Are pop stars breaking or revolutionising the English language?
By: Communications
With the launch of Harry Styles’ new album this week, grammar and language expert Sarah Brownsword at the University of East Anglia has given her thoughts on the debate around whether it’s title - ‘Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally’ - is grammatically correct.
Miss Brownsword, an Associate Professor in Education, posts videos on grammar, punctuation and vocabulary on TikTok, under the handle @grammarslammer.
She said: “The issue, it appears, is that kiss and disco are both being used as verbs here. But there's no comma after kiss, yet there is one after disco.
“For me, this is less about grammar and more about a style choice. When you're a pop star, you can pretty much do what you like with language.
“In another example, Billie Eilish does away with spaces between words in one of her song titles. She also got rid of an apostrophe and nothing's capitalised. Getting rid of capitals is a really popular pop star thing.”
“The track listing for Olivia Rodrigo's album Sour doesn't use any capitals and doing this is seen as being more casual, more authentic and more relaxed.
“However, rejecting capital letters is not new,” added Miss Brownsword. “The Black feminist writer bell hooks insisted on her name not being capitalised, and she did this to de-emphasise herself and put the focus on her work.
“This led to a lot of debate and controversy about it, in the same way that we're having these debates about the pop stars these days.
“So are pop stars killing the English language? I don't think so. Language evolves, and I love that about language.”
Watch Miss Brownsword's in-depth analysis here:
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