Take That, Westlife, and the Backstreet Boys: A Linguistic Analysis of the Discourses Surfacing in Boyband Names

Abstract

This study conducts a multi-level linguistic analysis of a corpus of 316 boyband names. Grammatical and semantic analyses are harnessed to shed light on the discourses surfacing across such names. The discursive patterns identified are in general related to the negotiation of masculinity as it unfolds within partly clashing norms in relation to three major aspects: the male artists’ construction of masculinity, the tastes of the mainly female target audience, and the genre conventions of boyband pop music.