Communication | Taylor Swift Scholar

Wordless Magic: Implication and Inference in Enchanted

Swift read a lot into eye contact and a quick conversation – in her mind, she decoded the message embedded in a light-hearted conversation.

Don’t Say Yes: Silence as a Speech Act in Speak Now

Taylor Swift uses Speak Now to specifically consider the consequences of not speaking – situations where silence is an action.

That's When[ever]: Blurring Time after a Reconciliation

Swift and Urban's time apart is not represented using discrete moments in linear time, but as a series of oppositions blurred together.

Word cloud of the text from Stay Beautiful

Missed Connections and Crossed Wires: Communication Breakdowns in Stay Beautiful

"Despite providing five examples of failed communication, the overall tone of Stay Beautiful is hopeful. While Tied Together with a Smile left us spiraling into an epistemological crisis, Stay Beautiful suggests that there are truths that transcend communication — such as beauty. Further, while the truth of beauty is impenetrable to Cory now, it is not permanently so. Cory will stay beautiful, and if he learns to become an active seeker of knowledge, he will become aware of t

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Diogenes the Dragon: Battling Cynicism in Long Live

We know from Swift’s later work that she was a noted scholar of Greek philosophy during this era of her life “You know how to ball / I know Aristotle” (So High School). It is thus worth digging into Swift name dropping a group of people who were deeply upset by her success – the world-denying philosophers known as the Cynics.