Untitled

[laurenstapp]

LaurenS WRD 111-011 

This planner describes me as a student because I like everything planned out and written down for me to see. I also like the satisfaction of crossing things out when I am finished with them. I especially like when I get ahead and get to cross things out that are due later on in the week. I am also a very organized person in general so keeping a planner really helps me keep my life in order because I am involved with so much here at school and back at home. Between  homework, studying, sorority events, sorority meetings, and club meetings I have a lot to handle and plan. So writing it all in a planner really helps keep my life together and not end up stressed out because I forgot to do something. The content of this image is a planner with all kinds of things to do and what times to do them written for every day. Also, different things are written in different colors. There is also a key on the side that says what each color pen writing means what. For example, in my personal planner, biology is written in green, biology lab is written in blue, chemistry is written in pink, chemistry lab is written in orange, wrd is written in purple, and Spanish is written in yellow. So every time I look at my planner and see a color, I know exactly what I have to do. There are times however when I get stressed out because there is so much written in one week of my planner that I feel like I am never going to get through it but the satisfaction of crossing everything off this the best part.  

[laurenstapp]

LaurenS wrd111-011 Reflection

After giving my speech in class Wednesday, I reflected on how I thought I did. Giving my speech in class on Wednesday was probably the most comfortable I've ever been giving a speech in a class. I feel like our class is really comfortable with each other and it felt like I was just talking to my friends. I was overall very confident going into the speech. I am a pretty confident person in general and I love speaking in front of people. I had also practiced multiple times, and timed myself. I even called my mom to practice giving it to her. I was still a little nervous, but I think that is pretty normal giving a 4-5 minute speech in front of a class. I’m always nervous when I first get up there to start and then I breathe a little and I calm down a lot. It really went as I expected and I am happy with how I did. 

In my speech I used many rhetorical appeals. I used the appeal to logic, the appeal to ethics, and the appeal to emotion. I used the appeal to logic by including statistics in my speech that really showed my audience that I had really researched the topic and had evidence to back me up. I used the appeal to ethics by including a personal connection to the topic. I talked about the police officer in my hometown who was shot and killed just doing his job. I also used the appeal to emotion by using the statistics and the personal story together. To engage my audience I started my speech with a question and a brief pause and then gave them optional answers to my question. This made the audience engage right in the beginning of my speech. I also brought the audience into the middle of my speech. I then left the audience with a quote which gave them something to think about as I finished.

Overall, I think the speech went really well and everyone is doing a great job.  

[laurenstapp]

LaurenS wrd111-011

There were many features in this podcast that had many effects and purposes. The first feature was a background of what was talked about in the first episode. This effects the listener so they have a recap of what was talked about in the previous episode. The purpose was to get people pulled back into this event. Another feature of this episode was the clips of actual interviews from people involved in this DUSTWUN search. This has a big effect on the listeners. By putting the listeners in the position to listen to what the people involved had to say about the situation. This was used to make the listeners feel more involved. There is a specific conversation in this episode that I’m still thinking about. In an interview with “Mujahid Rahman” he says they were blessed because they captured Bowe. He also said that capturing Bowe was worth the 15 Taliban that were killed. He says, “Some people are worth more than 1,000 other individuals. And he was worth maybe more than 5,000 individuals”. This quote being featured in this episode puts this whole situation into perspective. The Taliban saying that 15 of their own men being killed because of them capturing one American soldier was worth more like 5,000 individuals being killed, says something. This has a huge effect on the listeners. Is capturing one person really worth the death of 5,000 people? Not even 5,000, but 15? This has a counter argument because the American soldiers felt like retrieving one soldier wasn't worth all the deaths and work they had to put into the search. They were exhausted and he left his post. The purpose of this was to put this DUSTWUN into perspective.     

[laurenstapp]

LaurenS wrd111-011

I would like to go over features/effects/purposes again. 

[laurenstapp]

LaurenS wrd111-011

Sedaris uses humor throughout this article. I think he does this strategically because the article addresses a major issue in the world today. Gay marriage is a big topic that everyone has an opinion on. He uses humor in the article when he talks about waiting for the Supreme Court’s verdict on gay marriage. He makes this personal because it is a person issue for him. He has grown up with this as a personal problem in his life. He even brings up a time when his own mother called him a queer. He also talks about when the Supreme Court made their decision to make gay marriage legal nationwide. I think him making this personal really shows what it was like for someone who is gay to find out that they can legally get married and be with the person they love. His tone seems pretty laid back. His tone isn't argumentative. It may be kind of passive aggressive. He’s stating his opinion but not being argumentative about it. The feature of this article is the Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage. I think the effect of this article is for people to have a different look on gay marriage. He doesn't even want to refer to his significant other as his husband, but the fact that they can get married is a big event in history now. The purpose of this article is to inform people of the effect of the Supreme Court’s ruling on gay people and what it was like to finally hear that it was legal. 

[laurenstapp]

LaurenS wrd111-011

The logical fallacy I found was an example of a few types of fallacies. There were three in particular that I think related to the one I found. I think within the one fallacy someone could argue that it could be post hoc, ergo propter hoc, begging the question, or faulty generalizations. Presidential candidate Donald Trump said this in a recent debate: “America doesn't win anymore. But I’m a winner so I’ll make america win again.” Wait, excuse me Mr. Trump, but I am not sure that makes much sense. This could be an example of post hoc, ergo propter hoc because just because Donald Trump thinks he is great, doesn't mean he is great and it doesn't mean he’ll make something great. It is a good example of “after this, therefore because of this”. It is an example of begging the question because he uses circular reasoning. He says he's great so he’ll make America great. That would be like me saying that I think I’m great, so I can make America great. I would like to think I am great but that doesn't mean I can make America great. I think it is mainly an example of faulty generalizations because he draws a conclusion without any examples. He says he is great and can make America Great, yet he doesn’t give any information, examples, or facts that back up his conclusion. Whatever type of fallacy you decide it is, there is no argument that it isn't a fallacy.  

[laurenstapp]

LaurenS wrd111-011

The commercial I decided to look at and rhetorically analyze was the Victoria’s Secret commercial. In the commercial, a few of the Victoria’s Secret Angles, or models if you are unfamiliar, were dressed up like football players. Their team was the “Angles” and the other team was the “Devils”. The Angles were down with barely any time to go in the 4th quarter and they make this awesome play to win the game. They then proceed to do a celebratory dance in the end zone. This commercial aimed toward both women and men. Most people would get why it was aimed at women, because come on who doesn't want to look like those girls? They even look good playing FOOTBALL. That’s where the commercial is aimed at men. Men will watch this commercial because they love seeing tall, skinny, beautiful girls, dressed in football gear, pants, jersey, and even a helmet, tossing a football around and winning the game. It makes a few claims about women as well. It makes claims for women that women are strong and can play what society says is a mens sport. It also makes a claim that all women want to be sexy and impress men. It makes a stand for women in a good way like that one super bowl commercial from last year where they ask boys to run “like a girl” and then they ask girls to run “like a girl” and they are complete opposite reactions to the question. It’s empowering. On the other hand, it makes women not seem tough because their end zone celebratory dance is them doing a choreographed dance where they make a heart with their hands and their hair is down, curled, and their makeup is perfect. Overall i think the commercial was meant to be empowering to women and I think airing it during the super bowl was a great decision.    

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I8C20byFlc

[laurenstapp]

LaurenS wrd111-011

For this blog we had to read two articles about “privilege”. The first was titled “Why I’ll Never Apologize for My White Male Privilege” written by Tal Fortang.   The other, was called “Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person” written by Gina Crosley-Corcoran. Both of these articles talked about white privilege but both of these authors took their respective articles in two different directions. Tal Fortang took his article in direction one might expect. He starts his article by talking about the phrase “check your privilege”. He then spent the rest of his article talking about his family’s struggle to survive. How his grandfather overcame the Nazi’s invading Poland and eventually coming to America and about how his father worked hard enough in school to get into the top spot at a graduate school. He then eventually comes to the conclusion that he is in face privileged because he won't have to go through what his grandparents did. Gina Corcoran took her article in a completely different direction. She starts her article by talking about her conversation with a feminist saying that told her that she was privileged. One could say she was very shocked that someone told her she was privileged. She talks a little about her story and about how she grew up in a tiny trailer in the freezing temperatures with no heat. So she had never thought of herself as privileged. She spends the rest of her article defending what the feminist then told her. The feminist led her to another feminists article titled “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”. The article basically said just being born with white skin in America earns people certain privileges. She gives multiple examples and then comes to the conclusion that she herself is privileged. Both of these articles come to the same conclusion but they both went a different way about convincing themselves/their readers that they were. Both of these articles are a very persuasive and thought provoking. Fortang talked about his own personal struggle throughout the whole article whereas Corcoran talked about her own struggle but brought in a secondary source to help prove her case.  

[laurenstapp]

LaurenS wrd111-011

In this article, it was difficult to pick out who exactly was speaking because they start out the blog by saying “our”. The word our usually means multiple people which is confusing when it comes to a blog, which is usually run by one person. So technically the people who are speaking are the writers and owners of this particular blog. The audience was a little bit easier to pick out from this article. I would say the audience would be adults rather than students. This article is definitely more of an article that an adult would better comprehend and care more about. Not that younger people don't care at all but we [younger people and students] call the third world, “the third world” because thats what we were taught and that is all we know it as. To go deeper into what I mean by adult, I would say mainly people who study these other worlds. The people who write papers, do broadcasts, study, or label, the “third world”. This leads me into the exigence of the article. The exigence of this article, or the problem that drives this article, is whether we should call a certain parts of the world the “third world” or the “developing world” without this there would be no argument in this article. People have argued that the “developing world” doesn't work while other people have argued that the “third world” is not any better. That is the overall argument, or the exigence, of this article. 

[laurenstapp]

LaurenS wrd111-011

“Live Updates: What the President Is Doing to Keep Guns Out of the Wrong Hands.” whitehouse.gov. N.p., 8 Jan. 2016. Web. 19 Jan. 2016.

More than 30,000 people are killed because of gun violence in America each year. President Obama stated in his State of the Union Address this past week that he is taking executive action to reduce gun violence. His plans are designed to keep guns out of the wrong hands using background checks, make our communities safer from gun violence, increase mental health treatment, reporting to the background check system, and to shape the future of gun safety technology. If his plans really do all of these things then I truly do believe that it would be harder for guns to be put in the wrong peoples hands. The only problem I see with this is that he said he has “plans” to do these things. While he is working on his plans, anybody can go out and buy guns now so that they don’t have to put up with the hassle of more in depth background checks. I believe President Obama does have a plan, but he needs to get this plan started as soon as possible because more and more people are going out and buying guns before he starts to enforce these new gun laws.