Meaning and Affect in Popular Music

Abstract

Meaning and Affect in Popular Music looks at how popular music conveys meanings, including emotional meanings. The chapter argues that this occurs through semiotic processes, informed by Kristeva. This gives popular music continuity with the semiotic domain in which bodily-based and affective meanings emerge for human infants. The chapter engages with debates about how far popular music’s meanings are social and cultural, arguing that these meanings have both conventional and non-conventional aspects. Joy Division’s ‘Transmission’ and the Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’ are used as examples. The latter also illustrates the importance of re-use, re-contextualisation, and intertextuality in popular music.