The Song, the Emotion and The Apocalyptic Life Evidence Of Nihilism in Linkin Park’s Song Lyrics: A Critical Discourseanalysis

Abstract

The study scrutinizes nihilism, a philosophical viewpoint, in Linkin Park song lyrics. Being a Nu- Metal band, Linkin Park has been an influential rock band since the early 2000s. As a part of socio cultural group, the band, as the social agent, is believed to construe nihilism, which is viewed as social reality. The research aims to reveal nihilism as realized through the language use in two song lyrics, Papercut, and Crawling in Hybrid Theory album. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar on transitivity system and Fairclough’s framework of CDA are applied to provide evidences on how nihilism is produced and manifested in the song lyrics as social practice. The analysis on clauses reveals that nihilism is strongly established and prevalent in the lyrics representing the emotion and the apocalyptic life experienced by the band. The findings also demonstrate that CDA and Systemic Functional Grammar succeed in disclosing and addressing social problems as represented in the linguistic features used in the text as the product of the band’s discourse.