“Blank Space, baby,” “red lip classic,” “look what you made me do,” a million allusions to lost scarves—across subreddits and Twitter, Taylor Swift fans communicate in code. Lots of stans do. Fluency in an artist’s work is its own kind of currency in tight-knit devotee communities. Which is why it was odd when Swift-speak found its way onto the US Senate floor.
Last week, the Judiciary Committee grilled the president of Live Nation Entertainment about whether the concert behemoth was a monopoly, following last year’s internet meltdown over Ticketmaster’s handling of presales for Swift’s Eras tour. Throughout the hearing, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle worked in tongue-in-cheek references to Swift’s lyrics. “May I suggest, respectfully, that Ticketmaster look in the mirror and say, ‘I’m the problem. It’s me,’” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, quoting Swift’s recent hit “Anti-Hero.” While the moment went viral, it was met with glee and eyerolls on the internet. “Senators quoting Taylor Swift lyrics during the Ticketmaster hearings,” one self-professed Swiftie tweeted, “is both cringe and GOLD.”
The quote-laden hearing and online response to it reveal a distinct characteristic of Swift’s fandom, and indeed many fandoms: They speak a language all their own. When fans weave her lyrics into conversation, they’re doing it with the context—Swift’s metaphors and double entendres, the situations and relationships the singer may be referencing—intact. It’s authentic. When politicians do it, it’s cringe.
Quoting song lyrics constitutes a private way of speaking that binds Swift fans together, says Cynthia Gordon, who studies language and social media at Georgetown University. Gordon has spent years studying “lects,” or the varieties of languages shared by a group of speakers, and sees one in the way Swifties communicate. In families, these are called “familects” and are developed from years of inside jokes, or riffs on that thing someone said on that one trip to Grandma’s. They’re like memes, but memes that are only funny to a very small group and probably sound unusual to listeners outside their households. If families share “familect,” then Swifties might speak a fanilect. “In using language this way, we’re creating connections with people who share the references and who understand what’s taking place,” Gordon says. “If you’re quoting Taylor Swift, that connects us.”
The specific linguistic mechanism at play when fans bat around Swift quotes is called intertextuality—basically, taking quotes and bringing them into new context, like a subreddit or a Senate hearing. “Each new iteration of a quotation or word invokes and reanimates a shared set of meanings and experiences,” says Gordon.
The internet serves as an accelerant to fanilects. Because song lyrics are readily available online, they have a characteristic linguists call “persistence,” meaning anyone can refer to them and reuse them. And the web—particularly social media—provides countless opportunities for intertextuality, chances to recontextualize, retweet, repost, riposte. If a familect exists within a family unit, then an online community’s fanilect expands exponentially, like invisible strings across distance and time.
Invoking a fanilect effectively can foster feelings of intimacy, shared memories, and collective appreciation. But it can come with social risks. Tell a Swiftie, “I knew you were ‘trouble when you walked in,’” and they’ll laugh. Tell a stranger the same thing, and they’ll miss the meaning. Joke with a Swift fan that you’re “never ever, ever getting back together” at the end of a date, and they’ll be eager to see you again. Say that to someone who doesn’t know the fanilect, and you’re in a socio-linguistic pickle just in time for Valentine’s Day.
A fanilect can make it clear who is in the in-group and who doesn’t “get it.” The boundaries become painfully obvious when an outsider tries co-opting the language of the community. That’s where the “cringe” feeling comes from. When older lawmakers with political agendas quote Swift lyrics it’s perceived as inauthentic. “It’s like a feigned understanding. You’re borrowing a language that you don’t really understand,” says Gordon.
Not all linguists agree that Swift fans have a lect. Gretchen McCulloch, a linguist, occasional WIRED contributor, and author of Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language, says a dialect is defined by new words and distinct pronunciations from mainstream American English. So “Swiftie” marks a distinct word, as would “Gaylor,” the neologism that describes fans who believe that Swift is secretly gay and sowing clues about her sexuality in her songs. But fans quoting lyrics do not a lect make, McCulloch argues. Camille Vásquez, an internet linguist at the University of South Florida, says the art of quoting Swift is more accurately described as an “intertextual discourse phenomenon.”