View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE • Research in Language, 2013, vol. 11:4 • DOI: 10.2478/rela-2013-0007 KEY COMPONENTS OF MUSICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS EVGENIYA ALESHINSKAYA Lobachevsky State University, Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia
[email protected] Abstract Musical discourse analysis is an interdisciplinary study which is incomplete without consideration of relevant social, linguistic, psychological, visual, gestural, ritual, technical, historical and musicological aspects. In the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, musical discourse can be interpreted as social practice: it refers to specific means of representing specific aspects of the social (musical) sphere. The article introduces a general view of contemporary musical discourse, and analyses genres from the point of ‘semiosis’, ‘social agents’, ‘social relations’, ‘social context’, and ‘text’. These components of musical discourse analysis, in their various aspects and combinations, should help thoroughly examine the context of contemporary musical art, and determine linguistic features specific to different genres of musical discourse. 1. Introduction Contemporary musical discourse is of utmost research interest due to the global status of the English language, which has been adopted as a new ‘lingua franca’ in the sphere of contemporary musical art, operating across national borders and becoming increasingly multicultural and multinational. Musical discourse in all its diversity opens up infinite possibilities for multidimensional