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Part of the book series: Multilingual Education ((MULT,volume 1))

Abstract

The desire to appear ‘authentic’ is an aesthetic quality that both pop culture artists and fans have come to expect from pop culture performances. The pursuit of authenticity, however, is frequently in opposition to the commercial considerations that define much of pop culture: ‘authentic’ performances are frequently not commercially successful, or popular. This paper will introduce ‘linguistic authenticity’ as an aesthetic dimension of popular music and discuss some of the ways that the pursuit of ‘linguistic authenticity’ in Asian pop music might be at odds with the commercial ‘popularity’ of the performance or might be complementary to commercial success. ‘Authenticity’, then, becomes a value that both performers and fans may exploit or creatively overlook in Asian popular music.

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Moody, A. (2012). Authenticity of English in Asian Popular Music. In: Kirkpatrick, A., Sussex, R. (eds) English as an International Language in Asia: Implications for Language Education. Multilingual Education, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4578-0_13

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