TAYLOR SWIFT’S COUNTER-NARRATIVE STRATEGIES IN RECLAIMING FEMALE AGENCY IN THE LIFE OF A SHOWGIRL

Jonathan Irene Sartika Dewi Max, Yofi Irvan Vivian


Abstract


This study is among the first to analyze agency through clause-level transitivity in Swift’s lyrics. This study applies a feminist stylistic framework, supported by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), to analyze lyrics from her 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, as a counter-narrative resisting patriarchal master plots. The analysis comprised three stages: clause segmentation and coding, discovery of linguistic patterns via quantitative and qualitative methods, and interpretation of these patterns to elucidate themes of agency and identity. The findings demonstrate that agency is constructed through a strategic foregrounding of the Actor in material processes, reframing identity in articulated cognition through mental processes, and introspecting the external constraints through mental processes. These techniques are central to the making of counter narrative and underscore Swift's innovative reassertion of discursive authority. The developed self-narrative is contesting gendered power dynamics and affirming epistemic independence. Findings advance feminist stylistics by showing how linguistic form becomes a locus of resistance.

Keywords


agency;counter self-narrative;feminist stylistics;Taylor Swift;transitivity

Full Text:

PDF

References


Almeida, P., & Márquez, L. R. G. (2023). Interpreting repressive and economic threats: Música contestataria and collective resistance in Central America. Latin American Perspectives, 50(3), 134–156. https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X231194310

Angel, S., Bathran, R., & Goswami, M. P. (2026). Gender discourse and femadvertising in India: A multi-modal discourse analysis. Women’s Studies International Forum, 114, 103204. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.WSIF.2025.103204

Bagasbas, L., Cuadro, S., & Luares, E. S. C. V. (2025). Anatomizing Taylor Swift’s ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ album. Journal of Professional Communication and English Studies, 1(1), 46–60. Retrieved from ejournal2.pnp.ac.id/index.php/PROCESS/article/view/1808

Blansjaar, M., & Downs, J. K. (2023). On Taylor Swift and broken glass: Confessional pop, psychological intimacy, and two-way authentication. Journal of Popular Music Studies, 37(2), 117–128. https://doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2025.37.2.117

Calubayan, F. S., & Raymundo, C. Y. (2022). Jouissance: Uncovering the ideological positions in the selected poems of contemporary Filipino Women poets through M.A.K. Halliday’s transitivity analysis. International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 14(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijhss.14.1.1

Cheung, J. O., & Feng, D. (2021). Attitudinal meaning and social struggle in heavy metal song lyrics: A corpus-based analysis. Social Semiotics, 31(2), 230–247. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2019.1601337

Clavijo, N., & Perray-Redslob, L. (2024). “We don’t want to be accused of being feminists”. A gender equality measure for leadership positions and the perpetuation of patriarchal arrangements. Ludivine Perray-Redslob, 1000, 102754. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2024.102754

Crossley, N. (2021). A dependent structure of interdependence: Structure and agency in relational perspective. Sociology, 56(1), 166–182. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038521102023

Dahlberg, K. H., et al. (2024). Swiftonomics: Using Taylor Swift to teach economics. Journal for Economic Educators, 24(2), 47–62.

Derval, D. (2024). Designing luxury brands: The art and science of creating game-changers (2nd ed.). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-54093-6_11

Fabry, R. E. (2025). Counter self-narration: A creative-imaginative practice of resistance. Topoi, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-025-10260-x

Fernandez-Quintanilla, C., & Stradling, F. (2023). Introduction: stylistic approaches to narrative empathy. Journal of Literary Semantics, 52(2), 103–121. https://doi.org/10.1515/jls-2023-2008

Gebhard, M., Accurso, K., & Harris, G. (2019). Putting it all together: SFL in action. In M. Gebhard (Ed.), Teaching and Researching ELLs’ Disciplinary Literacies (pp. 239–272). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315108391-9

Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2014). Halliday’s introduction to functional grammar (4th ed.). London: Routledge.

Harrison, C., & Ringrow, H. (2022). Disnarration and the performance of storytelling in Taylor Swift’s folklore and evermore. International Journal of Literary Linguistics, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.15462/ijll.v11i1.140

Hart, C. (2014). Discourse, grammar, and ideology: Functional and cognitive perspectives. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Hatavara, M. (2025). Analyzing master and counter-narratives in the multilayered narrative communication of literary fiction. Frontiers of Narrative Studies, 11(1), 51–67. https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2025-2011

Hirsch, L. E. (2022). “Nasty” Taylor Swift. In insulting music: A lexicon of insult in music. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16466-8_9

Hunt, S. (2024). Investigating social actions (transitivity) with corpora. In F. Heritage & C. Taylor (Eds.), Analysing Representation: A Corpus and Discourse Textbook (1st ed., pp. 115–13). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003350972

Jeffries, L. (2023). Critical stylistics. In M. Burke (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics (pp. 436–450). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367568887

Jimmi, J., & Hafizah, N. F. (2025). Figurative language analysis of Taylor Swifts song lyrics in 1989 album. Journal of English Language Teaching, 9(2), 778–784. https://doi.org/10.30998/scope.v9i2.24480

Judkins, J. (2025). Taylor Swift and the philosophy of re-recording: The art of Taylor’s versions. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 83(3), 287–290. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpaf033

Kendong, F. A., Daud, A. S., & Joharry, S. A. (2023). A Corpus-driven analysis of Taylor Swift’s song lyrics. International Journal of Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics, 7(2), 59–82. https://doi.org/10.24191/ijmal.v7i2.7489

Klimchynskaya, B. W. T. A. (2024). Blank spaces, fresh pages: Taylor Swift and/as literature. In B. W. T. A. Klimchynskaya (Ed.), The Literary Taylor Swift: Songwriting and Intertextuality (pp. 1–9). London: Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi.org/10.5040/9798765104545.0003

Lee, J. Y. (2023). Relational approaches to personal autonomy. Philosophy Compass, 18(5), e12916. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12916

Lugea, J., & Walker, B. (2023). Stylistics: Text, cognition and corpora. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10422-0

Max, J. I. S. D. (2022a). Mythical car: Metonymy in Taylor Swift’s song lyrics. Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature and Linguistics, 9(2), 219–235. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.22219/celtic.v9i2.23139

Max, J. I. S. D. (2022b). Three speakers’ perspectives on experience in Taylor Swift’s selected lyrics from Folklore album. Rainbow : Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Culture Studies, 11(1), 11–18. https://doi.org/10.15294/rainbow.v11i1.50485

Max, J. I. S. D. (2025). An anthology of visual imagery, allusion, and symbolic meaning in Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department. Eliterate: Journal of English Linguistics and Literature Studies, 4(3), 288–301. https://doi.org/10.26858/eliterate.v4i3.75313

Max, J. I. S. D., Vivian, Y. I., Putra, B. A., & Kuncara, S. D. (2023). Transitivity analysis of Taylor Swift’s lyrics in Midnights album. Indonesian Journal of EFL and Linguistics, 8(2), 279–294. https://doi.org/10.21462/ijefl.v8i2.688

McCann, H., Faichney, E., Trelease, R., & Whatman, E. (2025). Why Taylor? On Taylor Swift as the anti-hero we need. In H. McCann, E. Faichney, R. Trelease, & E. Whatman (Eds.), Taylor Swift: Culture, Capital, and Critique (pp. 1–7). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/0.4324/9781003509271-1

Mills, S. (1995). Feminist stylistics. In The Bloomsbury ­Companion to Stylistics (1st ed.). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203408735

Montoro, R. (2023). Feminist stylistics. In M. Burke (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics (pp. 367–384). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367568887

Nisbett, G., & Dunn, S. (2019). Reputation matters: Parasocial attachment, narrative engagement, and the 2018 Taylor Swift political endorsement. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 29(1), 26–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/15456870.2019.1704758

Nurwidya, A. (2024). Realization of romance in song lyrics: A transitivity analysis. International Journal of English and Literature, 1(1), 1–18. Retrieved from journal.beaninstitute.id/index.php/ijoel/article/view/39/47

Poliakova, H. (2023). Means of creation of conceptuality in modern song texts. Humanities Science Current Issues, 2(70), 200–204. https://doi.org/10.24919/2308-4863/70-2-28

Reid, B., & MacKee, T. (2024). What are my ‘Wordsworth’?: Taylor Swift’s new romanticism. In B. W. Tontiplaphol & A. Klimchynskaya (Eds.), The Literary Taylor Swift: Songwriting and Intertextuality (pp. 49–62). London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Santika, P., & Syafryadin. (2023). An analysis of figurative language in song lyrics of the album “Midnights” by Taylor Swift. Wiralodra English Journal, 7(1), 14–28. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.31943/wej.v7i1.189

Schleppegrell, M. J., & Oteíza, T. (2023). Systemic functional linguistics: Exploring meaning in language. In The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis, 156.

Schneider, U. (2023). Reflexive analytic causatives: a diachronic analysis of transitivity parameters. English Language and Linguistics, 27(4), 789–813. https://doi.org/10.1017/S136067432300028X

Schreiber, B. (2020). Music is power. New Brunswick: Rutgers Unniversity Press. https://doi.org/10.36019/9781978808157-017

Sharf, Z. (2025, October 5). Taylor Swift and Charli xcx Feud Rumors explode over ‘actually romantic’ song. How did we get here? AOL Today website: https://www.aol.com/articles/taylor-swift-charli-xcx-feud-181723384.html

Srivastava, S. S. (2022). Agency and resistance in feminist discourse. The Eastern Anthropologist, 75(3), 319–338. Retrieved from https://serialsjournals.com/abstract/72396_9-sumit_s_srivastava__agency_and_resistance_in_feminist_discourse__prof_sukant_sir__the_eastern_anthropologist.pdf

Tian, W., & Ge, J. (2025). The womb as battleground: Negotiating motherhood and feminism on Chinese social media. Feminisit Media Studies, 25(4), 843–864. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2024.2323653

Wang, H. (2024). The aesthetic interplay between music and literature: From narrative to lyricism. Cultura: International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology, 21(5), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.70082/cijpca.v21i5.1050




DOI: https://doi.org/10.30743/ll.v10i1.12942

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.