What is Love: a Critical Metaphor Analysis of Taylor Swift’s Evermore

This thesis examines the metaphorical conceptualization of love in Taylor Swift’s evermore (2020) through the lens of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA). The corpus consists of the album’s complete lyrics with the focus on songs depicting romantic love. Following the MIPVU method for metaphor identification, the study identifies 75 love-themed metaphorical realizations. The findings show that Swift primarily relies on conventional conceptual metaphors like LOVE IS A JOURNEY, LOVE IS A GAME and LOVE IS AN OBJECT, but expresses them in novel and contextually meaningful ways. In this way she shows the creative potential of these concepts. The analysis also points to novel conceptual metaphors employed in the corpus: LOVE IS ART, LOVE IS FANTASY, LOVE IS AN ILLUSION, LOVE IS A STORY, and LOVE IS WORK. Swift’s lyrics thus illustrate the productivity of conventional metaphors, but also the need for novel conceptual metaphors that allow for expressing experiences that cannot be expressed through the existing concepts.