The Ideology in Broken-Heart Songs: A Functional Perspective
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30998/scope.v10i2.1396Keywords:
Ideology, Broken-Heart, Song Lyrics, TransitivityAbstract
To the present time, it has been known that song lyrics bring certain values even ideologies. The ideology can be also found in song lyrics about broken heart. The ideology needs to be disclosed as a way to increase the level of critical literacy. The present study aims to reveal the hidden ideology behind song lyrics about broken heart by investigating how the word ‘love’ in relation to ‘kill’ is represented in song lyrics. As the data sources, one Korean pop song entitled “Let’s Kill this Love’ and one Indonesian pop song “Cinta ini Membunuhku” translated as “This Love Is Killing Me” were selected. They were selected purposively due to their similarity in topic. Then their clauses were analyzed using the Hallidayan transitivity system. The finding reveals that love in the first data tends to be represented as the goals with humans as the actors. In the second data, love is inclined to be represented as the actors with humans as the goal. The different findings reflect that a broken-heart lover in the Korean song is seen as the controller of his/her feeling. On the other hand, a broken-heart lover in the Indonesian song is viewed as a powerless and fragile person controlled by his/her feeling. Based on the former, a broken-heart lover is portrayed as a creature that has a freewill to choose whether to be happy or not. It is inferred that the perspective of “Let’s Kill this Love” song lyrics tends to give emphasis on the power of logic. In comparison, the song of “This Love Is Killing Me” tends to emphasize the trait of being emotionally dependent. As we are living in the advanced literate society, public awareness of song lyrics needs to be increased. In the context of language education, selected song lyrics can be used as the literary work to be assessed by students, as way of improving their critical literacy
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Copyright (c) 2026 Marsandi Manar, Retno Wulan, Vindi Kaldina, Unpris Yastanti (Author)
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