Day 5: Dove Ads

The Dove article that you read for last night, "Fat is an Advertising Issue," always rings true with a lot of students.  Body image issues run deep with guys and girls.  And a large part of that issue is a rhetorical perspective that we are given by various media.  Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty offers girls a fresh and healthy look at this issue, and I am so thankful for it.  I've known many dear friends that have struggled with body image issues.  You probably know someone who has struggled with them as well.  Here are some of the videos that were developed from the campaign that the article discusses.  In class, we often discuss what's going on rhetorically and visually for them to make their argument.  Think about those things as you watch them.  How do they use music?  How do they use text?  What about pathos?  What is the logos, or the logic, of these arguments?  Who is their audience?  Who is the persona that's crafted in each?  What's effective?  What's ineffective?  You can ask all these same questions, and answer them, in your papers that you're working on!


But first, sit back and watch:


"Evolution"

"Onslaught"

"Amy"

When you write, you should strive to make it powerful every time, just as these arguments above are powerful.  One way to do that is to make it personal as the videos have done.  Did you like the ads, or did you feel manipulated?  It's a tricky issue with rhetoric.  They're using some strong pathos throughout.  But how do they execute it?  What makes something emotional?  


Along with adding something personal or unique, it's time for you to move beyond the five paragraph essay.  You can do five paragraphs in two pages, which is all that's due tomorrow.  But the traditional approach isn't going to cut it if your paper has to be 8 pages.  (Good editing tip: if you look down the left margin of your paper and don't see any indentations, you might have too long of a paragraph).  


Your introduction can be fun and interesting.  Think about the way the essay from last night introduced it's topic. It wasn't lame or boring.  It was natural and interesting.  Aim for that.  Put in some interesting fact, make a joke, create a beautiful metaphor.  (You remember what metaphors are, right?)  Then, finally, in the conclusion, you finally get to say everything you've been trying to say the whole paper very plainly and matter-of-factly.  People worry about conclusions, but they're just closing up and recapping.  You've taken such effort to say your argument throughout your paper by using examples and whatnot, but in the conclusion you can just state it straight-out.  Conclusions are your friends.


There is a writer that I like, named Anne Lamott.  She says that writers should take a step and be comfortable writing a "shitty first draft" (her words, not mine! but good advice nonetheless).  This is what she writes in her book, Bird by Bird:

“For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous.  In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.

“The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later.  You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page.  If one of the characters wants to say, “Well, so what, Mr. Poopy Pants?,” you let her.  No one is going to see it.  If the kid wants to get into really sentimental, weepy, emotional territory, you let him.

“Just get it all down on paper, because there may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would never have gotten to by more rational, grown-up means.  There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you’re supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go — but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages.”

So, there you go.  Good luck as you start.  Some of you have started.  That's good.  Others...

Just write.  Writing takes time, but you can do it.  You just need to get your behind in chair at your computer with Microsoft Word open, and then start to play in there.  Have fun.  I know that it's like me asking you to step off of the edge of a cliff, but what else are you going to do?  Hang around on boring dry land?  

Your Daily Assignment:


I was going to have you respond to the Dove ads, but I've decided to give you more time with your papers, so just get started on those.  Finish those first drafts.  2 pages done by tomorrow.  I'll give you until midnight instead of noon tomorrow to finish the first drafts.  I want you to really think about them.  Just e-mail them to me!


Wait a minute!!!  Tomorrow is the 4th of July!!!  That means no class.  So you have until Thursday the 5th at midnight.  An extra day!  But don't write tomorrow night... go shoot of some fireworks or something.  But be careful!  And I'll be back in The States tomorrow, which is a good thing as far as this class goes.  All right.  Good luck as you write!  Meet back here on Thursday morning.




Grammar Review:


Check out The Oatmeal on how to use a semicolon; it's funny!

Day 4: Observation

Before we get into the real content for the day, we need to have a brief discussion about ethics.  Now, you already know that ethics and ethos are different but related things.  But we do need to talk about ethics too.

Where do ethics come from and why are they important?

Since I can't let you answer me back like I normally do in my physical classes, I'll try to summarize where our discussion usually takes us.

Ethics come from lots of places, but mainly its either natural or cultural.  We may be born with a certain amount of knowing what is good or evil, or it may be taught to us by our environment.  This debate is known as the nature vs. nurture debate, and we're not really going to get into that.  Ethics comes from your parents, your religious background, your education, the government, and so on.

But why have these stupid rules?  If you lie, it's not going to hurt anyone is it?

Rules keep us safe.  If I agree to follow the rules, and you agree to follow the rules, then we won't hurt each other, and then we can safely live in a community.  So, rules are about living well.  If we didn't have rules, well, things might become chaotic, and people might even start dying.

So, here's another question?  Why is death bad?

I mean, is it bad?

It's the unknown.  Unless, you think you know what may linger after this world...

So, death is kind of bad.  So we have these codes of ethics to follow.  And that means I need you to promise me that you won't plagiarize or cheat on your papers this semester.  See your daily assignments for that part of your blog posts today.

*** horrifyingly unnatural transition***


So, you guys did a pretty good job describing those crocodiles.  But you can do even better.

Description can make such a difference in your writing.  Boring writing is vanilla, but adding that special touch of style is what often makes the difference between an A paper and a B paper.

Observation can be key when making an argument, to describe those little aspects to really captivate your reader in interesting ways.  Sherlock Holmes, for example, was a master of making little keen observations that made all the difference in his cases.

So, go get your favorite piece of candy...


I'm serious.  Go.

Run to the gas station if you need to.

For this assignment, when I am teaching class in "the real world," I usually pass out Starbursts, but any piece of candy will do.

You should know that there is a difference between inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning.  The distinction is "elementary, my dear Watson."

Deductive reasoning starts with a thesis or a hypothesis.  Then tries to find facts based upon observations to support that original thesis.

Inductive reasoning begins with observation first, then arrives at a thesis based on the observations.  Sometimes this way takes a little longer to reach a conclusion, but it can be really helpful because you're not coming to a problem with preconceived notions.

Sometimes practicing inductive reasoning about things that we're already familiar with can reveal really surprising results.  This sometimes happens with ads because we're bombarded with them daily, so we don't think about them very well.  So... let's try it with a piece of candy...  (Check the daily assignments for the next steps.)

(Please also note that we are loosely following my calendar from the syllabus.  I would like for you to keep up with the readings there from Envision in Depth, but you really only need to skim the chapters unless I specifically tell you to read something in particular like tonight.)


Your Daily Assignment:

1. Write me a paragraph on your blog promising me that you won't plagiarize on your papers and think about why you won't.  Why is that important to you?  (I know that the syllabus says that you don't have to do this post until tomorrow, but I want to make sure you take time for your papers tomorrow.  I thought we could push this back, but I think it's best to do the ethics claim here.  If you need more time with the posts though, just let me know).
2. Secondly, get out that candy.  Put on a timer for 3 minutes.  You can use this one if you want.  Now, write down as many observations as you can about that piece of candy.  Just make a bullet point list down your post and go as fast as you can.  Add a picture of your candy to your post.  If you had another minute, you could make even more observations.  If you had years and years, and infinite amounts of funding, you could make even more observations!  This is what scientists do.  And then they draw conclusions.  And then they make rhetorical arguments about the way that the world is.  It's amazing.  The person with the most observations gets a "You're the Bomb!"
3. Read the short article by Orbach in Envision in Depth, on page 386.  It's an important issue that we'll talk about over the next few weeks a bit.

(You can make these two separate posts if you'd like.  That seems most natural.)

Grammar Review:

Introductory Commas:

Commas are supposed to go after introductory material.  And here's the trick to that.  Look for the subject.  So, the structure looks something like this...  Blah, blah, blah, blah, S-V.

If you only have three words or fewer before your subject, then you don't need a comma, but it's not wrong to put one in.  And I usually recommend putting one in unless there's some reason not to.  Another example would be:

First, take the knife and put it into the peanut butter jar.

So, where should the introductory comma go in this sentence?

When we were calling the young boy to the road after a long day at the lake in the middle of summertime because of his bandaged feet the dogs barked.

Look for the subject.  The comma goes before that.

Here is the extra credit opportunity that I offer each semester.  If you can find an introductory comma on a piece of packaging, like the wrapper from your candy bar today, take a picture of it and post it to your blog, and I'll give you an extra 500 points.

You say, "That's crazy, Mr. B!  That's too many points for just for a little comma."

I reply, "I know...  I know..."

Day 3: Invention

(First of all, sorry that we have to have coursework during summertime.  Just get some Cheerios, turn on the morning cartoons, and do your blogs!  Your posts, remember won't be due until tomorrow at noon.)

So, is rhetoric to be trusted?

I mean, we use rhetoric to persuade each other all the time.  Buy my product.  Go to lunch with me. Rhetoric shapes our reality.

Just think about magazine covers.  Magazine covers are always trying to sell you a particular reality.  Cool cars = happy.  Nice pretty summer home = happy.  Ripped abs = happy.  Pretty supermodel = happy.

But all these things are rhetorical.  They are crafted.

Check out this website, which is mentioned in Envision in Depth.  It gives some really interesting insight into how advertisements are constructed.

In other words, this chick isn't real...

So, these images that are all around us, persuading us in different ways are shaped by using careful timing of shots, framing of the edges of the images, and then Photoshop.  We'll talk about timing and framing more later, but essentially this is a capturing of a particular time and space...

****

All right, unseemless transition...

***

How do you come up with ideas for a composition?

In rhetoric, there are what's called five canons: Invention, Style, Arrangement, Delivery, and Memory.  Invention allows us different approaches to developing concepts for our writing, and speaking, and other rhetorical work.  The Greeks would come up with ideas for arguments based on opposites, arguing based on definitions, dividing up concepts, looking for opposites, looking for similarities, determining cause and effect, looking for what's possible, or good, or right.

The Greeks would also practice dissoi logoi, which is opposing arguments.  Logoi is essentially the same word as logos that we learned yesterday.  I didn't get a chance to elaborate, but logos is an interesting word.  It can mean argument, logic, or just word.  It's the word in the Book of John, written in Greek, that begins, "In the beginning was the logos.  And the logos was with God.  And the logos was God."  Interesting, no?

Anyway, dissoi logoi is the practice of looking for counter arguments.  So,we'll practice that, like the Greeks did today on your blogs.  But first...

Daily Grammar Review:


Run-on Sentences:

As we mentioned yesterday, each sentence should have a subject and a verb.  But sometimes sentences have more than one subject or verb.

So, think of sentences like this:  Subject-Verb.  S-V.  Johnny runs.  But if the sentence is like this S-V and S-V, it becomes a run-on.  Johnny runs and Jane swims.  That "and" isn't strong enough to hold the two sentences together on its own, so it's a run-on sentence.  So we can make it two sentences: Johnny runs.  Jane swims.  We can put in a semicolon: Johnny runs; Jane swims.  Or we can put in a comma: Johnny runs, and Jane swims.  If the sentence is like this S-V-V, such as Johnny runs and swims.  Then it's okay.  Only if you have a new independent clause with its own new subject do you need to split up the sentence.


Your Daily Assignment: (Not due until Monday at noon.  Have a lovely weekend!)

Take a look at this Crocodile:

Now, to practice dissoi logoi, on your blog write a paragraph where the thesis is:

Crocodiles are majestic, powerful, and amazing creatures.

A thesis is simply your argument.  People sometimes freak out about thesis sentences, but they don't have to be complicated.

Now, on your blog, write a second paragraph with a second thesis:

Crocodiles are ridiculous looking, silly, and lame creatures.

That's practicing dissoi logoi, arguing both sides of an argument.  It can be a useful practice for working through a concept no matter which side your actually taking.


Your first major paper assignment:


Along with your blog posts, you have three major assignments for this class, the first of which I wanted to assign today so that you'd have it as early as possible.  It's a paper, and here's the prompt:

This assignment requires students to develop proficiency in rhetorical analysis and argument by developing a writing piece that closely problematizes one visual text. 

You have two choices for a text to analyze.

• You may choose your or a friend’s Facebook profile picture and think critically about what that image is communicating.  What kind of an ethos, or persona, is the image trying to persuade its audience that it possesses?  I want you to be critical of the image in some ways, even if it is of yourself.  You might even pick a picture that you used to use, but don’t anymore.  Why did you change it?  How does the image—whoever it is—communicate personality, good or bad?  What kind of details can you pick out that add or detract from what the person wants others to see about him or her?
• Alternatively, you may get a magazine cover from June or July.  Based on the idea that every image communicates something, walk me as your reader through the aspects that are being conveyed to a potential viewer for that image.  Is there a logic here?  Who made the image and is responsible for it?  Be a little critical of the image.  Think about what the magazine cover was trying to communicate and how it fails or doesn’t fail.  What kind of emotions does the image draw out of a potential audience, and why and how does the image draw out those emotions?

The aim of your argument is to support a thesis about an image—using the tools of persuasion—concerning how your chosen visual text itself offers a persuasive argument with troublesome issues or tactics.  The form of this assignment is an essay that analyzes the visual image and the rhetorical elements of composition, presentation, intended audience, and effect by looking at the image’s logical, emotional, and ethical appeals.  You should quote at least two other sources for your argument other than the primary rhetorical text—that is, the image—that you are analyzing.  This assignment should include a Works Cited page, be formatted according to MLA standards (which includes double spacing, one inch margins, 12 point font, and Times New Roman) and be a minimum of 1000 words.

You should e-mail me your draft and your final assignment, though it'd be nice to see the documents linked in the sidebars of your blogs too!

First draft due: July 5, at least 2 pages done.

Final draft due: July 9

Begin finding an image to analyze soon... today even!

Day 2: Visual Rhetorics

All right.   Now that you've got an idea of what rhetoric is, it's time to start applying these new skills of reading and critical thinking.

So, let's consider this piece of rhetoric, which has its own argument, and its own way of making it.

So, it's an ad for Canadian Club whiskey.  And we can look at two triangles of rhetoric to think through this image, which has an argument.

What is the argument?  What is its thesis?

"You should buy Canadian Club whiskey."  Easy.

But then what?

Well, we've got two triangles.  The first triangle that you read about last night is The Rhetorical Situation.

This is the interrelated interaction that goes on in any form of communication.  You've got a text, an author, and an audience, even if you're looking at an editorial cartoon.

So, who is the author, the communicator?  Well, it can be a bit complicated.  There is the company, Canadian Club, the graphic designer who made the ad, and also the person speaking in the ad, which is the persona crafted in the ad who is speaking to us.  Any of these could be said to be the speaker.  We, of course, are the audience.  But most of you aren't 21, so are you really the audience (*snicker snicker mumble mumble)?  Who is the specific audience that this ad is geared toward?  And what is the message, the text itself?

 I mean, this ad is talking about your dad, and how he slept around before he had sex with your mom.  (That anonymous "you," which is the second person, works all the time to make "you" the audience.  Remember, "Ask not what your country can do for you?")  But back to the sex.  Most people don't want to think about any of this, so is the ad misguided?  Is it misdirected?  And then there's this curse word, "damn."  How many audiences would that offend?  So, what audience is this ad targeting, and which audiences is it ignoring altogether?  But there must be someone whom this ad really works for, right?

We said that the message was simple: "Buy Canadian Club."  But there's something more.  There is a particular logic to this argument.  Why should you buy Canadian Club, according to the ad?  Because your father drank it, and he was cool, even if you don't know how "cool" he was (and they're working from a particular definition of cool, one that some people--including Mr. Butts--might disagree with).  So, it communicates some cultural values about being like your father and being cool.

Plus, we could get into little technical details about the ad, like what does the white space do around the images?  And that yellow tinge to make sure that we know these images are old, are vintage, and are real.  Why do all of this to sell a bottle of whiskey?

How might you write about this ad?

Or this one?

***

Tonight you'll also read about logos, ethos, and pathos (we italicize them since they are Greek words we are using in English), which function as a kind of second triangle.

These three things are known as the three artistic proofs in Aristotle's book called, On Rhetoric.  And, here might be a good time to remind you, if you're thinking, I'm a science major, how is rhetoric relevant to my work?  Rhetoric is sometimes known as the art of arts, which means that it's the big daddy of all the other subjects, because it contains them, because all the other subjects are wrapped up in language.  You know your science textbook?  It's all words.  It's rhetorical.  It's communication as much as it is testing.  So, that's why everybody has to take this class.

All right, back to the three artistic proofs.  Logos is logical appeal.  It's usually found very clearly in the thesis of a work, of an essay or whatever form of rhetoric that we're talking about.  Think of it corresponding to the message part of the triangle that we talked about earlier.

Then there's pathos.  Pathos is emotional appeal.  It's like when you see ads like this:

I don't think I need to say much about this, but you need to be able to describe different kinds of emotional appeals when you talk about rhetorical compositions such as happy, sad, nostalgic, frightening, or appalling, and so on.  Pathos might map onto audience from the first triangle, since the audience feels the emotion.

Then, there's ethos.  Ethos is not ethics, which we'll talk about another day.  But ethos is the persona that an arguer, a rhetor, a compositionist makes for him or herself.  These are artistic proofs, so they have to be crafted.  They aren't natural.  So, a good example of ethos is using actors to play doctors in drug commercials.  This builds credibility.  You wouldn't want a bum selling you pharmaceuticals in a commercial.  Doctors have credibility, so ad companies put good looking guys in lab coats and have them tell you about how awesome their product is.  What kind of an ethos did the Canadian Club whiskey ad have?  Ethos is important.  This is also why your professors don't come into class wearing sweatpants, or why you should dress up for a job interview.  These rhetorical approaches aren't lying; they aren't evil and manipulative; they're just the way to function rhetorically in different situations.  This leaves ethos to map onto author or communicator from the first triangle and completes our line of thinking for the day.

__________________________

Grammar Review:

Sentence Fragments:

A sentence always needs a subject and a verb (or a predicate).  This is the rule.

So, some sentence fragments are:

• When I went to the pirate ship.
• And I.
• Meatloaf.
• In the beginning when everyone was calm and grey near the old brick house at the center of town just after the war.

The first example is a sentence fragment because it has that "When."  Take it out and it's a perfectly good sentence.  The "when" makes it into a dependent clause, which can't stand on its own.

An independent clause has a subject and predicate, and every sentence needs an independent clause, but they can also use dependent clauses.

But here's a trick.

What about this sentence?

Love.

Is it a fragment?

No, because it could be an imperative verb, a verb that gives a command.  What's the subject though?

An implied "you."

(You) love.

And one last thing.  <-------  This is a sentence fragment, but sometimes they can actually be useful and used well.  Every grammar rule may be broken if you know what you're doing.  But your readers can tell if your consciously using a sentence fragment or if it's a mistake.  So, be very careful there, and don't use them in formal writing.  (But blogs aren't formal writing.)  So that's your first grammar review for the day.

Take care.


Your Daily Assignment:

Consider messages that you see around you every day and all of the forms of rhetoric, such as comics, ads, cinema, websites, and so on that bombard you and shape your experiences and your culture.  Find an interesting ad or picture that communicates something, and write up a little paragraph thinking through what it's communicating and how it's doing it like we did with the Canadian Club whiskey ad.  (And don't steal my ads, look for your own!  Maybe for a product that you like or don't like!)

Introductions: June 27th

Welcome, again, to English 103, summertime edition.  This English class is a bit different than many English classes that you may have taken before.  There aren't any novels.  There aren't many poems.  More than anything, this class should help you to think about reading and writing in the most general sense.  We read and write all the time.  We read each other.  We compose in a host of different ways, increasingly online, so there's a lot to be learned even by having this class digitally.

Each day on this blog, I'll have a post that goes over a few points, and has your blog assignment for the day, which will count as your class attendance for the day and count for participation grades based on the grade point worksheet (download that from the link to the right under the syllabus).  Each day I will post, then you will post by noon on the next day.  You will have a few other assignments along the way.

I'll also usually have some kind of grammar review attached to each blog post that will help us remember some basic things, like where our commas are supposed to go.  At the college level, you're expected to know and do these things in your writing, but I find that most of the time, students like having different refreshers on that needlessly intimidating thing known as "grammar."  You know who to blame for grammar?  This guy.

Anyways, the foundation of reading and writing was studied by the Greeks and was known as rhetoric.  Rhetoric is a tricky word that most people only associate with politicians who lie, but we use rhetoric all the time.  We use rhetoric whenever we communicate, in our body language, in our drawings, in the way we dress, in printed or spoken language, in Youtube videos.  Check out the Wikipedia entry for rhetoric now.

An essay is quite another matter.  In French, the word essayer means "to try."  The etymologies of words can be really interesting.  Here in this class, each essay will be an attempt at conveying something.  Writing is tough.  But it can be fun if you can find a way of writing something that you care about in an interesting way.  That's the trick.  Compose about topics that you love or hate, and have fun with it.  That's what we'll try to do here.

***

On a personal note, I have been in Switzerland.  And am now in Italy until the 3rd of July...  Maybe I'll post some pictures.  In any case, please e-mail me with any questions; but there is a little bit of a time difference.  I'll let you know if anything gets crazy with the European interwebs. Since, we'll be blogging, things can sometimes be a bit personal; that's good.  We'll create a community online together.  I look forward to it.

***

Your Daily Assignment:

1. Read over the syllabus.  That's our class contract.
2. Create a blog with a normal Google account. (It's easier that way, and more functional than your Clemson account).  Remember your password and username!  Email me the link which should be something like http://ashleyisawesome.blogspot.com.  You can see more about getting started with a blog here: http://support.google.com/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=112498
3. Write a blog post introducing yourself.  Include a picture that represents you.  Tell us something that you hate; it's important to know what you hate.
4. Read chapter one in your Envision in Depth book about rhetoric.  And in case you haven't gotten your teal copy of Envision in Depth yet, I've got a scanned pdf of the first chapter here.  And here's the second chapter.  But that's all I'm giving you!  Get the book!  (Aristotle's definition is in there, and that's the one we'll go by).  There are a lot of basic concepts for this class in that chapter, such as logos, ethos, and pathos... and kairos too.  Most of the time, I'll just have you skim a chapter, and then I'll point out specific things or have you do something related to a chapter's contents on your blogs.

Our Collective Little Class Space.

Hello out there.


So, this blog will be our homebase.  Our class space in cyberspace.  Our hub.  I'll post files here occasionally, and other English randomness, but also you'll be able to see each others' blogs in the link list on the right and keep up with what your community is saying and doing.  I encourage commenting and sharing!!!  Post whatever you like along with the posts that I ask of you.  From there, the rest is yours.