WA02 – Discourse Analysis: Deconstructing Lyrics (15% Overall Grade)
For your second writing assignment, you will be asked to select a song that is related to themes of sex, romantic relationships or sexuality. You are asked to subject these lyrics to a deconstruction to critically assess the values or beliefs embedded within and discuss how they are relevant to concepts and themes discussed to this point throughout the course.
Specifically, this assignment requires:
A section where you introduce the song you have selected. Here, it would be worthwhile to discuss the artist you have selected, including any relevant biographical information or a contextualization of their mainstream popularity, provide some context surrounding the song you have selected (when it was written, what album it was included on, exactly who composed the lyrics, it’s degree of mainstream success) and discuss any significant influences on the composition of the song you have chosen (was the song composed in response to specific incidents or socio-cultural influences, for example?);
A section where you discuss the purpose of critically assessing the messages embedded in media texts and explain the specific analysis methods you are applying to the lyrics of your chosen song. For this section, you are asked to select and apply a minimum of two media analysis methods (as discussed during our module on media and methods) and elaborate on any explicit or implicit messages that the song contains. Please note that this assignment focuses specifically and solely on lyrical content, and that it is not in keeping with the expectations of this assignment to instead conduct a content analysis on any music videos associated with the song;
A section where you discuss how the song relates to some of the concepts we have considered during our course. You may wish to reflect on the significance of the song from a sociological vantage, comment critically on the influence that this media text might have on audiences, discuss whether the song promotes or challenges dominant social perspectives on sex and sexuality, consider the song’s relation to the concepts of the male gaze and/or heteronormativity, so on and so forth.
This assignment requires a minimum of two resources (including the song you have chosen and any materials you draw from to provide background on the song and/or the artists) and requires that you include the lyrics to the song you have assessed as an appendix following your works cited page. Please also note the importance of abiding by the paper formatting expectations identified in the Written Assignment Requirements.
