Blog Post #5

Taylor Swift’s video “Love Story” contained romantic lyrics which are combined with mid tempo country and pop sounds made it a smashing hit. She plays a student who sees a handsome co-ed (Justin Gaston) and imagines them as a Romeo-and-Juliet couple. The story shifts between present day and medieval times where she is dancing in a gala or sitting out dreaming by the walls of the castles. It can only be imagined that she didn`t read the play, given that a fairy tale ending is tacked on at the end.

The most important part of writing is the audience. As an audience member to the video, I think that the lyrics go precisely with the video. Before I seen the video, I could explicitly depict what it was going to be like. We are familiar with the Cinderella and her prince love stories, therefore that is what we usually picture when hearing a song like this or reading a book. The title also displays what it is going to be like. You can tell from the castles and context of the video that Swift’s character has a reputation for being wealthy.

This song goes along well with our Composition Design Advocate textbook in the regards that it brings a lot of flavor from the rhetorical strategy of ethos. In Composition Design Advocate, the authors state that ethos main point in writing is the way you come across to the reader through the choices you make and how they reflect you (191). It also can be constructed through “the face you put on" for your audience (192). We can advise from the video that Taylor Swift’s point is to present a struggle going on within her. She shows that she has high spirits whenever she is with him; however once he goes away her smiling face turns lifeless.

Blog Post 4: Create Your Own Video

After viewing this video, I was driven towards some realizations. For writers, context shapes, some might disagree that it actually causes a purpose for writing. Furthermore, contexts shape the chances, obligations, and restrictions that influence the choices writers make as they generate their papers. For readers or audience, context shapes their attempt to build meaning as they understand. Physical context can improve or reduce their ability to read the text. Social context can affect the point to which writers and readers share ordinary experiences and expectations about a text. Cultural context will affect the beliefs and ambitions that they pass to the reading of a text.
In Taylor Swifts video “Love Story”, as the audience, I think the context is supposed to be positioned to the earlier century about an adolescent boy and girl. They fall in love, but the girl’s father is not pumped about the idea. He tells “Romeo” to stay away from his daughter, so they sneak around in the garden and around the town. “Romeo” goes away for awhile and they meet outside of town where he asks “Juliet” to marry him. “Romeo” said he talked to her dad, so begin making plans for the wedding. In the end, it was just a life-size love story.
In the story, there is all three context theories from stated above. The physical context is the story of how Taylor Swift interprets her video to the words. It depends on where you read or watch the text. The social context is when people put you in their shoes. Groups talk about their personal experiences from the text. Cultural context is about the peoples beliefs of the text. For example, when they father says stay away from my daughter. The cultural aspect is that he is afraid to let his daughter leave him. That means in their culture it isn’t appropriate to date at that age, but in different cultures it might not be so bad.
From the video I learned about the way context is perceived, and how the different audiences relate to the video.