A Literary Analysis of Identity, Emotion, and Symbolism in the English Lyrics of BTS

Abstract

"This study examines how BTS constructs and expresses identity, symbolism, and emotion in their English lyrics within a global cultural context. Drawing from frameworks including identity theory (Frith, 1996), performativity (Butler, 1990, as cited by Handayani et al., 2024), Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1981), and cultural hybridity (Bhabha, 1994, cited in Shah, 2016), the study investigates six BTS English songs: Dynamite, Butter, My Universe, Permission to Dance, Waste It On Me, and Take Two. Using qualitative discourse analysis and metaphor, the study examines how language choices, symbolic motifs, and emotional narratives function as interconnected systems of interpretation. Symbolism and metaphor form a coherent network centered on four motifs: light, space, movement, and time, which translate abstract emotions like hope, freedom, gratitude, and continuity into globally accessible imagery through conceptual metaphors such as FREEDOM IS MOVEMENT and TIME IS MEMORY. Emotionally, the lyrics transform personal feeling into a shared global experience. The study concludes that BTS’s English songs function as complex cultural texts and a “global poetics of emotion,” bridging Korean sensibility with global popular culture and enriching theoretical and pedagogical discussions of identity and symbolism in transnational music."