Male Blues Lyrics 1920-1965: A Corpus Assisted Analysis

This study is a corpus assisted investigation into blues lyrics. Using Wmatrix, an online statistical analysis tool, 795 different blues songs from 35 different male blues artists have been analysed quantitatively for information pertaining to key domains, words and parts of speech. This data has provided the basis for further, qualitative analysis of lyrics with reference being made to ideas already established in other studies of the blues and to linguistic theories about narrative, discourse and metaphor. The thesis seeks to define the linguistic features of blues lyrics at different historical points and attempts to interpret them in the light of the social and political conditions of their times. In doing so, it examines the role of blues lyrics within the African-American community as a whole and investigates the extent to which they established a sense of black identity and were part of a linguistic sub-culture. Further to the exploration of the genre as a whole, the dissertation includes a study into the work of an individual artist, Robert Johnson, with the aim of testing the extent to which he is representative of the blues form in general.