I think that through listening to what Anastasia had to say I came to the conclusion that I am not nearly done with this assignment, there are still several things I need to do. First off, I need to change my ad picture to my high school graduation photo the one that I had in there originally. Secondly, I am missing my citations (whether in text or paraphrases) I need to go back and add these in if I want to get my audience to see my argument in as most credible form possible. Thirdly, I need to improve my grammar, just going back and checking for things like: run-ons, comma splice etc. Lastly, I think that any research type paper could always use extra facts to support my general argument.

Project 3 was a pretty cool project in my opinion because it exposed me to a concept I was not so familiar with, the allocation of resources through the public school system nationally. The thing with this exposition is that something was revealed, the notion that through income inequality in America there is also inequality in education. More and more people are becoming disenfranchised by the system and are graduating high school at a 5th grade reading level or lower (1) if they even graduate. This in comparison to the town where I am from there is a high graduation rate and it can be said (2) that there is a correlation between socio-economic level and education level. Lastly this project showed me that America is not really improving (3) and were not even in the top 10 international countries regarding reading levels. To say that people who cannot read are to blame is ignorant, this is a system perpetuated by income inequality, how is a child supposed to learn to read without a book?

21 percent of adults in the U.S.  read below a 5th grade level, and 19 percent of high school graduates can’t read.

Time for a Change.

 The reality is that this statistic is one of the major issues that puts our nations youth into a risky situation. Graduation rates have more to do with unequal education opportunities than anything else. These ads in my opinion are made to garner support in pressuring law makers to close the “gap” that creates inequality in the education system. The town I went to high school in Long Island has a very large budget annually. The reason for this is because taxpayers money from the town I am from only goes to this one education district. What if these school districts that have a lot of money anyway, gave a mere fraction to a fund that dispersed money to school districts nationwide in need. These districts in need, need money in order to support programs that benefit their students. Whether it is after school tutoring or sports teams, these extracurricular activities are vital in keeping a teens mind focused on their respective priorities. I think the intended audience of the ad are those people who are disenfranchised by the fact they do not have the means necessary as a community to improve literacy and graduation rates. The purpose of the advertisement is to bring hindsight to the fact that people are not able to achieve their full potential without an education. The way to end this issue is by expanding access and resources towards education especially in low income communities because their the most vulnerable to this reality. My stance is that I believe that all people deserve the chance to have an education and I do not believe the federal government is doing enough to help on the local level in order to improve education.

The people that this ad is intended for is not only the ones who are disenfranchised by being born into a low income situation, but those with money. In a process like such, improving literacy rates start with dispersing funding across all levels of income, budgets should not be voted on by members of the community, they should be set by the median income of that district, that way those parents, who send their kids to private schools, that would normally vote for a lower budget since they do not send their kids to public school. This exposes another reality, public schools are losing money to private schools in a big way. For example, last year in my hometown there was a vote to increase the Great Neck Public Schools 2018 budget. In an attempt to suppress the success of this initiative, religious members of the community who send their kids to private schools took action. They went around the towns stores, deli’s even bagel stores, any place that sold a local newspaper they went in and bought them all. This was all in an effort to block the budget from passing so they would not face the project 1% tax increase that was due to come in as a result. This attempt failed and the budget passed, but this is a prime example of how the private school community is prying students and money away from public education in the name of profit. Moreover, Senate need to do there part in suppressing the efforts of President Trumps agenda to cut taxes placed on charter schools. This tax is aimed to alleviate the federal taxing of private schools in order for them to lower their tuition rate in order to increase enrollment. Rolling these taxes back will only take more money from the funding that goes into the public (education) sector. The reality is that this issue between Trump and Private Schools, is in the hands of rich people and the ultimate losers are those are that poor.

If I had to have this ad be displayed in a place it would be Forbes or Bloomberg, yes the obvious choice would be Scholastic magazine or some educational platform, however, as much as we want to believe that this is an issue of people not wanting to learn how to read, it is more of an issue of children not having an issue to books. A child could have a book and choose to not read it, this is much different than a child sitting with no book unable to read the writing on the wall in front of him. Forbes or Bloomberg would be ideal places because they’re financial magazines, because of this more people connected to money and politics will come across this ad, my belief is that the businessmen of the world do not realize how bad this issue is, and politicians simply do not care. Both realities are the reason so many low income public school students are disenfranchised and unable to read or graduate high school.

Throughout this web show we are able to see just how important language is in the role of communication between not only people, but how we communicate with objects through “Words”.

1. I felt as if the genre of the podcast was self-discovery, I say this because the theme of the segment was “Words”, however it goes further than that because it aims to display how language influences the way we perceive the world. The features of the show are that the hosts bring in several different guests to talk about their knowledge and experience with language. It serves to show how through their independent research and experiments they have formulated a way to perceive language. Research comes into play in most of the examples in breaking down the functions of the brain in making connections to language, more specifically with the Shapiro example, this professor shows how Shakespeare was able to connect words into phrases we use every day such as “Knock, knock, who’s there?”.
2. I feel like a science based podcast like such is comparable to an advertisement in a few different ways. First off, the basis of an advertisement is to communicate a certain thing to a certain person. The aim of communicating that idea is to show how it can be applied to their life in a better way. For example, an ad for a cooking device is usually going to be advertised on some sort of home cooking channel instead of sports channel. It will be advertised to show its benefits in making cooking easier to the consumer. Similarly, a science advertisement is used to show how a certain theory about science can be applied to someone’s knowledge and applied to their everyday. Susan Schallers example showed how she was able to teach that 27-year old deaf man language through linking objects with their names via sign language. This example can be applied as a teaching method for anyone struggling to communicate with a deaf person.
3. The facts in this show are instrumental in making the connection in describing the importance of language in communicating. The first anecdote shows how a teacher, Schaller, goes through the process of teaching her student how to learn sign language because he did not have a language he knew so he was not able to communicate. After several trial and error methods are attempted she finally is able to teach him by acting out a teaching skit, the facts here are that this method was able to show the student how people use objects and titles to communicate. The student then had a breakthrough and understood it. The next anecdote was done by Charles Fernyough who set up an experiment where he tested a rats ability to find a biscuit in a room where all the walls were painted white, then the rat was picked up and spun around. This was done to see if the rat would remember which direction it was running in, fifty percent of the time the rat was able to find the biscuit again. This is an example of how the facts were instrumental because it proved infants were on the same level as rats because they were asked which way was left right or blue or white. The study found infants couldn’t distinguish between color or left and right until the age of around 6. These facts help demonstrate how the infant is able to make these connections once it reaches this point of maturation at 6 on describing the ability to connect ideas as islands that come together to make 6 year-olds talk. Fernyough then experimented by having adults listen to an audio recording, he would then have them repeat everything they heard on the audio, they were asked to explain what they were just repeating and they could not. This showed how the human brain relates to the rat in another way because they could not comprehend what was being blasted in their brain. The third example was done by James Shapiro, a professor on Shakespearian language, he described Shakespeare as more of an experimenter of language than a writer. He said that Shakespeare brought terms together and used them more loosely in communication. He brought words that were not used in the way he used them, and would use them together to form phrases that described action and imagery, Shapiro says Shakespeare invented the term “Knock, knock, who’s there?”. These facts collectively show how language is a vital form of communication because it connects the things we identify as objects or actions and helps us explain and communicate them.
4. In the segment there are a lot of audio effects played over the speaker when certain things are said. I thought this was a key element in engaging the listener, if they were speaking with no sounds coming on behind them it would sound less interesting, for me it would lose my attention quickly and often. When they bring in Fernyough to talk about the babies they play a sort of ambient type of music to bring the listener in to more of an intimate experience, it truly made imagining the situation different. Then when talking about the rats there was less music, I felt to make it more of an explicit tone. Another example came when Jill Bolte Taylor described not having a voice in her head after she had a stroke, even though she was in a bad state of health she felt as if it were liberating and in order to bring the listener more closely to understanding the feeling she had they played that ambient noise again over her dialect. I feel like this method of playing soft music behind the speaker is beneficial to the comprehension of the listener because there is more substance brought into the conversation.
5. If required to write a radio ad on bringing attention to poor literacy rates in the nation I would make the ad in a similar way to how this radio segment was done. The panel of hosts for the radio show did not just present facts, they brought in people with great experience involving language and communication. I would run an ad where I spoke about the importance of funding being better allocated and I would bring on either athletes or other well-known celebrities to bring more attention to the listener. The ad will engage more people if I am not the only one talking about, if people recognize people from popular culture they will likely retain the message more. That is one thing that was beneficial from listening to the segment it showed me how they were successful in presenting their theme of Words and how words affect the way we live our everyday lives and how they essentially change the way we see things.
6. The NPR segment, “Words” was very informative in displaying a connection behind the assignment of words to phrases. I did not realize how rats and infant humans were on similar levels of IQ in the sense that babies could not solve certain tasks any better than a rat could. Another thing I did not realize was how humans could not multi task in focusing on repeating what they were listening while also retaining that information. But perhaps the most striking to me was how genius Shakespeare was in putting words that were not commonly seen in the form of phrases. These were things I did not realize or appreciate because these are thing that first off humans are limited by, and second I did not appreciate the method behind the formation of phrases that we use every day.
7. I really liked analyzing this segment because it gave me a much different perspective to how our brain makes connections when it comes to communicating with others and objects. I did not appreciate the brains ability to make connections and I found the different stories and demonstrations to be informative to the overall connection to how words effect everyday life. Further I felt that the hosts were credible through their years of experience so I felt I was learning something that was factually proven and based off. That was more with the Fernyough and Schaller methods that I felt the facts really set up my understanding of these connections. With Shapiro I was just straight up amazed with his description of Shakespeare’s methods, it is truly inspiring to see how Shakespeare was doing something nobody had done before him yet he has become critically acclaimed for eternity.

I felt as if this ad was strong in displaying a simple yet riveting statistic. The reality is that this statistic is one of the major issues that puts our nations youth into a risky situation. Graduation rates have more to do with unequal education opportunities than anything else. These ads in my opinion are made to garner support in pressuring law makers to close the “gap” that creates inequality in the education system. The town I went to high school in Long Island has a very large budget annually. The reason for this is because taxpayers money from the town I am from only goes to this one education district. What if these school districts that have a lot of money anyway, gave a mere fraction to a fund that dispersed money to school districts nationwide in need. These districts in need, need money in order to support programs that benefit their students. Whether it is after school tutoring or sports teams, these extracurricular activities are vital in keeping a teens mind focused on their respective priorities. I think the intended audience of the ad are those people who are disenfranchised by the fact they do not have the means necessary as a community to improve literacy and graduation rates. The purpose of the advertisement is to bring hindsight to the fact that people are not able to achieve their full potential without an education. The way to end this issue is by expanding access and resources towards education especially in low income communities because their the most vulnerable to this reality. My stance is that I believe that all people deserve the chance to have an education and I do not believe the federal government is doing enough to help on the local level in order to improve education.

Explicit: The explicit message of this ad is that there is a major issue when it comes to graduation rate in the United States, every year more and more students are dropping out of college and limiting what they can across all the realms of opportunity in life.

Implicit: Combined with the statistic and the picture the goal of the ad is to show how the subjects in the picture are very proud of the work they put into graduating. The goal is to emulate the fulfillment that is achieved through working for something and not quitting. I think that as technology makes our daily tasks more and more easy, the necessity to work hard like our parents and grandparents is not as urgent.

Extended Meaning: The reality is that because we are all born with ambition this issue is fixable. Because there are so many kids that want to do well, but they look at school as a hinder on their potential, the issue becomes gearing their focus towards staying in school. The way to do this is by giving kids more of an opportunity and the way to do that is by equalizing the funding, at least to an amicable level that helps resolve the drop out issue.

Rhetorical Analysis of Linh Le: https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/lle04/?p=157

Explicit: The ad shows a girl sitting on a chair with a bulletin behind her that displays a statistic relating literacy levels to to the random person.

Implicit: The implied message here is that there are a lot of random strangers who make up the statistic of those who are illiterate. I like the way Linh used the picture of this random girl to display her message I found the usage to be very effective.

Extended Meaning: I think that the goal of this ad is to try and shed light on the fact that reading is the basic necessity that people need to function in our society, meanwhile it has become a luxury to be literate. I found this ad to be very effective in displaying the overall correlation between literacy levels on a broader scale, and to narrow it in on a particular issue within this realm of issue.

1. Make it more relating to the whole nation, not just me and my friends.
2. Since I am using a statistic and an image that correlates the relationship between graduation rate and drop out rate, make sure there are no better statistics to help fulfill my message.
3. Make the advertisement more eye catching, from a marketing perspective an ad will jump out more of people through color and font usage (bold font and italicized).

1. “You’re Using Fallacies and You Don’t Even Know It.” CopyPressed. April 07, 2016. Accessed November 14, 2017. http://www.copypress.com/blog/youre-using-fallacies-and-you-dont-even-know-it/.

Summary: This article is a very simple article about how fallacies affect the way people interpret the meaning of certain advertisements. People watch ads and do not know the true intent behind the creator of the ad until it is revealed at the very end because then the ad revelaed itself. This is the case of commercials.

Analyze: This article is very important to my research into fallacies within advertisements as I go and create my own ad. This article breaks down several key fallacies used by people in determining what kind of fallacy an advertisement is, it can be slippery slope, appeal to authority, post hoc fallacy, or Ad Populum.

2. http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/identifying-understanding-fallacies-used-785.html?tab=4

Summary: This article is an informative on the ways fallacies come up in everyday life, it starts by briefly defining each of roughly 10 different fallacies that appear not only in advertisements but in popular culture as well.

Analyze: This article will be very helpful to my research into fallacies as I need more than the 4 examples given in the first article to choose from when deciding which fallacy will play into my advertisement. All of these articles are very similar in direction and message so it is hard to differentiate the message as it applies to my research.

3. Fallacies In Commercials. Performed by Edevaldo Contreras. TEDEd.

Summary: In this video, the demonstration shows how fallacies in commercials affect the way we think towards not only the people advertising in the commercial, but also in the sense of how/if these fallacies play into our everyday lives. Contreras clearly has a lot of experience when it comes to solving fallacies and breaking down their meaning both in literal terms and broader terms when applying it to society.

Analyze: I think this video has helped me a lot more in understanding how fallacies make people think in terms of them being impressed by the abstractness of a certain ad or by how it does not make sense. It takes a certain person to appreciate these types of things according to Contreras and it is not super shocking because he shows how people are more receptive based on their personality and relationship to not only society but the ad as well, helps determine the ultimate target market of an ad as well.

4. Danziger, Pamela. “Facebooks Advertising Fallacy: The Fact it Works!” Forbes, August 2017.

Summary: This article is filled with facts that give a rhetorical analysis behind how Facebooks mere existence is an advertising fallacy. Facebook brought in 26 billion dollars in revenue in 2016 meanwhile over 60% of users said the thing they hate most about “FB” are the constant stream of advertisements between posts. They are everywhere, if you thought Hulu or youtube was bad try scrolling through 20 facebook posts and see how many ads are cramped between them, if I would have to guess betwen 4-6 ads per 20 posts.

Analyze: This article was key in showing me how to apply various forms of advertising to the common person, in this article Danziger describes the intent of facebook to bring communities together through the internet and then describes their actual intent, to profit off our ignorance to the amount of ads they play. This in itself is a fallacy because while people believe they are being further immersed into society, they are actually being plighted into a consumer situation that happens to also have a bunch of posts from your friends and families profiles in between.

Anytime that a person is dealing with persuasion they are dealing with some sort of argument, they may not appear to be arguing but persuasion in my opinion is an “argumentative” form of language. I think when dealing with manipulation there is an element of deceitfulness in that one individual is attempting to misrepresent their intent at that moment. I think that when an ad starts to describe elements of their advertisement that aren’t true this is a lie, a fallacy is more of a joke to me (except when its cigarette ads). A fallacy is more of something that is demonstrated but holds no substantive fact to it, a lie I think is more geared to misrepresent a claimed fact. An example in pop culture, is this show a fallacy or a lie? I think technically it is a lie but they were trying to represent the life of a 16 year old girl and they did not cross the situational boundaries in that regard, so I think its just a real life example of realistic fiction. I think that in pop culture there are many instances when people are being persuaded through manipulation. It may be that manipulation is a vide of persuasion since again, its a misrepresentation of intent. I do not think that the point of the Lonely Girl series was to deceive peoples sense of awareness to the truth, I think it was a genuine attempt to entertain people and connect with them on some sort of real level.

 

I think that there are other ways that people are persuaded other than advertising, to name one main one, motivation (whether by money, power, sex etc.). People are the way the way that they are through motivation, I also believe that most of all life is centered around how were motivated, by the things that we expect to relish in the future. In order to achieve things there must be motivation. So in a general sense along with the advertising example, motivation certainly plays into the way people interact through the persuasion of pop culture. I think something that stems from within this that is a significant aspect of persuasion and motivation would be religion, even though society is becoming more and more secular in the Western world, there is still a lot of people that lead their lives based off the ideologies that their respective religions advocate on behalf of.