Leiden University Student Repository

Rutten, Lucas (2022)

The Frequency and Use of English Words in Korean Pop Songs

Bachelor thesis | Engelse taal en cultuur (BA)

In this thesis, I will research the frequency of English loan words in K-pop songs that were released between 2010 and 2021. With this research I will attempt to answer three questions. Firstly: Has the average amount of English words in K-pop songs increased between 2010-2021? Secondly: How can English loans in Korean be linguistically classified? Thirdly: Why has the use of English words in Korean increased, if it is the case that it did? The found loan words will be distributed into five different categories laid out in Grant (2019) and Kim (2012), based on the identifying linguistic features. Furthermore, I will attempt to provide a sociolinguistic explanation for the reasons for the use of English words in Korean. Both broad societal factors, as well as factors specific to the K-pop industry will be taken into account to arrive at a conclusion.

English

Korean

Kpop

Linguistics

Socio-linguistics

quantitative analysis

Author

Rutten, Lucas

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Linguistics

Supervisors

Lipták, A.K.

ECTS Credits

10

Language

en