A grammatical analysis of American and British pop music

Abstract Previous work has shown that American-influenced singing is common in British pop music (BPM). While the existing largely literature focuses on phonetic analysis, this study investigates grammatical variables. The data are drawn from two 1.5-million-word corpora that contain songs performed by either American or British singers during the years 1953–2009. Four grammatical items that tend to appear more frequently in American English than in British English are extracted ( ain’t , third-person don’t , multiple negation, and the intensifier so ). The frequency of these items is examined, as are genre and diachronic effects, and the patterns in the two corpora are then contrasted. A multivariate analysis through GoldVarb X reveals a high level of similarity in terms of the relative strength of these predictor variables and the quantitative tendency of each factor. The results are interpreted within an audience/reference design framework as evidence of the influence of American music on BPM.