Journal article
A quantitative characterisation of English in K-Pop through the Korean wave 2000–2020
- Abstract:
- This paper provides an, empirical account of changes in the prevalence of English in K-Pop lyrics from 2000 to 2020. It contrasts with earlier, smaller-scale investigations by leveraging computational techniques and a bespoke corpus of over 2000 songs. We find the prevalence of English, i.e, raw number of English tokens, proportion of English tokens relative to Korean tokens, and proportion of songs including English tokens, has risen over the surveyed period. We also presenttwo case studies. The first suggests this rise is attributable to changes in songwriting practice, rather than artists who use less English being replaced by those who use more. The second finds English translation equivalents do not displace Korean words thematically central to K-Pop. Our results support the hypothesis that the observed increase is motivated, at least partly, by the Korean Wave. Further, we highlight the complementarity of quantitative and qualitative approaches.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 2.4MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1080/13488678.2025.2533537
Authors
+ Academy of Korean Studies
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/00bw4x405
- Grant:
- AKS-2021-OLU-2250004
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis Group
- Journal:
- Asian Englishes More from this journal
- Volume:
- 27
- Issue:
- 3
- Pages:
- 700–715
- Publication date:
- 2025-07-21
- Acceptance date:
- 2025-07-06
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2331-2548
- ISSN:
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1348-8678
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
2249001
- Local pid:
-
pubs:2249001
- Deposit date:
-
2025-07-24
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Barnes-Sadler et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2025
- Rights statement:
- © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
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