Multimodality in visual media: the meaning of typography in Taylor Swift’s lyric videos

Mariana Oliveira Martins de Arruda; Vânia Soares Barbosa

doi:10.14393/DLv19a2025-51

Autores/as

Mariana Oliveira Martins de Arruda Universidade Estadual do Piauí https://orcid.org/0009-0009-8298-1212
Vânia Soares Barbosa Universidade Federal do Piauí https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5816-1064

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14393/DLv19a2025-51

Palabras clave:

Multimodality, Typography, Lyric videos, Visual literacy

Resumen

Following the evolution of digital technologies, communication is opening more space to visual elements, recognizing them for their semiotic functions. Among those elements, typography plays a significant role since, as van Leeuwen (2017, p. 9) states, “writing of all kinds now has to ‘look good’”. This affirmation can also be associated with the popularization of lyric videos — videos that show the lyrics and the audio of a song synchronically — which have been gaining recognition as a promotional tool in the music industry (McLaren, 2018). Considering that, this paper aims at presenting and discussing typography as a multimodal aspect of lyric videos of Taylor Swift’s songs that, when integrated to other visual elements present in those videos, may help the viewer to understand the context in which they were produced, the meanings behind the lyrics, and consequently, promote visual literacy. To do that, in a qualitative and exploratory study, we selected 7 (seven) lyric videos published on Taylor Swift’s official YouTube channel and took screenshots of three lines of each song: the first line of the song, the first line of the chorus, and the last line of the song, totaling 21 (twenty-one) screenshots. Then, the screenshots were cataloged in a spreadsheet, in which the characteristics present on the typographic elements were organized based on van Leeuwen’s (2006) and Serafini and Clausen’s (2012) descriptions. The last step was to analyze the data obtained and identify the meaning-making possibilities brought by this semiotic mode. Results showed that typography in Taylor Swift’s lyric videos plays a significant role in the meaning-making process. Features such as (it)regularity, (in)formality, framing, and color may have been used to convey messages of love, heartbreak, and grudge. We could understand that a possible implication of this is the use of lyric videos in the educational context, which might bring a new contribution to the English learning process and to visual literacy promotion through typography.

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Biografía del autor/a

Mariana Oliveira Martins de Arruda, Universidade Estadual do Piauí

Mestranda em Letras/Linguística pela Universidade Estadual do Piauí.
Vânia Soares Barbosa, Universidade Federal do Piauí

Doutora em Linguística Aplicada pela Universidade Estadual do Ceará (UECE). Professora Adjunta na Coordenação de Letras Estrangeiras, na Universidade Federal do Piauí.

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