Taylor Swift has changed her accent over the years – and science can prove it.
A quirky new study from the University of Minnesota analysed hours of Swift interviews to show how her voice shifted depending on what era she was in.
Professor Luke O’Neill used to opportunity to discuss the science of accents and dialects on this week’s Show Me the Science podcast.
“It is a linguistically important academic question; where do accents come from and how do they develop and so on,” he said.
“Obviously, they’re using Taylor Swift as a model organism, we might call it.
“They noticed by assessing her interviews – now there’s a woman who’s been interviewed a huge amount, thousands of interviews.
“She began with a Southern Tennessee accent, I think, and over time it got more and more towards a North American accent.
“They reckon now her accent is more like someone from New York.”
Prof O’Neill explained that Taylor Swift has moved a number of times over her life from Pennsylvania to Nashville to New York, which would explain her accent change.
While changes in accent might not seem that big of a deal, Prof O’Neill said that it can be the beginning of new language formations.
“It’s called dialectology, it’s a branch of linguistics,” he said.
“Linguists are very interested in how languages develop and how they change through time, like what makes a new language emerge, say.
“First of all, it starts with an accent and pronunciation, and then those words begin to change because of the pronunciation, and eventually you end up with a brand-new language.”
According to Prof O’Neill, accents can also give us an insight into someone’s cultural or socio-economic background.
“To educated people, ‘I done it’ is classified as incorrect, the right way to pronounce or say it is, ‘I did it’,” he said.
“But eventually, ‘I done it’ might start to dominate, and dominate in a particular dialect, and that will begin to define that dialect.”
Prof O’Neill said that this can sometimes lead to controversy when certain accents or dialogues are valued above others.
“Some countries, as a result of this spread of different dialects, they began to use standardised languages,” he said.
“So, for example, in England, the received English became the posh speaking language and the BBC newsreaders would always speak with received English.
“Of course, that began to change in the 60s with the Beatles… Before that, you were looked down upon if you spoke with [regional] accents.”
This can sometimes make it difficult to draw a line between languages and dialects.
“If you’re talking to a Welsh person and you’re speaking Irish, there’s a certain amount of intelligibility between us,” Prof O’Neill said.
“But they are classified as two different languages, because there are sufficient differences between them to define that.”
Prof O’Neill said that the whole study of linguistics “really tells us about the wonderful diversity of humans, doesn’t it?”
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