Part-of-Speech Features in Bob Dylan's Song Lyrics: A Stylometric Analysis

Honoured as a Nobel Laureate in 2016, Bob Dylan's song lyrics have garnered well-deserved recognition and appreciation for their themes, content and artistic performances. Part-of-speech characteristics are effective in denoting stylistic features of texts in stylometric studies. The present study carried out a quantitative observation of stylistic features of Dylan's lyrics. Specifically, the study focuses on parts of speech like verbs, adjectives, adverbs, nouns and pronouns. Results of the present study reveal that: (1) Based on the distribution of verbs and adjectives, Dylan's lyrics are significantly active texts, and the activity sequences (Q-sequences) have validated the result in a dynamic way; (2) Dylan's lyrics tend to present the characteristics of a written body; (3) Individualism is prominent in Dylan's lyrics accompanied by the wide use of the first-person singular pronouns.