Metaphors of Sadness in Music : A comparison between the 1980s and the 2020s

Sammanfattning

This study examines sadness metaphors from five song lyrics from the 1980s and five from the 2020s, using Conceptual Metaphor Theory by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) as the analytical framework. The purpose of this study is to identify the types of source domains used to express sadness and to explore whether metaphoric representations differ across decades. The data was retrieved from Spotify and Anghami playlists and included only songs whose lyrics reflected sadness. Metaphors were identified through a combined application of MIPVU and MSDIP, resulting in ten source domains. The analysis shows that SADNESS IS A SUBSTANCE IN A CONTAINER appears exclusively in the 1980s material, suggesting that sadness is conceptualized as an internal, contained experience in the set of songs from that decade. A complementary pattern, namely, a greater use of metaphors involving external forces in the 2020s lyrics, which could be expected, given claims about increased externalization of distress in contemporary contexts, was not confirmed. The findings also raise methodological considerations regarding metaphor identification in poetic discourse.