Discourse Analysis Of Parti Smith's Poetic Punk Music:1975-2012

Patti Smith is a famous and influential American rock musician,songwriter,poet and social activist,known as "godmother of punk" and "punk poet laureate",is officially acknowledged by the music critics as the creator of punk music.Smith creatively combines poetry and garage rock and introduces institutional critique into rock music,regarded as a prominent representative of punk rock in the 1970s.Under the influence of French poet Rimbaud and the "Beat Generation",Smith's lyrics demonstrates the features of poetic genre and rebellious spirit.As a unique acoustic phenomenon,music is considered as a microcosm of social ideologies and sociocultural phenomenon.Punk music,as a contagious and revolutionary embodiment of music,representing ideological emancipation and the attitude of anti-culture,has a large member of audiences.However,the interpretation and research on punk music restricts to unilateral and extreme perspective,neglecting the exploration of the political thoughts reflected in punk music.Patti Smith's punk music is characterized as rebellious;the thesis aims to conduct a research on Patti Smith's rebellious thoughts through analyzing the music lyrics.Through reviewing Patti Smith's music career,it can be found that her music creations can generally be categorized into three phases.Respectively,the first phase refers to 1975 to 1978—radical phase,the second phase refers to 1979-1988—mainstreaming phase and the third phase refers to 1996 to 2012—humanitarian phase.Among them,the rebellious appeals and social critiques demonstrated in the first and third phases are remarkable.Comparing the two creation phases which are separated in time by almost twenty years,it can be found that Smith has continued some rebellious thoughts in the 1970s and developed some new thoughts of critiques.The thesis comprehensively analyzes Patti Smith's punk rock discourse with the analytical method of critical discourse analysis.in order to interpret Patti Smith's representative music works and political thoughts.The research adopts Norman Fairclough's three dimensional critical discourse analysis,the microscopic to macroscopic perspective is as follows:text analysis,discourse practice(intertextuality)and social practice,aiming to discuss how the literary techniques of music discourse are related to political thoughts.It also will compare and analyze the similarities and differences in Patti Smith's political engagements through music.l)Based on the observation of the characteristics of lyrics content,text analysis will mainly analyze the rhetoric devices adopted in music discourse in order to analyze how Patti Smith manifests political engagements through adopting literary devices in music discourse.2)Discourse practice analysis is conducted with an aim to find out the political and cultural contexts that endow music text with political connotations.3)Social practice analysis mainly combines the political context in Smith's creation period and her interview records about the intention of creation and observes from five perspectives:political themes,attitude,focus,strategy and identity in political engagements in order to find out the similarities and differences.Through analysis,the thesis finds that l)at the text analysis level,Patti Smith has mostly adopted the rhetoric techniques including parallelism,repetition,pun,synesthesia and imagination,vividly and powerfully conveying political thoughts,making the music easier for the audiences to accept and comprehend and strengthening the political influence and persuasion of punk music.2)At the discourse practice level,Patti Smith mainly uses allusion,calque,poetic genre and terms with cultural connotations in her music,closely combining her music with particular political and cultural context and endowing the music text with political connotations.3)At the social practice level,Patti Smith has mainly demonstrated the common themes in political engagements through her music:anti-war,advocacy for peace,critique of the Capitalist society,concerns over social inequalities,anti?racism,advocacy for feminism.There are also some differences between her political engagements in different phases.1)In terms of her attitude of political engagements,Patti Smith has shifted her attitude from"anti-social" to the humanist view for "people" without national boundaries;2)in terms of her focus in political engagements,Smith has transformed from care for "self" to care for"other people" as she intends to influence "other people" to participate in social activism;3)in the aspect of her strategy of political engagements,she has changed from criticizing social reality and social structures through alcohol,drugs and other self-emancipation ways to a more active way in participating in social movements;4)in the aspect of her identity of political engagements,Smith has transformed from a rebel and anarchist of the society to a social activist as she calls on a humanist view on politics.From the comparison and analysis of Patti Smith's political engagements through her music in two phases,it can be seen that she constantly grows as a rock musician and rebellious revolutionist.Smith has gradually grown from a rebellious youth to a social activist and a preeminent musician in leading social reforms.She adopts music as a medium to call on more people to actively participate in social activists to change the world into a better place.