Media consumption and girls who want to have fun

Abstract

This essay explores the nature and function of listening to music from the perspective of semiotic phenomenology. Listening to music is a form of media consumption, a habitual practice that inscribes social meanings and organizes pleasure. The analysis of listening to music occurs in the three stages of description, definition, and interpretation. The description specifies the lived reality of listening to music in a postmodern world. The definition reduces this description to the structures of affect that locate audiences and interpretive positions on music. The interpretation elucidates the potential for co‐optation in pop music.