This course enables students to identify the social and historical role of the sounds of English in globalising English language and culture. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach (historical, practical and global), the course will get students to reflect on the historical connections between music and the literary arts (e.g. ballads, lyrical poetry, song lyrics), examine how phonological and rhetorical features in English poetry are carried over into popular music to create different intertextual meanings, and analyse the social role of popular music in globalising the English language and English culture in different parts of the world. Special emphasis will also be placed on exploring the relationship between popular music and the formation of social identities including: gender, racial, youth, political and religious identities. Overall, this course assimilates knowledge from different disciplines to help students explore the relationship between the English sound system, literature and popular music, and discover how these have contributed to the globalisation of English and English culture at the social and cultural level.