Language doesn’t sit still. The way we speak bends and twists across a lifetime, shaped by where we grow up but also the cities we move to, the communities we join, and the identities we try on for size. Dialect isn’t just an accident of birth — it’s a social technology, one we use to blend in, to stand out, or to project authority.
A new study showcases this fact through an unlikely lens: the recorded interviews of Taylor Swift. By tracking how her vowels changed as she moved from Nashville to Pennsylvania to New York, scientists revealed how dialects can act as fingerprints of belonging — and how even the world’s biggest pop star adjusts her speech to navigate new stages of life.
“Taylor Swift is perfect for this type of longitudinal analysis because she has been interviewed and recorded many times over the years and had motivations for changing her accent at specific times,” said Matthew Winn, co-author of the study and a speech scientist at the University of Minnesota.
Nashville, Pennsylvania, New York—Three Eras, Three Accents
Researchers Miski Mohamed and Winn collected over 100 minutes of Swift’s interview speech across three eras: her Fearless period in Nashville (2008), her Red years back home in Pennsylvania (2012), and her Lover era in New York City (2019). They sliced this speech into more than 1,400 vowels and analyzed them with acoustic software.
The patterns were striking. In Nashville, Swift leaned hard into Southern speech. Words like “ride” sounded closer to “rod,” thanks to a shortened /aɪ/ vowel. The word “two” nudged forward in the mouth, becoming more like “tee-you.” Linguists call this monophthongization and fronting, both classic markers of Southern White English.
But when she moved back to Pennsylvania, those features disappeared. Her vowels lengthened, aligning more closely with Philadelphia English. And in New York, researchers found evidence of hypercorrection — she exaggerated the difference between words like “cot” and “caught,” distancing herself from any trace of Southernness.
“This retreat would be consistent with the general lack of Southern accent in pop music,” the authors wrote in their study.
More Than Geography: Identity and Power
Swift’s vocal changes also tracked with her public image. In New York, where she became a more outspoken advocate for feminism and musicians’ rights, she noticeably lowered her pitch.
“This was the time in her career when she became more well-known for speaking up on issues of social change,” Winn said. “Sometimes, people with a lower pitch are perceived as a voice of authority, and it is possible that she was making use of that tendency to ensure her message was received.”
The study found her voice pitch dropped significantly — by about 1.5 semitones — between her Nashville and New York eras. That shift coincided with her battles over music ownership, her critiques of sexism in the industry, and her political messages.
This is not unique to Swift. Researchers have shown that lowering pitch often signals confidence and leadership. Queen Elizabeth II’s voice, famously, also dropped in pitch over her lifetime as she moved from ingénue to monarch.
Dialects as Social Tools
What’s fascinating about this research is that it frames accent not as a fixed trait but as a social tool. “Dialects are a key component of communities that can be defined by geographic region, social characteristics, and shared interests,” the study notes. People adopt features of speech to signal allegiance to a group, project authority, or craft an identity.
Swift’s Nashville vowels helped her embody country authenticity. Her Pennsylvania shift matched her pivot to pop. And in New York, her lowered pitch underscored her growing role as a cultural leader.
“[Swift’s] adaptive use of these dialect features builds on foundational work to demonstrate how the ways that talkers use their spoken language to convey identity and community belonging are malleable across the lifespan,” the authors concluded.
The findings appeared in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.
