The digital genre songfic in dialogic relations: between fan narratives and song lyrics

Abstract

Our research focuses on exploring the digital genre of songfic. We ask: What techniques do writers use to weave song lyrics into fan stories? Also, how do they create dialogue between the songs and the narratives? The theoretical framework adopted is derived from the Bakhtin Circle, operating with concepts of re-elaboration, dialogism, and architectonics, as well as other research in the field of Text Linguistics that focuses on hypertext, intertextuality, and multimodality. Our methodology, of a qualitative descriptive nature, consisted of constructing a database composed of 6 songfics, published on two platforms specialized in the dissemination of this genre (Nyah! Fanfiction and Wattpad), using screenshots and converting the pages to PDF format. Consequently, due to the extensive length of the works, we selected two narratives, one from each site, to closely observe the aforementioned phenomena. The analysis revealed that songfics rely on song lyrics using verbal elements, images, and multimodal resources. In ‘Cry Baby’, each chapter refers to a specific track from the eponymous album, while in ‘Medo Bobo’, the story revolves around a single musical track. The writers engage in dialogue not only with the songs but also with other literary works and the artists' music videos that inspire them, creating a complex network of references. In this context, we observe that ficwriters, when textualizing their desires and ideas, operate a series of intertextual, multimodal, and dialogic movements. This is a potential factor in discursive practice, especially regarding critical positioning towards the world, new reading and writing practices, and, finally, the construction of a participatory culture that goes against hegemonic and centralizing means of production.