Diction
Diction is the deliberate selection and arrangement of words (including verb choice, register, and grammatical agency) used to shape meaning beyond what the words literally state. In Taylor's writing diction is often analytical work the song does at the level of word choice rather than image: which speaker is given the active verb, which person is granted naming authority, which register the line settles into. The technique sits alongside Twisted cliché as a Language & Diction device that operates at the sentence level rather than through figure. One technique for isolating a poem or song's diction is to read it backwards, stripping away punctuation, sentence structure, and the propulsive force of meaning so that only the writer's individual word choices remain visible. The brain can no longer process the line as a sentence; the words have to be taken in turn rather than as a unit, and patterns the forward reading runs past (a coherent lexicon, a particular tonal register, a recurring verb-register) surface in the disordered pass. The technique reinforces the broader principle that diction operates at the level of word choice rather than image, and is detectable through deliberate slowing or disordering of the act of reading.
Diction embeds the song's argument or feeling into grammar itself (power dynamics, character agency, emotional state) so the listener absorbs the meaning before processing it consciously. The effect is most often cumulative rather than line-local: a sustained pattern of word choice across a song does the load-bearing work that direct statement would otherwise have to do. Diction analysis involves not only examining the words that are present (their register, syllabic weight, and complexity) but also noticing what the writer has deliberately left out. In Taylor's writing, the absence of her usual poetic tools (alliteration, assonance, metaphor, simile) from a passage can itself be a diction choice, signalling that the speaker lacks the linguistic resources the writer possesses. What the writer omits is as analytically significant as what she includes.
Appears in 13 songs
Uncle Jerry conducts a systematic diction analysis of the song, cataloguing its dark word choices: 'Pierce, holes, hit, die, screaming, heartbroken, kills, hate, shaken, hazing, cruel, smoke, fire, exercise.' He argues these words collectively place the song in the Gothic tradition, 'this dark place, this castle of a Toronto, this Frankensteinian Gothic tradition.' He states the diction is 'appropriately all focused around that black dog image.'
The consistently dark diction creates the Gothic atmosphere that supports the black dog as both literal pub and metaphorical demon, every word choice reinforces the song's darkness and emotional violence.
Angela & Uncle Jerry extensively discuss the deliberate simplicity of James's diction as a characterization technique. Uncle Jerry performs a diction analysis, noting the monosyllabism of the words, the simplistic verb choices ('it's cause,' 'I was,' 'it's like'), and the absence of Taylor's typical poetic toolbox, no alliteration, assonance, metaphor, or simile. He reads the words of the pre-chorus backwards to demonstrate the monosyllabic quality. Angela notes that Taylor has deliberately 'erased herself from the text' and 'taken the Taylor Swift out of this' to voice a teenage boy. Uncle Jerry calls this 'adolescent diction' and says she reflects his 'impulsive adolescent diction and discourse.' The word choice carries the trilogy's device for community readers: James's "summer thing" against august's "summer love" renders the competing accounts in a single word; "thing" rather than "fling" removes even the choice, dodging accountability; and he says "miss" but never "love", asking for what he wants while offering nothing. Listeners trace the wider craft principle through the catalogue, register deliberately matched to character in The Life of a Showgirl, Eldest Daughter, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things and Cowboy Like Me: plain language as characterisation, not weakness.
The deliberate diction choice is arguably the song's most important craft decision, it establishes James as a distinct character voice within the split narrative, differentiated from the more mature voice of cardigan and the developing voice of august. The simplicity of diction IS the characterization.
Uncle Jerry contrasts cardigan's diction with Betty's throughout the episode. He notes that Betty uses 'adolescent diction' and is 'very monosyllabic' and 'almost devoid of importance, intentional symbolic elements... almost devoid of complex metaphors or cliches,' while cardigan 'immediately gives us a sort of newer, richer feel.' He identifies the diction as evidence of a mature, adult speaker versus the 17-year-old boy of Betty. He also notes the choice of 'bars' over 'clubs' or 'joints' as a deliberate diction choice.
The elevated diction throughout cardigan is itself the evidence that the speaker has grown up, the vocabulary, the symbolic density, the richness of expression all demonstrate the distance between the remembering adult and the remembered adolescence.
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify the song's fairy tale diction as a major feature. Uncle Jerry explains his technique of reading the poem backwards to isolate word choice, and presents a list of fairy tale diction: 'enchanted, night, vanished, eyes whispered, silhouette, sparkling, wonderstruck, wishing, flawless, spend forever, praying, storyline, echo.' He also identifies a tonal shift in diction between the first verse (forced, faking, old, tired) and the chorus (sparkling, wonderstruck, blushing, wondering, enchanted), noting 'the shift in tone is clearly indicated by a shift in diction.'
The fairy tale diction is central to the song's identity, every key word choice places the song within the fairy tale genre, and the tonal shift in diction from negative to enchanted mirrors the narrative arc of the encounter transforming the speaker's emotional state.
“Grab your passport and my hand”
Uncle Jerry notes the specific word choice of 'grab' over alternatives like 'get' or 'pick up': 'Not get your passport. Pick up your passport. Yeah. Grab it like you're going to. Right. We're going to go quick. You better hang on.' The verb choice conveys urgency and the jet-setter lifestyle.
The active, urgent verb reinforces the flippant, fast-moving persona, relationships are grabbed and discarded quickly, consistent with the media's perception of the speaker as a serial dater.
“Nice to meet you, where you been?”
Uncle Jerry identifies the truncation of grammatical elements as a deliberate diction choice throughout the song. He notes: 'she truncates the lines, which is to say she clips off grammatic bits. So it should be nice to meet you where have you been... But she's like that rapid barking salesperson. She's got to catch attention.' He extends this to lines like 'Magic, madness, heaven, sin', 'she doesn't even manage to put those all in a sentence, it's just words. It's this tumble of words where she's selling something.'
The truncated, clipped diction creates the carnival-barker persona, rapid-fire, attention-grabbing, selling an image rather than communicating genuine feeling. The grammatical incompleteness mirrors the persona's emotional incompleteness.
“Boys only want love if it's torture Don't say I didn't, say I didn't warn ya”
Angela and Uncle Jerry analyse Taylor's choice of 'boys' rather than 'men' as a deliberate diction-level inversion. Angela: 'just like how we call women girls.' Uncle Jerry confirms the move is conscious, by using the diminutive 'boys' the speaker reverses the cultural habit of infantilising women as 'girls,' putting men on the receiving end of the same linguistic diminishment. The word choice does the inversion before the line's content lands.
The diction operates alongside the bridge's narrative reversal (the speaker assigns torture-seeking behaviour to men instead of women) but works at a finer level, the boys/men choice carries the gendered argument in word selection before the listener processes the inversion of roles. Diction here embeds the feminist critique into grammar.
“In a mourning warning, no one heard”
Angela & Uncle Jerry note the use of 'mourning' (M-O-U-R-N) rather than 'morning,' which means to cry out in a funeral sense. Uncle Jerry connects this to Cassandra always telling people about forthcoming death, the word choice carries the weight of lamentation and prophecy simultaneously.
The deliberate choice of 'mourning' over 'morning' layers the line with grief and death, connecting to Cassandra's role as prophet of destruction.
“I was in my tower weaving nightmares”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify 'weaving' as a perfectly chosen word (citing Percy Bysshe Shelley's principle that 'the one well chosen word is the poetry'). The word is not 'creating' or 'dreaming' but specifically 'weaving,' which connects to the three Fates in mythology who weave the future on their dark looms (as in the Odyssey). Uncle Jerry also connects this to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness where three secretaries at dark typewriters replicate the Fates.
The word 'weaving' anchors the verse in mythological tradition, the Fates weaving destiny, making the speaker's nightmares feel fated and inescapable, perfect for a song rooted in mythological storytelling.
“Pad around when I get home”
Uncle Jerry notes the diction of 'pad', 'her word choice, her diction is really fun. So you got to stop and say pad, walking quietly... you think of the pads of your feet, the soles of your feet. So is she walking without shoes on? Is she barefooted? Is she pacing? It feels like there's a sense of comfort and at-homeness with the word pad.'
The word 'pad' grounds the speaker in domestic vulnerability, shoeless, human, just walking around her house at the lowest point of the day.
Uncle Jerry repeatedly notes the antique diction throughout the song, 'Hand on the Throttle had an antique sound to it,' the ink pen as 'very old fashioned, very antique feeling,' and the overall observation: 'we're dealing with prophecies and old fairy tales and tarot cards and so I like it that she uses this antique simile.' He identifies the antique register as a deliberate diction choice that matches the song's content.
The antique diction supports the song's engagement with ancient systems of divination, prophecy, tarot, fairy tales, biblical literature, placing the speaker's modern loneliness in an ageless register.
“Too big to hang out, slowly lurching toward your favorite city”
Uncle Jerry specifically praises 'lurching' as a great word, nice diction, great word choice. The word conveys the monstrous, ungainly quality of something massive and unstoppable moving toward you.
The word 'lurching' reinforces the monster-on-the-hill imagery, making the speaker's fame feel physically threatening and ungainly rather than glamorous.
“When my depression works the graveyard shift”
Uncle Jerry specifically calls out 'graveyard shift' as terrific diction choice, the word 'graveyard' carries connotations of dank, dark, death imagery that reinforces the depression theme beyond the literal meaning of a late-night work shift.
The diction choice of 'graveyard' does double duty, it describes the late-night timing of the depression while simultaneously evoking death, darkness, and the macabre atmosphere of the speaker's mental state.
“I've come too far to watch some namedropping sleaze”
Uncle Jerry initially disliked the word 'sleaze' as too ugly and common, but then recognized it as a deliberate diction choice aligned with the Romantic principle of common language as articulated in the Lyrical Ballads preface. He says: 'I remembered, wait a minute, one of the hallmarks according to lyrical ballads. Common words.'
The deliberately common, even ugly diction of 'sleaze' enacts the Romantic commitment to common language, embedding the poem's argument about Romanticism into its word choices even when those choices feel jarring.
“I don't belong and, my beloved, neither do you”
Uncle Jerry identifies 'my beloved' as a deliberate diction choice drawn from 19th-century Romantic vocabulary, citing Wordsworth and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Sonnet 20 from Sonnets from the Portuguese). He says: 'It's a very 19th century, very romantic thing to say and do. So she's got the diction of romanticism.'
The archaic, Romantic diction of 'my beloved' signals the speaker's alignment with the literary tradition she is invoking, embedding the poem's Romantic identity into its word choices.
“My ribs get the feeling she did”
Angela & Uncle Jerry discuss the word choice of 'ribs' instead of the expected 'heart.' Uncle Jerry argues the rib cage is 'the protector of the heart' and that she feels the realization penetrating through the barriers she sets up. He praises the word choice: 'I love it that she used ribs to make us stop and think. If she had just thrown heart out there, I would have gotten it. And it would have been a little clichéd. She doesn't play with clichés unless she's got a reason.' Community readers add a second sense to the rib: to rib is to tease, so the goddess of timing was ribbing her, joking rather than promising. The teasing note rhymes with the suspicion in The Black Dog, "were you makin' fun of me with some esoteric joke?"
The deliberate choice of 'ribs' over 'heart' avoids cliché and adds a layer of physical specificity, the feeling must penetrate the protective barrier of the rib cage to reach the heart, suggesting the speaker's emotional defenses are being breached.
Uncle Jerry discusses reading the final chorus backwards to examine word choice. He notes that 'the terrible danger, the terrible danger is mitigated by words like angel, swept, rescue, spread, wings, parachute', all 'beautiful polysyllabic words that are all about rescuing.' This backward-reading technique reveals how the diction of the redemptive chorus is deliberately constructed with rescue-oriented vocabulary.
The deliberate diction of the final chorus, polysyllabic, rescue-oriented words replacing the monosyllabic, threatening vocabulary of the earlier choruses, enacts the song's transformation from repudiation to redemption at the level of individual word choice.
“And you were tossing me the car keys, "Fuck the patriarchy”
Uncle Jerry highlights the specific word 'tosses' as meaningful diction, he doesn't handle the keys, he doesn't throw them, he tosses them. This carelessness in the verb choice foreshadows his later casual cruelty ('casually cruel'). Angela agrees it's careless rather than hostile or generous.
The careless diction in 'tosses' captures his indifference toward her, which will escalate throughout the song, the word choice embeds his emotional unavailability into the grammar of the line.
Uncle Jerry identifies a deliberate pattern in the diction where the male partner consistently performs the active verbs (takes, walks away) while the speaker is passive (standing, sitting, being taken from). He calls it 'a kind of a level of intentionality with her diction' and 'an interesting study in diction,' noting that 'when he takes in the first verse, he's performing the action. In the chorus, when he's walking away, he's performing the action. So she's much more passive.' Angela confirms: 'these are just things happening to her.'
The deliberate asymmetry of agency in verb assignment enacts the power imbalance of the relationship, the partner acts while the speaker endures, mirroring the song's emotional content at the level of grammar.