Chapter 3 Reading Response

Rhetorical situation describes the way we communicate with other people as we are unconsciously and intuitively analyzing our situation without much applied effort. A rhetorical situation would be the instance where we are actually communicating with another person or a group of people and interpreting the patters in how the group is communicating. Rhetorical situation happens when a person follows the general flow of the conversation and interprets what the other people are thinking as a result of how you and other people are conveying information to them. This can feel like analyzing the emotions of other people in how they deliver information to you and the intention behind the words or the emotions behind what they are saying to you. This gives the people in groups a clearer understanding of how information that is passed along in groups makes more sense to the interpreter and how a steady flow of conversation and dialogue is able to continue. A Rhetorical analysis is how a person interprets information and how they decide to provide feedback to the individual or group of people they are communicating with. The way a person responds is determined by how they intend for their reader to respond to the information they present to them. For example, people will contextualize what they say in order to sway another person’s opinion or help them to feel the same way they do about a certain situation. If a person feels angry about the violence that resulted at the Ferguson riot and how innocent people were injured as a result, then they may convey information to someone they’re telling the news to in a way that will sway their opinion about Ferguson in a way that aligns with their point of view and feelings.

When I write online I appeal most to Pathos, because I like to express myself emotionally when I am talking to other people. Communicating with people through my feelings is the best way for me because I am an emotional person so I am able to understand other people’s emotions when I am communicating with them and feel their intention behind the words they are saying to me so I can give an appropriate response. When I blog or write online I try to help my readers experience the way I feel about my life or the social justice related issues I typically tend to post. I describe my emotions through pictures, writing, and graphics such as videos to explain my personality and describe the things that I find funny. I may post a picture of That’s So Raven for example, to show that it was a show I really enjoyed and my personality is shaped by the shows I watched growing up and how I was socialized by mainstream Disney movies and upper middle class predominately white culture. When kids find something funny on the TV when they grow up they tend to adopt those characteristics and repeat them when they are in front of their friends, family, and other people at school. When kids watch similar things on TV that are classified as humorous then these behaviors are perpetuated through their actions and they are made universally and generationally funny when they are familiar and carried out by other kids in their age group.

While watching the Q&A I noticed how the politicians used plenty of Ethos and Logos when they were backing up their claims. They used very specific examples of Pathos when they rooted their claims in real life situations. At the beginning of the Q&A, the first speaker referenced how unemployment was a serious issue in the nation. The speaker specifically talked about how young African American boy Carter junior and his families were homeless, struggling, and he included how they went to the Salvation Army. The young boy’s father said that jobs were hard to come by compared to when he was younger. Unemployment is at an all time high compared to the time of his youth. Pulling on the emotions of the audience members to back up their opinions in the format of a question made it easy for the panelists to provoke an authentic dialogue with president Obama. Whenever someone is emotionally charged about what they are speaking about they feel more motivated to engage in the dialogue. The way a person responds in a dialogue all depends on the way they are approached by the individual(s) who made initial contact with them. In this case, since the man referenced a struggling African American family this could have made the president more passionate about his response because he is an African American man himself who is passionate about helping people elevate to greater heights. The closer a person identifies with an issue or the person they are communicating with, then they feel more emotionally invested in what they are discussing. They feel more tied to the topic because they are easily able to picture the situation happening to them. When President Obama responded to the original question, that was a great example of Pathos, the way he delivered his response was coded with a conviction and forwardness that made him seem more passionate about the discussion. He corrected the original speakers statement that unemployment has reached 10% and instead stated how unemployment was maintained in the 8% range of job losses after the recession. Another way that Logos are used is when Obama talks about the stimulus package when he uses reasoning because he asks rhetorical questions throughout his speech when he asks the panelists and audience members whether they agree with his position or not. The fact that he is willing to take other peoples comprehension into consideration and help them to understand his position helps others to understand his reasoning. And lastly, the president also demonstrates ethos when he stated how he is willing to take the opinions of the opposing party into consideration so he can strengthen his outlook on different perspectives instead of only his own.

This paper analyzes the way the blog I have chosen reaches its community of readers and the means by which they communicate to their readers using the three most common rhetorical appeals. We will explore the types of messages this blog sends to its community of readers and how its readers may feel about the messages they receive from viewing the blog, and also what the demographic of blog viewers are that view this blog. The blog I have chosen is called “Turquoblue,” which is an amalgamation of pictures and messages surrounding the themes of love, travel, freedom, hope, intimacy, accomplishment, and positive encouragement. We will define the types of feelings or emotions the viewer may experience while viewing the blog and also describe the author’s intentions behind blogging what they chose to blog as well as their pattern of thematic elements. The recurring themes of the blog all come together to make a statement about the overall genre of the blog and what purpose it serves to covey to the reader will be examined during this paper.

The blog that I have chosen is about love, travel, serious still images of black and white editorial still images of nature, industrialism, and the concrete spaces of working class people in metropolitan cities. The demographic of the blog would be people who are feminine, caregivers, and romantic thinkers that are interested in travel and adventure. This blog is very much about how people relate to other people and how they form connections to their outside world. It is an expression of love in several creative forms because one of the primary focuses of the blog is how people intimately connect with one another and how they express their language of love to one another by means of body language. This blog strives to show how love and freedom are expressed through nature such as pictures of tropical places, the loose spacing of fruits spread out over a table, and walking down a tunnel where at the end of the path you see a light of hope that submerges your body in its rays. One picture on the blog was of a horse and its mane is loosely braided down its neck that hangs off its shoulder. The horse represents freedom and strength and agility, sturdiness, and forwardness. The romantic framing of the horses mane paints the picture of a loosely romantic freedom of a woman with a long sheer gown with her hair carried by the wind as beads of oceanic rain mist drips through the strands of her hair and loosens the tangles of each follicle. The image I described reminds me of a romantic portrayal of Helen Keller as her life living on a prairie on the West coast in Washington state or Oregon. The image that this creates perfectly describes one predominant thematic element of the blog of a natural and romantic style of living that is rooted in earth and the pre-industrial era. The blog also makes a stark comparison of the pre and post industrial eras by including pictures of prairie, nature, and pasteurization, along with automobiles, urban city living, gadgets from the modern electronic era such as beats head sets and modern car technologies and amenities.

*I Wrote this on time for class and posted it after the fact.

1. Gee defines literacy as discourses that are established as a set of ways language is used, the way we think, and the way we behave to identify ourselves within a community. Literacy is linked to the discourses within a community and how ideals are expressed by a community through its language. Therefore, literacy is linked to our identity because Gee also defines our discourse as our identity kit within a group. Our identity is influenced by our race, gender, socioeconomic class, education, ability and age.

2. I changed my understanding of literacy because I originally thought of literacy only as the ability to read and write. But now I think of literacy as the language of discourses that are particular to the community it is circulating throughout, and common to that community. This affects my own understanding of my own literacy story because now I think of literacy on a broader scale that is particular to certain groups more than others based off of the standards of what is acceptable to that group. Without being allowed to criticize that community, an outside group would not be able to do so if it doesn't understand the standards and principles within that community.

I think that Ong's Main argument is that "without a deep understanding of the normal oral or oral-aural consciousness and noetic economy of humankind before writing came along, it is impossible to grasp what writing accomplished". He Goes on to talk about the contributions that writing has made to our society and our thought processes as humans have developed by the structuring of thoughts into writing. He also talks about how our thoughts have been influenced by writing. By thinking about a word we are able to think about the tangible letters of the words. Writing and the development of the alphabet is a technology that is so deeply engrained in our thoughts about words that "without tremendous effort we cannot separate it from ourselves or even recognize its presence and influence".

A few quotes from the writing that have influenced the way I view this piece is:
Ong talks about Writing as a technology and he references Asian Culture as its technology of writing developed particular to its culture.
"In their own indigenous technologies of writing, East Asia--China, Korea, and Japan--typically used not pens but brushes, not liquid ink in ink-horns or inkwells, but ink block blocks, on which the wet brush was rubbed as in making water-colour paintings, in this sense 'painting' rather than 'writing' their texts".
Writing as a technology as it pertains to literacy is an interesting concept.

I was standing on the ground looking up at Brian as he attempted to climb the rock-climbing wall that was the first level of difficulty on the wall. The wall was an incline that made a right triangle with the wall. There was a metal beam at the top of the wall that stretched across it from the left to right side of the room. We looped our belaying ropes around the metal beam where we were able to secure our climbers safety to the wall if they lost their grip from it. As a climber steadily got closer towards the top of the wall where the metal beam was, the incline got steeper and steeper closer toward an acute angle with the top of the wall. The wall he climbed was the least difficult wall to climb and it had the largest amount of pegs to grip the wall. It was challenging to anyone who hasn’t climbed a wall before or was afraid of heights. As a member of the bunker busters it was our duty to cheer on a member of our tribe to encourage them to be the best they can be and conquer any obstacle we each tried to overcome.
“Brian keep on going!”
“You can do it Brian!”
“Bunker Busters Unite!”
We pushed his legs up the wall whenever he tried to come down, because we knew he was capable of making it to the top this time. We didn’t force him to do anything he didn’t want to do but it was our duty as peer leaders to push our peers with adapted needs to be the best they can be. We straddled a humble line of encouragement and forcefulness to ensure the right balance of reassurance along with positive reinforcement for them to know they can reach their fullest potential if they tried and didn’t give up. We weren’t just leaders for them but they were our friends and some of us took it upon ourselves to eat lunch and hang out with them outside of class and school. We developed a deep connection with Brian because we took him out to the movies at some point and we continued to bring out his social side by fueling him with our silliness and we encouraged him to break out of his shell. Sometimes were were too much for him and he felt overpowered by the energy we brought to him, but without the level of energy we brought to him he wouldn’t have flowered as well as he did throughout the semester.
Brian was one of the special needs peers in our tribe. We were grouped with other special needs peers to make our own tribes. We were able-bodied peer leaders who were grouped with disable bodied mentees but we were treated each other equally in our gym class like we were all friends. We would choose whom we wanted to be in a tribe with at the beginning of the semester based on which special needs person we most identified with. Brian was one of two high functioning peers within our tribe. Both of our peers were high functioning but Brian was not at high functioning as Brendan who had more of a social disability. Brian had Asperger syndrome with is a high functioning form of autism. The behaviors associated with Asperger’s syndrome are social disability, repetitive language, and clumsiness. He was all of these things but these things were what made him unique and why we appreciated him and his personality so much. We formed our tribes around our special needs peers who we combined with to promote team building, encouragement, empowerment, and healthy competition. We worked together in different units that we implemented all of these facets of our class. The unit we were currently working in was the Rock Climbing unit. Since our peers were higher functioning when we had relay competitions in either of our units we may have been more advantaged than other tribes. We would compete against each other in some of our units and we would call these competitions ‘tribal’ as they were modeled after the reality TV series “Survivor”. If our activities were tribal that meant that we were competing against other tribes to win a prize or even just for the fun of it. We felt like families towards the end of the semester as we overcame more and more obstacles within our groups as we transitioned from each different unit together. In our high ropes and rock-climbing unit our fear of heights challenged us, but overcoming our fear by using our mental and physical strength, and also pushing ourselves farther than we ever thought we could go to overcome obstacles is what put us in situations where we had no choice but to come together and merge at delicate times in the midst of our struggles. Going past a point where we felt we were no longer able to continue due to fear or self doubt were the moments that shaped us to become capable people who can attain our potential no matter what we put our minds to.
The Bunker Busters was the name of our tribe. We said positive and silly phrases to each other in order to have as much fun in class as possible. If we didn’t make it fun and exciting we would’ve been like other tribes who didn’t show how invested in what they were doing as we felt we were. We broke down the barrier between able bodied and disable bodied people and we truly integrated ourselves with each other by bringing out our childish nature and encouraging the best and most exciting environment. The whole time we interacted with each other we made it seem like we were a hyper exaggeration of ourselves. That made it even more fun for us to just let go of our ambitions and just be free in our gym class. Because we developed this side of ourselves within our class setting it was hard for us to not separate who we were in gym class from who we were in our everyday lives to make our lives as vibrant and fun as they were in our gym class. We would also adopt our developed personalities especially when dealing with other special needs kids and whenever we interacted with special needs kids outside of gym. By letting go of what other people thought of us in our class it aided us to become more self-accepting people outside of how other people thought of us because we were interested in having fun, having a good time and enjoying life.
The phrases that we commonly said to each other and Brian as we encouraged him to travel up the wall and touch the top of the metal beam were delivered with humor and positivity. In order to show to our peers that they were capable of doing what they set their minds to past any preconceived limitations they may have had, we tried to do our best on the obstacles to make a positive example for our special needs peers. They could follow our example if they were able to push themselves past a point they did not think they were capable of attaining. I always made it a point to push myself my hardest and past my comfort level to encourage other people in my class that they can accomplish anything they set their minds to. Being apart of adapted P.E. helped me develop my ability to set my mind to something and actually maintain an unbreakable determination to see my goal through. In addition to helping myself overcome my fears I developed a leadership mentality. Leaders set their minds to something and are able to overcome what they see as obstacles with group reinforcement and understanding. They do not hold an elevated position above any other member they are working with. I was able to encourage other people to do what they set their minds to by developing friendship bonds with people and giving them positive encouragement along the way. I genuinely wanted to know about how people were and know whom they are as people by getting to know who they were outside of gym class. We talked about their families, and how they were feeling and why they felt the way they did on a given day but most of all we kept the energy up and had fun with each other. Oftentimes Adapted P.E. was the best part of the day for our peers and us. We enjoyed each other and had so much fun making our own close-knit families within our classes because we created an inclusive space where everyone was cool with each other regardless of who our friends were outside of our class.
Our class huddled around the first rock-climbing wall as we made a huge ruckus to keep Brian going up the wall. If he continued up the wall it would have been an accomplishment for our tribe and more of a huge personal accomplishment for him too. We kept on chanting our tribe name and other silly sayings that unified our tribe, and kept us having a great time. More of our classmates crowded around the first rock-climbing wall as Brian kept climbing. The energy we created to push him towards the top attracted other people to cheer him on as well. So many other times he tried to climb that rock-climbing wall he wasn’t able to because we would encourage him to continue climbing whenever he made a departure down the wall. We were able to encourage him to finish climbing and he reached it to the top. He hung onto the black metal beam at the top of the wall and we were able to let him down from the rock-climbing wall. He reached away from the wall and developed the courage to hang onto the beam and wait for his departure after his successful climb. After climbing to the top of the wall and hanging from the pole it generally sealed the climbers’ success of their climb by going the extra mile to challenge themselves to let go of their comfort for an split moment in time to either jump or leap to the pole and be prepared to be lowered down from their climb.

The lines that I tended to like in the story were painting the picture of what the girl (Jig) at the bar looked like while she was having the sit-down drink with the man. Here are the parts of text that I felt were a cool visual that the narrator put forth. I also included important parts of the text that stood out as key and are important to me.

"The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry."

I liked this part of text because I can clearly imagine a visualization of the girl as she sits across the table from Jig and they have their beers in front of them. She has her chin resting on her hand as she peers off into the sunset behind the hills with peeled eyes.

Here is another piece that painted a cool visual.

"Should we have another drink?"
"All right."
The warm wind blew the bead curtain against the table.
"The beer's nice and cool," the man said.
"It's Lovely," the girl said.
"It's really an awfully simple operation, Jig," The man said. It's not really an operation at all."
The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on.
"I know you wouldn't mind it, Jig. It's really not anything. It's just to let the air in."

This part of the text stood out to me because I could also see the tensity of the conversation as Jig was discussing the abortion with henry. She looks stern with her arms resting in her lap as she daydreams while glancing down at the table legs. The situation is somewhat tense as Jig looked down. She is contemplating whether or not the operation is beneficial to them and whether or not she wants to go through with it. It's important to highlight the tensity of this scene because they are deciding whether they want to terminate a human life or not.

The last part I liked is as follows.
"You've got to realize," he said. "that I don't want you to do it if you don't want to. I'm perfectly willing to go through with it if it means anything to you."
"Doesn't it mean anything to you" We could get along"

This is an important part of the story because they went back and forth a lot about how it was beneficial to do the abortion but then the man comes out and says that he is willing to go through with raising a child. Even though he says he gives his approval he is ultimately disconnected from the situation because he not entirely sure about his decision either. It seems like a hard topic to discuss because its hard for them to fully commit to one decision. "To do it or not to do it. That is the ultimate question." Having a baby drastically changes the outcome of where their lives are traveling from then onward such as whether or not they need to add the expense of raising another human's life into existence. But to not go through with the abortion means to not have given themselves and that life the chance to raise a life into existence. This situation is important to highlight because a human's life is priceless thing that can never be redeemed.