LISTENER’S PERCEPTION ON SEXIST WORDS IN SELECTED MALAYSIAN HIP HOP LYRICS

Abstract

The study on gender has always been an important research area in the field of popular music studies. While most studies focus on the content analysis of the popular music, there is still a need to research on listener’s perception of popular music lyrics. This study examined 30 listener’s perception on sexist words in selected 20 Malaysian hip hop lyrics. A total of 13 sexist words were analysed using text analysis. To further facilitate the data, the listeners were also given 9 random lyrics which contained sexist words and were asked to rank them from positive, negative or neutral. The data was then tabulated using Google Form.  The results showed that listeners are aware of words that denote women to a lower level and yet the words are still used on women, perhaps due to dissatisfaction. The findings show that the respondents are merely going by the flow of what media puts forward which can be related back to the agenda set by the media