A linguistic study of the theme of life represented in two selected American and Egyptian popular songs

الملخص EN

This study explores two American and Egyptian popular songs.

The goal is to show how the popular song reflects the society where it belongs.

This is achieved through applying an eclectic approach of the speech act theory by Searle (1969, 1975) and the conceptual metaphor theory by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) to American and Egyptian popular songs.

The study examines two songs selected due to one common theme which is the theme of life.

The result shows that both the American and Egyptian societies suffer from life hardships, but they deal with these hardships differently.

While Egyptians complain life helplessly, American people never give up trying to achieve their goals.