WOMEN UNDERREPRESENTATION IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY REFLECTED FROM TAYLOR SWIFT’S BILLBOARD “WOMAN OF THE DECADE” SPEECH

Abstract

Studies on women underrepresentation within various fields have been widely conducted, indicating that people are well-aware of the issue. Nonetheless, little attention has been paid to women underrepresentation in the music industry. Thus, this research focuses on examining the issue through Taylor Swift’s Billboard “Woman of the Decade†speech. Critical Discourse Analysis approach was applied in this research. The data were taken from Taylor Swift’s speech transcript, which was accessible in Billboard’s official website (www.billboard.com). It can be concluded that Taylor Swift’s speech reflects issue of women underrepresentation in the music industry through at least two linguistic features, namely pronouns and assertive speech act. The use of inclusive pronouns “we†and “us†in her speech supports that women tend to seek intimacy and build strong relationship with their peers, while the exclusive pronoun “they†was employed to refer to people who criticized women in the music industry. Furthermore, Taylor Swift used assertive speech act to be vocal about the issue of unfair treatment received by women in the industry, as well as to empower them to keep on making music under any circumstances, breaking society’s stereotype that women are not likely to be assertive.

Keywords: critical discourse analysis; music industry; women underrepresentation