Kellie Flynn reading response

If I were to explain the terms rhetorical situation and rhetorical analysis to a friend, I would describe them in a casual manner.I would be able to describe it through a text or email instead of in a formal paper. I would not need to use big words or write as if I was writing to a teacher or someone of high authority. I would be able to use past conversations of ours as examples to describe the two words. I would be able to communicate what the word rhetoric means and the four key elements of writer, reader text, and element.
While writing online I would most likely appeal to pathos. Pathos is the appeal to emotion, values, and beliefs. If I were writing about a controversial topic online I would want to emphasize emotions, pull on their beliefs, and stress values in order to fight for my side. I would use statistics and graphs to create a more powerful effect. I could also find photographs or videos that relate to the topic as mediums to back up my claim even more.

In high school there was a retreat the seniors all attended called Kairos, therefore I believed that the word just had to do with Catholicism. After reading this article and looking up what Kairos actually means, I discovered it has to do with time. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as: a time when conditions are right for the accomplishment of a crucial action; the opportune and decisive moment. This relates to the idea that online blogs are becoming a genre of their own because it is the most opportune time for such thing to happen. The article discusses how the online atmosphere of over-sharing allows for blogs to become popular and more widespread. The article discusses many of the modern concerns surrounding blogs deal with the confessional nature of blogs. Because they are public and can be extremely personal, people's personal lives are being seen or read by any one; the reader is not one specific type of person. Blogs can be extremely controversial in their content and with the wide variety of readers can be taken offensively by one person and supported by another. I believe these issues do exist. However due to the fact all Americans have the right to freedom of speech, people should be allowed to post what they would like online while refraining from obscenity and other things freedom of speech does not protect. The ideas of voyeurism and exhibitionism are a big issue in the world of online blogging. They allow for new questions of freedom of speech to arise and how voyeurism should be treated online.

1. The article talked a lot about voyeurism, however I have never learned about it before. Is there a better way to understand what it is and what the issues are surrounding it?

2. Why was MTV's "The Real World" brought up in this article? What does it have to do with blogging?

3. Why is the "democratization of celebrities" relevant to this article and blogging?

J’s Every Day Fashion is a blog created to display a closet online and inspire women who read it with innovative fashion ideas and ways to style their clothing. The author of this blog goes by J, she is a journalist who has a passion for empowering women to try something new and feel confident in what they are wearing. This blog is easy to read, yet informative containing pictures and how-to’s. J’s Every Day Fashion is a great resource for women of many different ages in search of finding out what is going on in the fashion world and how to implement these ideas in their own closets.
The author, J, describes her blog as “a place for moms, college students, and professionals in all shapes and sizes on a budget and dressing for the challenges of everyday life.” After reading through many of her blog posts, the blog as a whole accomplishes this goal of being a blog for all women to enjoy. The pictures on the blog are not of anorexic models that create an impossible ideal for most women, but are of regular women wearing clothing that would look nice on girls of many ages and shapes. Reading through the many comments of the viewers, it is easy to tell that the readers are not all one type of person, but a variety of women who share one common trait: they love fashion.
The blog’s readers play a huge role in the making of the blog. If it were not for them, the blog would not be as successful. The readers offer commentaries on their likes and dislikes of posts while adding their own ideas on how to make an outfit or how-to better for the next time the author does something similar. The author tries very hard to stay in contact with her readers by creating other outlets of social media for the readers to follow and learn more about what is going on in the author’s life and the fashion world.
This blog does a great job of tying together high fashion and normal people together. It creates a way for those on a budget to figure out how to dress like the hottest celebrities of the moment without blowing their life’s savings. J’s Everyday Fashion has every resource needed for a success and keeps working to become even better in the future.

1st speaker
Pointed out obama’s plans to lower unemployment, then pointed out how the unemployment rate has only gone up. Appealing to pathos by using an example of a little boy and his family struggling because the father does not have a job before asking if Obama would agree to a more bipartisan plan

2nd speaker provided his own research to back up his claims before asking his question. Spoke very directly and promptly.

3rd speaker brought up promises president Obama made that he did not follow up on, and parts of his campaign platform that also did not come true.

4th woman speaker from Tenessee thanked the president for being open to ideas then listed things she agreed with before offering ideas on how to change parts of healthcare that she did not agree with. Used evidence from past experiments as grounds to develop new ideas and policies instead of working off old ones

5th speaker used past evidence and pointed out the Republican’s desire to help create new policies instead of being pushed to the sideline

Last speaker brought up similarities with the president and how they both have children, appealing to pathos. Then brought up Republican policies to prevent the growth of government and how they were all ignored and only democratic policies have been given a chance.

Almost all of the representatives questioning the President used past evidence to support their claim before presenting their questions. A couple of the representatives used pathos by giving examples of specific poor families with little children and comparing himself with the president because they both have small children. All of the representatives asking questions did so in a respectful tone, yet their questions and question wording was clearly developed to point out the things they did not agree with in President Obama’s policies.

Literacy is difficult to define. Gee defines literacy as a way to control the secondary use of a language. He then discusses how people can interpret the meaning of the word literacy. Though there are many different meanings to the word, no matter what, it must be learned. No one is born literate. Learning how to be literate is a process and takes time. The way people learn to speak and write is also different based upon who is teaching them and where they are learning. There are many different social and economic influences that influence the way a person becomes literate.

Yes, reading this made me think of the way I became literate. I have been very blessed to have great education since pre-school. Because of this, I learned to read and write at a very early age. My educators were from the same area as me and spoke the same way as my parents. Therefore, I learned to pronounce and create sentences similar to the way my parents and educators did. Reflecting on the way I was taught to become literate may explain why my literacy story takes place in my home and involves my parents.

1. My family was on vacation in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. My mom, sister, and I decided to take the public bus to a market area we heard other people talking about. After being on the bus for over twenty minutes, we realized we had either gotten on the wrong bus or missed our stop. We then noticed that we were the only English-speaking people left on the bus and were on our way to a different small town in a foreign country. After trying to communicate with some of the other people on the bus, we decided it would be a good idea to get off and figure out a way back to our resort.

2. When I was little my mom and I read Junie B. Jones books every night before bed. I would always look forward to reading these books because they were funny. This book series is what ignited my love of reading. As I got older I began to get to read the books to my mom instead of her reading them to me.

3. When I was in a very difficult biology class. I am not very good at science; therefore I was completely lost during the lecture. I had no idea what was going on and was feeling completely lost. By teaching myself and getting extra help I was able to become literate in Biology and get a good grade on the test.


I originally printed this out and brought it to class, but we didn't use it in class so I am posting it on here now.

1. What are the health risks of drinking diet soda?

2. what are the long term effects of drinking caffeine?

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691502000960
This article discusses the effects of caffeine and caffeine withdrawal on mood and cognitive performance degraded by sleep restriction. Because sleep loss is one of the main side effects of drinking caffeine, I plan to use the research in this article to discuss the effects of sleep loss as a result of drinking caffeine.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0265203021000007840#.VTVDC16yjwI
This article discusses the effects of caffeine on human health in general. It discusses all areas in which caffeine can be harmful to the way your body functions. I plan to use it to find the most important and serious effects on health and then find more research on each of the most important effects.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02244933#page-1
This is another article on the effects of sleep loss and caffeine tied together. It goes more in depth to discuss this topic and I will use it to further support my claim that caffeine prevents sleep loss, which can effect a person’s mood and alertness

http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=609886
This article discusses the relation of caffeine and high blood pressure. Because high blood pressure is a health problem that can be contributed to use of caffeine, I will use the research from this article to support my claim that caffeine can have negative effects on a person’s health and well being.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02245285#page-1
This article discusses how people can gain a caffeine tolerance and then become dependent on caffeine. It is very controversial whether or not people can be dependent on caffeine (coffee or soda) to get through their day to day tasks. I will use this research to find whether or not it is in their heads or they have an actual addiction to caffeine



After researching the negative effects of caffeine in class, I found the public does not perceive caffeine as a harmful substance used day to day. Many view drinking coffee or having a soda as a daily necessity, but do not realize the harmful effects that go along with having too much caffeine on a regular basis. The articles and sites found in class tended to take people’s caffeine addiction as a joke or make it humorous. After finding scholarly articles online, I found that people’s addiction to caffeine could potentially lead to health issues. The scholarly, scientific articles based on research and facts discuss the harmful effects of caffeine on the human body and how over consumption can lead to chronic sleep loss, which leads to many other side effects.