A Lexico-Semantic Analysis of Philippine Indie Song Lyrics Written in English

The power of music to entertain and to affect people psychologically makes it a significant part of human society and a ripe field for empirical investigations. Researches about music's psychological and physiological effects on people as well as music's pedagogical value in language teaching and learning have shown interesting results. However, there still remains a dearth of empirical studies that look into the purported meanings of songs unearthed through linguistic lenses. This study, therefore, examines the intersection of music and linguistics by conducting a lexico-semantic analysis of 30 indie songs written in English by three Filipino indie musicians. One key finding is that indie songs are not usually unclear contrary to the popular belief that they generally tend to be nebulous and require deliberate disambiguation.