music use to reduce psychological distress in adolescents accessing primary mental health care. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry 23(4). 567–581. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Merse, Thosten. 2018. Creating queer text ensembles for the EFL literature classroom: Conceptual considerations and practice-oriented perspectives. In Maria Eisenmann & Christian Ludwig (eds.), Queer beats: Gender and literature in the EFL classroom, 307–338. Berlin: Lang.Google Scholar
Miller, Ashley M. 2017. Analyzing songs used for lyrics analysis with mental health consumers using linguistic inquiry and word count (LIWC) software. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky MMus thesis. DOI logo
Motschenbacher, Heiko. 2016. A corpus linguistic study of the situatedness of English pop song lyrics. Corpora 11(1). 1–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Muehsam, John P. 2020. “Some words when spoken can’t be taken back”: Self and mental health in grunge music. Chester, PA: Widener University PhD thesis. [URL]
Packer, Sharon (ed.). 2017. Mental illness in popular culture. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Plikat, Jochen. 2016. Fremdsprachliche Diskursbewusstheit als Zielkonstrukt des Fremdsprachenunterrichts: Eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit der Interkulturellen Kompetenz [Foreign-language discourse awareness as a target construct of foreign language education: A critical engagement with intercultural competence]. Berlin: Lang.Google Scholar
Rayson, Paul. 2008. From key words to key semantic domains. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 13(4). 519–549. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Robert Koch Institut. 2013. Studie zur Gesundheit Erwachsener in Deutschland: Ergebnisse aus der ersten Erhebungswelle [Study on adult health in Germany: Results form the first study circle]. Special issue of Bundesgesundheitsblatt: Gesundheitsforschung – Gesundheits­schutz 56(5–6). 637–642. [URL]
Rubin, Lawrence C. (ed.). 2012. Mental illness in popular media: Essays on the representation of disorders. London: McFarland & Company.Google Scholar
Shayakhmetova, Liliia, Leysan Shayakhmetova, Alsu Ashrapova & Yevgeniya Zhuravleva. 2017. Using songs in developing intercultural competence. Journal of History, Culture and Art Research 6(4). 639–646. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stickley, Theo & Thurstine Basset (eds.). 2007. Teaching mental health. Chichester: Wiley. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Summer, Theresa. 2018. An analysis of pop songs for Teaching English as a Foreign Language: Bridging the gap between corpus analysis and teaching practice. In Valentin Werner (ed.), The language of pop culture, 187–209. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2021. Eco-songs in foreign language education. In Valentin Werner & Friederike Tegge (eds.), 136–150. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Summer, Theresa & Valentin Werner. Forthcoming. Learning to express emotions through songs. In Christian Ludwig, Theresa Summer, Maria Eisenmann, Daniel Becker & Nadine Krüger (eds.), Mental health in English language education. Tübingen: Narr.
Tegge, Friederike. 2017. The lexical coverage of popular songs in English language teaching. System 671. 87–98. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tegge, Friederike & Katharina Parry. 2020. The impact of differences in text segmentation on the automated quantitative evaluation of song-lyrics. PLOS ONE 15(11). e0241979. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Twenge, Jean M., A. Bell Cooper, Thomas E. Joiner, Mary E. Duffy & Sarah G. Binau. 2019. Age, period, and cohort trends in mood disorder indicators and suicide-related outcomes in a nationally representative dataset, 2005–2017. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 128(3). 185–199. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
United Nations. 2015. Sustainable Development Goals: 17 goals to transform our world. [URL] (16 June 2022).
Weist, Mark D., Nancy A. Lever, Catherine P. Bradshaw & Julie Sarno Owens (eds.). 2014. Handbook of school mental health: Research, training, practice, and policy. New York: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Werner, Valentin. 2012. Love is all around: A corpus-based study of pop music lyrics. Corpora 7(1). 19–50. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2020. “Song-advantage” or “cost of singing”? A research synthesis of classroom-based intervention studies applying lyrics-based language teaching (1972–2019). Journal of Second Language Teaching and Research 8(1). 138–170. DOI logo
. 2021a. Catchy and conversational? A register analysis of pop lyrics. Corpora 16(2). 237–270. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2021b. A register approach toward pop lyrics in EFL education. In Elena Seoane & Douglas Biber (eds.), Corpus-based approaches to register variation, 209–234. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2021c. Teaching grammar through pop culture. In Valentin Werner & Friederike Tegge (eds.), 85–104. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Werner, Valentin & Friederike Tegge. 2021a. Learning languages through pop culture/learning about pop culture through language education. In Valentin Werner & Friederike Tegge (eds.), 3–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(eds.). 2021b. Pop culture in language education: Theory, research, practice. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
World Health Organization. 2022. Mental health: Strengthening our response. [URL] (15 June 2022).