About

The dissertation titled ‘An Ideological Analysis into the music of Pink Floyd’ was completed by
Ms Deenaz Raisinghani, student of Department of Communication Studies, Savitribai Phule
Pune University, during January 2015 to May 2015 as a partial fulfillment of the requirement of
Master in Communication Studies.

Relevance of the Topic

The researcher had chosen this topic particularly after searching a number of rock bands that
appeared from 1960s’ to 2014 and its ideological journey. The other reason for choosing the
topic was that the researcher wanted to analyse the music from a communication point of view
rather than the sole musical purpose. Pink Floyd is one of the most searched out rock band till
today too, so the researcher wanted to know what exactly the reason for the popularity of its
music is and analyse the band itself. And also the researcher feels that the study of popular music
is very few and it needs to be studied as the cultural industries make music into product that is
then given to the masses to be consumed.

The band Pink Floyd is very famous among the rock music lovers and its songs are loved by all
the music lovers. So getting to know what the band as a whole was thinking and their ideologies
will be of much interest to their fans and followers. The analysis of popular music through the
communication’s glass is also not done much and it also tells us about the kind of preferences or
thoughts that particular generation of people have.

Aim and Objectives

The aim of the dissertation is

To conduct an Ideological Analysis into the music of Pink Floyd.

The researcher has identified three research objectives:

1. To conduct a semiotic analysis of selected music tracks from the set of studio albums of
Pink Floyd’s music discography:
a. Album Cover/ Track Poster
b. Song Theme
c. Song Lyrics

2. To approach ideological analysis by application of a theoretical framework to the media

text.

3. To conduct a discursive analysis of the same analysed media content by Pink Floyd fans
in an online space.
Some of the terms of the objectives look vague but the researcher has also provided an extra sub-
chapter; operational definitions, that define the terms like ideological analysis, studio albums,
semiotic analysis, music discography, Pink Floyd fans and online discursive analysis. This in
turn helps the objectives to be more specific.

The objectives seem to be relevant with the aim of the researcher as the researcher is keen in
analyzing the ideology of the band through its music. We must take into account that the
researcher had framed the aim from the communication point of view rather than the
composition. So the analysis using semiotic, its media text, i.e, the lyrics and media content by
Pink Floyd fans in an online space will be effective in order to complete the objectives of the
researcher. However, the researcher could also look into the use of rhetoric in the media text so
that the researcher could review how the lyrics have appealed to the fans.

Review of related literature

The researcher has only looked into the semiotics and ideology while reviewing the literature.
There was very little review on fan interpretation. I think that more literature review on the
media text should have been conducted using rhetorical devices in order to analyze what was the
factor that appealed the fans of the band. And also the number of research papers that was
reviewed were also less and the researcher have relied much on the different websites and books.

The researcher had only reviewed two research papers, Which one's pink? Towards an analysis
of the concept albums of Roger Waters and pink Floyd and Music, the social construction of fans
and patterns of fandom practices around two alternative rock bands in Cluj and also only the
first research paper could be available. And the references in the first research paper are also
mostly journals and books so I couldn’t get much reference. So I’ve only read the first research
paper and continued with my assignment as others were not available.

The article, Which one's pink? Towards an analysis of the concept albums of Roger Waters,
Rose, P.A.(1995) analyses the concept album of the band, Pink Floyd. This was done as the
researcher wanted to know about the theme of the albums of the band through analysis of its
songs, mainly through the lyrics. The researcher studied about the three studio albums of the
band and came up with the findings that how all these three albums are interrelated with each
other with respect to their meanings and ideas which they present. This research paper was very
much related with what our current researcher wanted to do. Like in the reviewed research paper,
our researcher also wanted to analyse the ideas of the band and one of the methods to analyse it
was through the analysis of the bands album cover, song theme and lyrics.

The other reason for our researcher to have taken this paper might be because Rose, P.A.(1995)
also talks about how the music have been theorized and discussed but with minimum attention to
the critical analysis. What Rose, P.A.(1995) meant by critical analysis is that the semiotics of the
lyrics and the ideas of what the songs meant are not thoroughly discussed in the music field
rather only the notations are mostly discussed in almost all text. The connotative meanings are
rarely discussed. So our researcher might have also been interested by this objective of the
Rose’s research paper.

Rose in his paper also talks about the pictures in the music that also gives some connotative
meaning it rather than relying simply on the music.

So our researcher has reviewed this paper and gave its insight and knowledge to its own paper.

Methodology and Sampling Scheme

The researcher has used qualitative approach and the tool used for this approach was semiotic
analysis. This was then followed by an ideological analysis and finally an online discursive
analysis to understand fan interpretation. Semiotic analysis was done by interpreting the lyrics of
the songs by breaking into semiotic elements, ideological analysis was done by identifying
worldview of media presentation, i.e. its album cover and discursive analysis was done by
understanding the fan’s interpretation of same song in an online platform.

The sampling scheme used for the analysis was non probability purposive sampling in which the
researcher had chosen particular songs on the basis of following criteria. Only one song from one
album was chosen. This one musical track was chosen on the basis of its ranking, popularity. The
researcher only could take one musical track as the researcher could not analyse all the music
tracks due to lack of time and resources.