Texts of Popular Songs in the Construction of National Memory

Abstract

This work is based on the discourse and conceptual analysis of popular songs broadcasted on the radio from the perspective of culture of memory. The basic assumption of the study is that the conceptual structure of the lyrics reflects the identity of the Croatian society. The corpus of songs broadcasted on Statehood Day has been created over 5 consecutive years, yielding a list consisting of the most frequent 19 out of 31,372 songs contained in 50 music play lists. Multidimensional social and discourse aspects were analysed in terms of their role in the formation of cultural knowledge about the national identity. The corpus based conceptual analysis identified the key concepts from the perspective of embodied constructions of the meaning that highlight the continuity of the nation’s existence and refer to the Homeland War as a badge of identity of the Croatian society. The paper provides the perspectives and methodologies for further research of the role of popular songs in the process of Croatian cultural memory.