Novitas-ROYAL, cilt.18, sa.2, ss.29-51, 2024 (Scopus, TRDizin)
This research aimed to scrutinize and delineate the figures of speech manifesting in English hit songs. A selection of songs from Spotify’s Top 30 Hit Songs List was chosen as the study material. The study employed a qualitative content analysis approach to classify the type and calculate the frequency of the figures of speech within the corpus of English hit songs. The results of this study revealed 200 figurative speech examples in our small-scale corpus, which comprised 8352 words. This suggests a prevalence of figurative language use within English-language songs. While metaphors and hyperboles were the most frequently used figures of speech, apostrophes, and understatements were the least common. The results underscore the linguistic richness of hit songs, advocating their inclusion in English language teaching (ELT) classrooms, particularly for vocabulary instruction.