Reading Responses

In our everyday lives we use a rhetorical analysis to help convey our thoughts in rhetorical situations. A rhetorical analysis is a process we use to determine what the best approach is when writing. The four components of a rhetorical analysis are the writer, the reader, the text, and the medium. Simply put, who are you, who are you writing to, what are you trying to say, and how will you say it. For example, when trying to say “hi” to an old friend the writer is you. The reader is an old friend, so it isn’t expected to be as formal with them seeing as how you are on more of a personal level. The text is a simple message so the medium that could be used would be something such as an email, or a text message.
Within a rhetorical analysis you can also use appeals such as pathos, logos, and ethos to help you strengthen your writing. Pathos is the appeal to emotion. Logos is the appeal to logic and facts. Ethos is the appeal to credibility and establishing yourself. It is up to you to determine which appeal would be appropriate when drafting your rhetorical analysis. Different situations need different approaches to help support a topic. When it comes to writing online I believe I appeal more towards ethos, the appeal to credibility. It is important to establish who you are on the internet, and why people should listen to you and what you’re saying.

In this video with the president, each politician uses a different approach when asking Mr. Obama. The first politician, I believe, uses the approach to the appeal of pathos. He begins by telling president Obama of a letter he has from a lower class family that is struggling to make ends meet because of the unemployment rate. The politician also mentions that this is an African American family, which I'm not sure if it was supposed to help Obama relate or not. I do not believe his approach worked well with Mr. Obama because instead of getting an emotional response back, he just received a sort of cold answer full of numbers and facts. On the other hand, I do believe that this politicians appeal towards pathos worked for me. His approach made me feel sympathetic towards the family and question Obama's goals as a leader, like the politician wanted. The second politician began his approach with a bit of ethos which I think was successful I regards to his specific question. Right off the bat he mentions that he is one of the head chairs in the budget committee. I believe that this worked well with Mr. Obama because the president like to answer with facts and numbers and that's all the budget committee deals with so Mr. Obama answered his question with something he can relate with. An example of logos I believe came from the president. First off he is using his position to justify a lot of situations. Second of all, almost all the answers he gives have a lot of facts and numbers in them. I feel like a lot of the politicians only care about the numbers, excluding the lady politician. You can hear the sympathy and the overall concern with how her people are doing. When she spoke to Obama she wasn't really being accusatory like the others came off, but more curious as to why things aren't working and what's being changed. I think her approach worked well with me because since I could see her passion in the subject it made me pay more attention. When the other politicians become more accusatory towards the president, it turns me away from what they're saying and more towards Obama's response because I feel bad and feel like he's being attacked.

My blog is one that posts comical thoughts/stories and is called "The Tangential". It presents itself very cleanly, in regards to how the blog is set up. Most of the page is white, with a slight hint of blue in some of the links. I find this page appealing because its very simple, there isn't much going on, and you can focus more on the text and titles of the blog posts. On the right side of the page, there is a column for the categories the authors have written about. Some of the blog posts are categorized into ones such as, "Art Bonner", "Hatorade", "Minnesota", and, "Substances". Although there are some more common categories listed like, "Music", and, "Television", I like the creativity and more original categories that have been presented. On the left side column, you can find a list of the blog posts, with the most recent post being listed first. The first few blog posts are titled, "What Meatloaf Won't do for Love (and why its creepy)", "Thoughts I had While Hangover at Walmart", and, "Santa Welcomes his Elves Back from Summer Vacation". I think the titles alone help set up and present what this blog is all about.

I think the ideal audience for my blog is an audience that has a sense of humor, enjoys sarcasm or satire, and knows how to avidly use tumblr. I believe my web blog is one that requires someone with a sense of humor because most of their posts aren't things about what is happening in society, what's going on with celebrities, how to cook food, or the latest update on fashion. These posts are served with a purpose to entertain. Although some may be relateable like the post about being hangover in Walmart, most of the posts are just outrageous and humorous. I say that this blogs audience requires someone who knows how to use tumblr because there aren't very many comments so I feel like its not a blog that comes across very often unless you know what you're searching for.

The audience of these posts seem to be educated people. Most of the comments on certain blogs are ones that are correcting what the author said. One comment written by blindeke says, "also you're about 6 miles too far northwest to be in the "west 7th neighborhood"; otherwise, thanks for the piece." Even though he is correcting the author, I feel like he wants to reassure the author that he doesn't mean anything negative. This gives me the idea that the audience is appreciative or positive towards the posts and just wants the author to be more correct, without trying to offend them.

I believe the authors sole purpose is to entertain their audience. This web blog has many authors and most seem to have a background with comedy. The first header on the page says, "A creative writing blog. Our mission: Don't be boring. Don't suck. We exist here". I think that if a post were to get negative feedback from the audience that the authors would genuinely feel bad and want only to improve their work. This might be far fetched but I feel like the authors might use this blog as a way to test out certain posts, jokes, and ideas, if in fact they are things like comedians.

James Paul Gee defines literacy as control of secondary use of language. He helps support his definition by breaking it down even further. Gee says that within the definition of literacy, you must first define the term discourse. Discourse is "a socially accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking, and of acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or a social network". Within the term discourse there are the terms Dominant literacy and Powerful literacy. Dominant literacy is "control of a secondary use of language used in what I called above a “dominant discourse”. Powerful literacy is control as a secondary use of language used in a secondary discourse that can serve as a meta-discourse to critique the primary discourse of other secondary discourses, including dominant discourses". Along with those terms he also mentions the words acquisition and learning. He then defines literacy as, "any discourse, primary or secondary, that is for most people most of the time only mastered through acquisition, not learning".

This did change my understanding of literacy. It overcomplicated the word by showing so many levels to the definition, but Gee explained them thoroughly enough to understand. I never thought about the definition much before, but it is interesting to see how Gee could write such a long paper over one definition. This helps show me that writing 5 pages over a broad topic can be a lot easier and more detailed than I usually find it to be.

Some of the dialogue I liked was:


The girl looked across at the hills
"They're lovely hills," she said. "They don't really look like white elephants. I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees.'
"Should we have another drink?"
"All right"

These lines help bring out the title. I don't like Hemingway's writing all too much. There were points in the dialogue where I would get confused as to who is talking. His writing worked in the sense that I want to read more just to figure out what happened though.

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