Language, neoliberalism and K-pop: multilingualism in Korean pop music and language commodification

Abstract

In the past decade K-pop has crossed the globe, mixing not only rhythms and musical genres, but also languages. Observing the profusion of languages in Korean popular music, we asked what the role of languages is and in what forms are they used within K-pop. To answer these questions, 200 popular K-pop songs from the 2010s were selected and compiled in a corpus. The massive use of code-switching and the reproduction of versions in other languages was observed, using, throughout the decade, not just majority lan-guages, but also minority, local and dead languages. The songs from years after 2014 used code-switching more frequently. Considering the data obtained by this research, data and patterns of growth and exportation of Korean popular music in the 2010s, we found that multilingualism acts as one of the fundamental tools of K-pop, being necessary for the medium of production in which K-pop is inserted by creating a product differential and promoting greater diffusion in the international phonographic market.

Keywords

• code-switching
• k-pop
• hallyu 2.0
• multilingualism
• language and economics