Song lyrics are potentially the one type of discourse that exceeds all others in reaching the most people globally. In 2017 each American spent on average over 32 hours a week listening to music and there was a 59% increase in on demand audio streams of music. The most streamed songs on Spotify had over one billion streams each. It is of importance, therefore, that popular music song lyrics are investigated to see what messages they are giving to the listener. This thesis set out to achieve three aims. The first was to develop a methodology for creating balanced and representative corpora of contemporary popular song lyrics. The second aim was to investigate the lexicogrammatical differences of the popular song lyrics sung by men and those sung by women. Finally, it was determined whether popular song lyrics could be said to construct social identities, social relationships and ultimately reality in different ways depending if they are sung by men or by women. Two corpora of song lyrics were built containing the lyrics of popular music songs taken from the Spotify Global Chart. One corpus contained songs sung by men, the other songs sung by women. The two linguistic approaches of critical discourse analysis and systemic functional linguistics were used to analyse and compare the two corpora. It was found that the male voice dominates the Spotify Global Chart. Furthermore, songs sung by men are more complex and have a greater lexical variety than those sung by women, which were found to be simpler and contain more repetition than those by male artists. Song lyrics sung by men are also significantly more likely to contain profanity and have higher frequencies of authoritative commands and threatening language than those sung by women. In contrast, songs sung by women contain more inclusive pronouns, are more positive and are more likely to refer to building relationships than those sung by male artists. The research showed that there is a difference between popular song lyrics sung by men and those sung by women. The two groups of artists do construct social identities, relationships and reality in different ways. The male voice in popular music is loud, dominant and supports and performs ideas of masculinity. In contrast, the female voice is less accessible and quieter, it is however, positive, has a strong stance and actively works at building relationships with the reader or listener. As a register of language, popular music seems to build upon gender inequalities that are prevalent within the entertainment industry and, indeed, society as a whole. Popular music is dominated by male artists who use a linguistic repertoire that is overwhelmingly aimed at acting out social performances with the aim of expressing and supporting ideas of masculinity.

With much contemporary discussion on social media and the ethics and transparency of the way they operate, this article examines the discursive processes of user engagement as Baudrillardian solicitation. The concept of solicitation allows us to conceptualize social media use as a transactional process whereby the user is enticed by a promise of a 'Gift' and thus lured into using a service or a product. Simultaneously, the very act of participation implicates the user, albeit unwittingly, in the sanctioning and legitimizing of the operational logic behind social media. Adopting a CDS perspective, we explore the ways in which Facebook entices users through discursive processes of solicitation. We analyse, making use of corpus linguistic tools, both Facebook corporate communication and user reactions. Our findings show that the user is enticed by foregrounding the value of participation for the user and promising four types of Gift: protection, freedom of expression, personal connection, and a general altruism on the part of the corporation. Thus, this study sheds light on how users are enticed discursively by the social media company and the ways in which they either accept the discourse or resist it.