K-pop 노랫말 코드전환의 기저언어 설정

Abstract

In recent years K-pop has obtained distinctive character by its active linguistic hybridization in the lyrics. This paper addresses the issue of matrix language assignment in the Korean/English bilingual code-switches in K-pop lyrics. A total of 242 lyrics were selected from the 14 K-pop groups that have gained popularity among the Korean youths. Analysis of the K-pop lyrics corpus reveals that the overall discourse is determined by the Korean language. Of the total 10,257 song lines selected for the analysis, Korean lines accounted for 58.5% (6,001), followed by English lines (25.3%: 2,597) and Korean/English code-switched ones (16.2%: 1,659). The Korean-dominated linguistic context in K-pop lyrics is claimed to have a strong bearing on the matrix language assignment of the code-switches in the lyrics. In most code-switching cases in the K-pop lyrics, matrix language was rather easily determined due to the structural disparity between Korean and English.