The question of whether music has meaning has been the subject of sustained debate ever since music became a subject of academic inquiry. This book presents a synthetic and innovative approach to musical meaning which argues deftly for the thinking of music as a discourse in itself.

Series statement on p. [4] of cover, paperback edition.

Research on electronic dance music communities has been initiated by scholars in the fields of sociology, cultural studies, public health research and others. Linguistic aspects, however, are rarely considered. Anita Jóri fills this gap of research and suggests a new perspective by looking at these communities as a discourse community. She gives an overview of the language use and discourse characteristics of this community while applying a mixed methodology of linguistic discourse analysis and cultural studies. The book is aimed at researchers and students in the fields of applied linguistics, popular music, media, communication and cultural studies.

In The Discourse of Musicology, Giles Hooper considers a number of issues central to recent debates about the nature and direction of contemporary musicology. The first part of the book seeks to situate and critically rethink the alleged 'postmodern' turn in musical scholarship. Then, in attempting to overcome some of the problems typically associated with postmodern theory, Hooper draws on the work of Jürgen Habermas in order to interpret musicology as a form of institutionalized discourse and to propose a normative framework for the kind of knowledge in which it can legitimately issue. The second part of the book focuses on the concepts of 'mediation' and the 'music itself' and engages with the work of influential critical theorist, Theodor Adorno, and the contemporary musicologist, Lawrence Kramer. Finally Hooper compares and contrasts a number of different approaches to Mahler's Ninth Symphony. The author's underlying aim throughout is to question whether, and how, it is possible to develop a mode of musicological enquiry that is both epistemologically robust and at the same time capable of answering the demand that it demonstrate its social, political and ethical relevance.

We communicate multimodally. Everyday communication involves not only words, but gestures, images, videos, sounds and of course, music. Music has traditionally been viewed as a separate object that we can isolate, discuss, perform and listen to. However, much of music's power lies in its use as multimodal communication. It is not just lyrics which lend songs their meaning, but images and musical sounds as well. The music industry, governments and artists have always relied on posters, films and album covers to enhance music's semiotic meaning. Music as Multimodal Discourse: Semiotics, Power and Protest considers musical sound as multimodal communication, examining the interacting meaning potential of sonic aspects such as rhythm, instrumentation, pitch, tonality, melody and their interrelationships with text, image and other modes, drawing upon, and extending the conceptual territory of social semiotics. In so doing, this book brings together research from scholars to explore questions around how we communicate through musical discourse, and in the discourses of music. Methods in this collection are drawn from Critical Discourse Analysis, Social Semiotics and Music Studies to expose both the function and semiotic potential of the various modes used in songs and other musical texts. These analyses reveal how each mode works in various contexts from around the world often articulating counter-hegemonic and subversive discourses of identity and belonging.

Leonard addresses core issues relating to gender, rock and the music industry through a case study of 'female-centred' bands from the UK and US performing so called 'indie rock' from the 1990s to the present day. Using original interview material with both amateur and internationally renowned musicians, the book further addresses the fact that the voices of musicians have often been absent from music industry studies. Leonard's central aim is to progress from feminist scholarship that has documented and explored the experience of female musicians, to presenting an analytic discussion of gender and the music industry. In this way, the book engages directly with a number of under-researched areas: the impact of gender on the everyday life of performing musicians; gendered attitudes in music journalism, promotion and production; the responses and strategies developed by female performers; the feminist network riot grrrl and the succession of international festivals it inspired under the name of Ladyfest.

Music-Dance explores the identity of the choreomusical work, its complex authorship, the cognitive processes involved in dance performance and its modes of reception. Scholars of dance and music analyse the ways in which the musical score changes its prescriptive status when becoming part of choreographic project, the encounter between sound and motion on stage and the intersection of listening and sight in the act of reception. As well as being of interest to musicologists considering issues such as notation, multimedia and the analysis of performance, this volume will also appeal to those interested in applied research in the field of cognition and neuroscience.