The University of the West Indies, Mona

This course will examine how the Creole and standard languages spoken in Caribbean, as well as the language varieties intermediate between them, are used in commercially produced popular music lyrics across the decades from the 1950s into the 21st century. It will focus on mapping the patterns of language choice on to a series of other features, i.e. the musical genres, the topics, the guises the performers adopt, and the particular time period.  cover thematic variants of the kernel clause as well as clause/sentence type, among others. It investigates concepts of standardness and correctness, and aims to give students a solid understanding of English sentence structure.