We Are Not Taylor Swift’s We: Music for Movement Building Toward Social Justice (Poster 25)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Sunday 11:40 a.m.
  In Poster Session: Language, Literacies, and Representations

Abstract

The white hegemonic messaging of Beyoncé’s (2024) latest album release, Cowboy Carter, has sparked racializing discourse concerning representation in U.S. country music. Perpetuating a dominant white Anglophone narrative and recapitulating a cultural and linguistic dominant narrative, the messaging of Taylor Swift’s music frequently aligns with the hegemonic “All-American “girl narrative. Applying Halliday’s (1978) systemic functional linguistics framework and using music as a language of conversation, I provide a critical multimodal discourse analysis of lyrics from Beyonce’s (2024) song “16 Carriages” and Taylor Swift’s (2021) song “22.” I peel back the impact of hegemonic representation extending to direct impact on the bodies of marginalized and oppressed folx, while simultaneously providing an entry point for dialogue and movement towards social justice.

Author

• Emily Lee, University of San Diego