A Deixis Analysis and Narrating Strategies in Taylor Swift’s Songs: Betty, August, and Cardigan

Abstract

As a mode of communication, songs are frequently used not only to express emotions but also tell the stories of the author’s experience or observations about life. Despite the abundance of research conducted to analyze the meaning of song lyrics, the way songs are mechanically used to convey interconnected narratives remains under-researched. This descriptive qualitative study aims to examine the narrative link between the selected songs in the folklore album (Betty, August, and Cardigan) by Taylor Swift through deictic expressions. The three songs were selected based on Swift’s statement on her YouTube account that the songs tell a love triangle story. The researchers collected the lyrics of the three songs, compiled the lyrics into TXT files, identified the deictic expressions, categorized the deixis into personal, spatial, and temporal and analyzed their interconnectedness using NVivo 12 software. A mind map visualization was made to demonstrate the connection between the deixis in the songs based on the similarity of the deixis and the referents. This study confirms that the three songs written by Taylor Swift are related, as shown by the similarity of the referents in the personal, spatial, and temporal deixis.