Cooper Brooks - 1/30

This week we had 3 readings that covered a wide range of topics. The readings we were assigned included a passage from Praxis that gave us stories about animal cruelty, how the web is changing our world, how scientific studies are often misrepresented by the common media, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I have a dream speech, televising executions, slavery, and the expansiveness of space and what we are doing to reach it. The other readings we were assigned were about finding the argument, and a child’s right to voice their opinion in the classroom. The readings I will be focusing on will be the stories about animal cruelty, and social media from Praxis.

               The first story in in the praxis book, which is written about the issue of animal cruelty is a passage that emotionally appeals to the reader, the intention of this story was twofold, firstly to make us more aware of the horrible testing that large cosmetic companies are performing on animals to make sure that their products are safe. This article attempts to raise the point that the testing on animals cant be accurate on humans, and that testing on animals is unethical, especially in the case there they are testing a common compound that has been shown to not be particularly harmful to animals in prior testing. This article stuck a cord with me, I am an animal lover and I was unaware as the extent of harm that animals were going through when they were submitted to product testing, and frankly it appalled me. The world we live in is ever changing and there is no need to be cruel and inhumane to animals, especially when there is a long list of chemicals that have already been deemed safe for human use. While we must audit the environment around us, we must also make sure we treat lightly through that environment if we decide to make a less than optimal decision.

The second story in the praxis book is the story about how our world is changing thanks to the web. This article informed us that while the web, and specifically social media on the web has the ability to unite us and to spread the work better about all things. The bad thing about being able to share and show off everything on social media is that once something is put up, there is no taking it down, and anyone anywhere ever after the date it was originally was put up can see it. This has a heavy implication on the common young adult who spends their day waging social media wars and debating hot button topics, this forces us to be cognizant that what we are posting is not something that we will just see one time, but something that our employers will see, and the legal system still hasn’t worked out all the kinks in this. I think due to this there will eventually come a day when we no longer use social media, and we use more actual face to face, not so easily recordable means of communication so that we can be free to both speak our minds, and to know that no employer will ever turn us away because of a mistake we made years ago.

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The term Kairos is a relatively new term to me. The word, by definition, means "the right or opportune moment to do something" (Praxus 84). When I first heard of Kairos, I immediately thought it was similar to emotional intelligence. For both emotional intelligence and Kairos, the person or author must know how the audience will receive the information they are giving and appropriately convey their message at it's most effective time. Now that I am aware of its use in writing, I find Kairos' application in each and every piece I come across.

Whether it be a speech by the President over policy involving a current event, a teenager finding the perfect time to break up with their significant other, or that teen first saying "I love you," Kairos is involved. There is an opportune moment for everything, and if done right, the message can be conveyed clearly and accepted well. However, things can go wrong. If someone misreads the Kairos of a situation, the audience can be horribly misled and end up angry. Specifically, in the Microsoft letter, the author did not find the right moment to tell his employees they were fired. Rather than waiting for a newsletter to circulate about the potential job losses and then having a staff meeting at a time when everyone was caught up on the state of the company, the author chose to lump the laying-off with a terribly confusing email. The audience was not mentally prepared for what was coming, so he received backlash for his decision.

The most interesting concept I came across while studying Kairos was that it "both constrains and enables what a rhetor can say or write effectively in a particular situation" (Praxus 84).  This means that one moment can both limit the number of topics and emotions that could be said or revealed and, if at the perfect moment, also give someone complete freedom to share something they otherwise could not have. I pose two questions about this: How can both of those things happen in one moment? Or even better yet, is there really a "perfect" time for anything?

From prior experience, I have learned that you can not please everyone. Rhetors can attempt to find the right audience, right place, and right time to convey their message, but every individual has unique thoughts and reactions to information. I believe the art to Kairos and rhetoric is that it is imperfect--an individual can come very close to affecting 100% of the audience, but they will never be fully effective. Those that come close, though, are the ones who are remembered for being "moving" and "legendary." A proper use of Kairos is what separates the good from the great.

            Arguments, debates, and speeches are apart of our every day lives, whether it be to make a point on a political issue or just to persuade your friend to go to your favorite restaurant; all of them using a form of rhetoric, which can take many shapes and forms. This week we were able to establish the basis for a good speech and argument by analyzing deductive and inductive reasoning and the types of persuasive appeals: kairos, ethos, pathos, and logos. Not only that but, more importantly, we discussed what logical fallacies we can unintentionally fall into. 

            One of the speeches we had to analyze was the " I Have a Dream" speech, where we discussed the profound impact of the speech and how Martin Luther King Jr. utilized his rhetorical abilities to convey his message to all Americans. Our group was responsible for finding the element of deductive reasoning in his speech; one of the quotes we chose was towards the end of his speech where he says, “...when we allow freedom to ring….we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men,..., will be able to join hands and sing in the words,...., Free at last!...”. This really hammered home the message of the impact a united nation has on every one versus a divided nation. In addition to his use of reasoning in his speech, King used the setting of his speech, at the Lincoln Memorial to establish kairos.

Having the techniques to make a speech successful is important, but another equally important piece of knowledge that is important in creating a good argument/speech is what you need to avoid when creating an argument. One of the things you should avoid, and is ironically used most often in arguments, are logical fallacies. When it comes to logical fallacies there are many, but the ones that interested me were the straw man fallacy and ad hominem fallacy. The reason I was interested in these two was because I see them most often in "arguments" on news channels. Attacking a person's character (ad hominem) has come almost instinctively when another side fails to back up their argument and the straw man fallacy puts them, in what they feel to be, a better position. I see these most often when the opposing side themselves have questionable logic and fail to address the issue.

Chelsea DiValerio

Last week in class we covered a range of topics, from parts of an argument to Aristotle’s appeals.  We read a chapter from Praxis, “Democracy and Education” by Stanley Fish, and “Find the Argument” by Rebecca Jones.  In Praxis, we mainly focused on Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech, “I Have a Dream.”  We also diagrammed how to make an argument using the six parts given to us in the essay.

              “Democracy and Education” allowed us to formulate our arguments in the best way we knew how before reading “Find the Argument.”  We did not get the full story before deciding if we agreed with the author or not.  Once we found out all the details, almost every person in the class changed their opinion to side with him.  “Find the Argument” gave us six steps in creating a persuasive argument.  The six parts include claim, data, warrant, backing, rebuttal, and qualifiers.  I believe the two most important parts of an argument is the rebuttal and the warrant.  A writer needs to show his reasoning behind his facts and information and how they connect to his or her claim.  A writer also needs to be able to look at all perspectives of an argument and take a strong stance on one side. 

              Aristotle’s appeals of ethos, logos, and pathos are seen in most persuasive literature today.  Ethos is an appeal to the writer’s credibility and his/her character.  Logos is an appeal to the audience’s reason, usually based on information and facts.  Pathos is an appeal to the audience’s emotion.  A good writer will utilize all three of these appeals, and that is exactly what Martin Luther King Jr. did in his “I Have a Dream” speech. 

My group particularly focused on pathos, which deals with emotion.  We could not only feel the emotion in MLK’s deliverance of his speech and his mannerisms, but also in his sentences and his diction.  He was trying to convey the emotions of sadness and remembrance of the past, but also hope and encouragement for the future.  “This will be the day that all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning.”  Here, he is not just referencing solely black children, but all of God’s children.  He is showing newfound hope and unity among all children in America.  The new meaning of the song comes from the new attitude of the American people. 

Mitchell Berger 1/29

This week we read a lot of material both in and out of class. It included readings from praxis as well as Stanley Fish’s New York Times article, “Democracy in Education. We also tackled Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” and Rebecca Jones’ article, “Find the Argument. In all of these readings we were being educated about or practicing Aristotle’s three rhetorical appeals.

Aristotle’s three rhetorical appeals are ethos, logos, and pathos. Ethos establishes the speaker’s credibility. It builds trust between the author and the audience. Logos is the appeal that uses logic to argue a point. For example, in group work this week my group had to find three logos appeals in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. One of the logos appeals we found was “We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality”. This was a logos appeal because he used the example of police brutality to plead his case that no man would logically want to be the victim of police brutality. And the third and final appeal is pathos, which connects to the audience’s emotional side. An example would be leading off a wedding toast with a story about the groom and yourself.

In Rebecca Jones’s article, “Find the Argument”, there is an interesting metaphor that I would like to bring to attention. The metaphor is argument in western culture is war, “It is important to see that we don’t just talk about arguments in terms of war. We actually win or lose arguments. We see the person we are arguing with as an opponent. We attack his positions and we defend our own. We gain and lose ground. We plan and use strategies. If we find a position indefensible, we can abandon it and take a new line of attack. Many of the things we do in arguing are partially structured by the concept of war. (4)” I really like this metaphor because I think people really do see argument as war. How many times do you go on Facebook and see two people arguing like their life depended on it? Most of those arguments often end in a draw due to people staying true to their opinions even if they were proven wrong. This metaphor made me realize that when I do get into an argument with someone, I need to start viewing it as a battle. I think my ideas and opinions would be comprehended much better if I did so.

Jordan Donze 1/29

Last week in class, we applied Aristotle's three appeals of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos to some of our reading assignments as well as reading about Stanley Fish's article, "Democracy in Education" in the New York Times.  We additionally read Jones’ article, “Find the Argument.”

During our group activity, we each looked at Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" from each of the different appeals.  My group used Pathos, which related to emotion.  King is very passionate about equality and uses children in his examples to convey innocence.  “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  King is being mindful of the suffering but is confident that one day there will be a change.  I personally enjoyed the readings from chapter three because there was a valid purpose; King wanted equality and Skinner addressed the issues of sex trafficking. 

Stanley Fish’s article focused on the issue “whether a public employee is limited to his or her right of free speech by an employer’s interest in promoting the efficiency of the unit’s operation.”  Before learning the background of the story, we were asked if we agreed with Fish’s opinion of denying students in the education system the right to freedom of speech.  As a class, we all disagreed because everyone should be allowed to speak their minds.  Once we learned the reasoning of the article, that a student had manipulated his rights and raised an inappropriate banner in the school, we all suddenly changed our minds.  If something is morally incorrect or offensive to people, the right should be taken away.  In this case, the student’s banner was taken down from the school.  Schools have the right to intervene when under the right circumstances.  The student’s banner may have been freedom of speech, but it could have also been offensive to other students in the school.

Jones’ article, “Find the Argument” addresses the different ways to discern an argument.  In class we used his methods and applied them to Fish’s article.  We learned about the claim, data, warrant, and the rebuttal.  The claim is basic principle presented; data is evidence supporting the claim; the warrant makes clear assumptions for underlying the argument; and the rebuttal is a condition or flaw that supports the alternate position.

Welcome to English 1900

Hello everyone!

Welcome to our class blog where you post and comment on others' posts. This is meant to be a space for your own reflection on the course material. I hope that these posts can carry over into class discussion. I look forward to reading what you have to say!

Your posting groups are listed below.

Group A
Sami Abdulnabi
Mitchell Berger
Sarah Bostic
Cooper Brooks
Chelsea Chin
Chelsea Divalerio
Jordan Donze
Sarah Gilfillan

Group B
Grace Gwin
Joanna Hitchcock
Patricia Phan
Jack Pingel
Elon Smith-Miller
Claire Tidey
Eleanor Usher
Andruw Wittels