A rhetoric of style: Eleanor Rigby and the reordering of popular music

Philip Graham; Briony Luttrell

doi:10.1080/10350330.2018.1434971

Back

A rhetoric of style: Eleanor Rigby and the reordering of popular music

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

A rhetoric of style: Eleanor Rigby and the reordering of popular music

Philip Graham and Briony Luttrell

Social Semiotics, Vol.29(2), pp.222-239

2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2018.1434971

Files and links (2)

pdf

PDF - Author Accepted Version315.32 kBDownload View

Accepted VersionPDF - Author Accepted Version Open Access

url

https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2018.1434971View

Published Version

Abstract

rhetoric

string arranging

popular music

multimodal corpus analysis

Eleanor Rigby

The Beatles

In this paper, we present a synthesis of Kenneth Burke's rhetoric of identification and Jay Lemke's social semiotics to frame Eleanor Rigby by the Beatles as a unique point in the phylogenesis of recorded popular music. We emphasise the social semiotic functioning of string arrangements as styles, with style also being understood in the manner of Burke, and style names and definitions being drawn from a corpus analysis of string arrangements for popular music. We argue that, through a rhetoric of style, Eleanor Rigby made canonical claims against rock's cultural counterpart, classical music. We demonstrate the working of the rhetoric and its political implications in the context of the counter-cultural forces active during the mid-1960s.

Details

Title: A rhetoric of style: Eleanor Rigby and the reordering of popular music
Authors: Philip Graham (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - Faculty of Arts, Business and Law
Briony Luttrell (Author) - Queensland University of Technology
Publication details: Social Semiotics, Vol.29(2), pp.222-239
Publisher: Routledge
Date published: 2019
DOI: 10.1080/10350330.2018.1434971
ISSN: 1035-0330
Copyright note: Copyright © 2019 The Authors. This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Social Semiotics 2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/10350330.2018.1434971
Organisation Unit: School of Business and Creative Industries; Office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic); University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Creative Industries - Legacy
Language: English
Record Identifier: 99450784802621
Output Type: Journal article

Metrics

200 File views/ downloads

2122 Record Views

3 Times Cited - Web of Science

InCites Highlights

These are selected metrics from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool, related to this output

Collaboration types: Domestic collaboration
Web Of Science research areas: Communication; Humanities, Multidisciplinary; Linguistics