English 2150 Blog

I learned a lot from the work that I have done for project 3. I learned how fallacies are used in ads to make them more effective and appealing to the audience. I also learned about some statistics about Americas literacy and literacy among adults. I also learned that rhetorical concepts are used in ads to help make them more persuasive and appealing.

I can structure the ad so that it looks more visually appealing, I can also make the rationale into separate paragraphs so my ideas and solutions are well organized. I could also use more rhetorical concepts on my ad. I have to also find a publication where I can post my ad, so that the audience who are functionally illiterate can see my ad.

Adult Illiteracy in the United States

In the United States, today nearly 32 million or 1 in 7 adults are considered functionally illiterate. According to UNESCO, “A person is functionally literate who can engage in all those activities in which literacy is required for effective functioning of his group and community and also for enabling him to continue to use reading, writing and calculation for his own and the community’s development.” Many adults in the United States who live a middle class life aren’t functionally literate. That is to say, that they have have good jobs and a home, but they don’t have the right reading or writing skills to help he/she function in the community or elsewhere beyond his/her job. Their skills are basic and it does not help them flourish with society. Another study has shown that many college athletes are functionally illiterate, in fact 19% of high school graduates are not functionally literate. Literacy can be achieved by doing more reading and writing, so basic skills can be enhanced. Going to an educational institution or doing literate work as a hobby can be a great way to improve these skills. Some workplaces, like Ford and Motorola, are even sponsoring remedial reading programs so that their employees can benefit with an enhanced functional literacy. The target audience for my advertisement is adults in the United States. The target audience is adults because this is an advertisement that is directed towards them, and hopefully this ad can target those 32 million adults that are functionally illiterate. My advertisement is trying to solve this crisis that is ongoing in America, that is effecting millions of adults in the United States. My advertisement is trying to get adults that are not fully literate to gain some confidence and get some help, so that they too can be functionally literate. My ad gives those adults that are too ashamed or scared some cushion, because it states that there are 32 million adults in the same situation. My ad will be effective because it informs the audience of the problem that is ongoing and that there are solutions to fix this problem. I think my ad can go as a post on social media like Facebook, because social media is the second highest news platform that adults read news on. I also think social media is mixed when it comes to its user’s literacy rates for example, an illiterate person would be more likely to use Facebook, than buy a newspaper or magazine to read.

Link to ad —–>  Attention_ All Adults

Rhetorical Analysis:

This podcasts genre is an interview because it interviews different people based on knowledge and experience. The podcast had interviews with doctors, professors, and people that experienced the idea of interpreting and learning a language when disabled. For this podcast the audience can be anybody that has an interest in learning about interpretation and learning of languages. The podcast is used to definitely inform readers of language and how the disabled use different techniques to learn the language. It informs by interviewing people with a lot of knowledge and experience on the topic. The podcast is very conversation like, which helps me as a listener be more engaged.

Questions:

1. Describe the science-based podcast as a genre (based on this example). What are its features? How does it function? How does research come into play? This podcast is a podcast that talks about language and how language is for disabled people or babies. The podcast has different stories and each story is unique because it talks about a different experience and also the psychology behind the use of the languages.  Alot of the podcast features interviews with people with experiences and professors. The research here would be from professors, experiments, and even experiences.
2. In what ways might a science-based podcast be said to be similar to an advertisement? This science based podcast could be similar to an advertisement because it can inform readers with real information and less persuasion. Some people are more lured with factual information which isn’t really obvious.
3. What is the function of facts in the show? What is the function of anecdotes? For each of the show’s three separate segments, which is more persuasive, fact or anecdote? Why? The function of facts on this show is to inform the readers of language for people with disabilities. The function of the anecdotes I would say is to also inform and to also provide a connection with the listener of the podcast. To me personally, i really liked the podcast of the women that had a stroke, because her anecdote made me feel and think about language the way she did with her descriptions. She mentioned how she forgot everything and she would have to see pictures to remember words. She was learning the language just the way baby learns a language.
4. How do audio-only elements (music, sound effects) enhance the way the information is presented? Be specific and provide examples. Is there any way in which the audio-only elements detract from the presentation of information (or from the stories being told)? If so, how? The sound effects enhance the information because it gives us an example of what exactly they are talking about. For instance when they were talking about going to a NYC club, and it just so crowded, you can hear all of the little conversations in the background. The sound effect made me feel like or helped me remember a time, where I was in a tight space with a lot of people.
5. If Project 3 required you to write a radio ad (or podcast ad) for improving literacy, rather than a print ad, how would you do it? How would you make a persuasive impact with that ad, knowing that you can’t use visual elements? Describe what the ad would consist of, what some of the language would be, how it would have an impact on its audience. I would try to use factual evidence stated from reliable sources and also i would try to get some personal experience on literacy from people so that i can connect with my podcast listeners and also persuade them on my ideas.
6. What are three things you learned from the show that you hadn’t known before? I didn’t know rats and even human babies didn’t know how to connect two things together to remember one thing. I also learned what a stroke really is and kind of how it feels to remember things after a stroke. I also learned the different ways that deaf people interpret language and the ways they communicate.
7. Write a brief paragraph describing your reaction to the show: Did you like it, dislike it, find it interesting, find it boring? Why? Provide a detailed response. For the most part I enjoyed the podcast. It really opened up my mind about language with disabled people, as well as learning many new things. For some of the stories I thought it was a little boring because I wasn’t able to connect with the story teller. One of the stories I really enjoyed was the lady with the stroke and how she interpreted language after the incident. The podcast did a good job overall of kind of teaching and informing the listeners about this topic.

1. Think of a good attention grabber heading which will make target audience want to know more.
2. Try to think of an image that would relate to the rationale.
3. Since I will be using statistics of literacy in America, just put them in a way that would keep the reader interested.

The ad that i found effective was an ad from Baruch Colleges club Women in Business. First off it shows a women at the center of the table and she is dictating a business meeting. The thing i found most effective was the heading which reads, The Secret to Success: Being Assertive, its a very catchy heading because if you look at the intended audience it is Baruch College students. Its a heading that would grab a lot of students attention and it would want them to attend the program. I think the purpose of this ad is to persuade students to attend the workshop so that they can learn to be assertive and be successful. For the explicit part of this ad i think its just to bring in a large audience to their workshop. The implicit would be to teach people to be assertive.

The ineffective ad I found was the Baruch College Republicans ad. I felt like the ad itself would not grab many students attention because of the color it was printed in and there isn’t much detail of exactly what would be discussed in the workshop. The intended audience would be for Baruch College students. The purpose of this ad is persuade students to come to the workshop.

Where can we draw the line between persuasion and manipulation? When in an artifact — whether an ad, a book, a show, whatever — ceasing to persuade and beginning to lie? What’s the connection between lies and fallacies?

I think persuasion and manipulation go together in many ways. Manipulation is the act of fooling and controlling the other person to believe or do something. Persuasion is the idea to get somebody to do or think a certain way. I don’t think you necessarily have to manipulate to persuade somebody, because you can give factual information and still get somebody to do something. You don’t have to fool or control the person to persuade them. Though there may be some areas of persuasion where you might have to manipulate to make the persuasion stronger. Lying and fallacies are also very similar in a way that they don’t say the truth and they’re both done to benefit the person doing the lying or fallacy. Fallacies aren’t as clear or direct that a person maybe lying especially when the fallacy helps persuade the other person to think or do something.

A fallacy is an error used mostly in advertisements and arguments to prove a point. Fallacies are both informal and formal. In most cases fallacies are bad examples when proving a point or when arguing on a specific side. Here are some the examples of fallacies from different advertisements:

For this ad the fallacy would be an appeal to authority. That is because the ad is using an Olympic athlete to show us that maybe drinking coke can make us an Olympic athlete. In reality tho we all know that she is just endorsing Coca Cola and drinking coke does not make you a better athlete, instead it can make an athlete worse.

I would say that this is another appeal to authority fallacy. The authority here is the doctor, and it states that more doctors smoke camel cigarettes than any other cigarette brand. We know that smoking is bad for our health, but the ad uses a doctor, who is suppose to keep us healthy, to show that their cigarette is supposed to be healthy. This ad is completely illogical.

This ad is an example of a non-sequitur because it is comparing to completely different things. This ad is comparing the shape of a women and a cigarette which are completely different things and are irrelevant to each other. This ad also seems to be targeting men because of the comparisons with the shape of a women. I think the ad is also offensive to women in many ways.

A body paragraph should consist of a topic sentence, a couple of supporting sentences, and a concluding sentence. The topic sentence is usually the main idea of the body paragraph. The reader should be able to tell what you paragraph is all about just based on the topic sentence. The supporting sentences can be examples or elaboration on the topic sentence. The body paragraph, when written as an essay is usually just about one topic from the introduction of an essay.

Dialogue method:

1. Whats your point?
2. I don’t get it
3. prove it
4. so what?

Rewrite using dialogue method: A body paragraph is a paragraph that is after an introduction and usually elaborates and emphasizes on one point of the introduction. It goes in depth and explains more thoroughly the idea of the point that is being stated. The body paragraph usually consists of a topic sentence which is usually the main topic being discussed, supporting sentences which are used to elaborate and support the topic sentence, and finally the concluding sentence which generalizes the main ideas being discussed. Without body paragraphs in any forms of writing the reader would not be able to fully understand what is trying to be conveyed. Body paragraphs are important to any piece of writing because they give the reader a more detailed perspective of the message or messages that you are trying to convince.

Quantitative Data Analysis

According to John Swales, author of The Concept of Discourse Community, a speech community is group of people that share linguistic rules, cultural concepts, and shared regulative rules. So therefore based on my research I fall into two different speech communities which are English and Bengali. I interact and switch between the two languages when it is appropriate. Sometimes I also mix the two languages together because, though I am fluent in Bengali a lot of the words do not come to me easily, so therefore I just say them in English, but it is still understandable to most native Bengali speakers. This also brings me to my next definition of multilingualism and code switching. Multilingualism is the term for using several languages and in my case the languages I use in my daily life are English and Bengali. According to Rosamina Lowi the process of code switching is when an individual switches his or her language or tone based on the situation or subject he or she is talking to. Also according to John Swales a discourse community, a group that one belongs to based on similar lifestyles or characteristics and Is usually influenced by persuasion and occupation. From my research I can say that I can be a part more than one discourse community. This data is important to me because it is showing me a glance at how I use some of the terms mentioned above without even knowing and it also gives me a good understanding of the unique language and tone that I speak.

All of the data was collected by just taking notes on how and who I spoke to. I used my cell phone to take note of all the languages I spoke and how I spoke them based on the situations. My data was recorded on two separate times, two weekdays and weekends. I broke the time periods up into 3-4 hours a block I was able to jot down the ways I spoke and whom I spoke to. For the most part I would say I was able to take the data down all the time but there were sometimes where I would forget to, and I would add it to the block. Here are brief descriptions of some of the languages and styles of languages that were used:

Bengali: Language used by people from Eastern India and Bangladesh and also the Bengali diaspora around the world.

Slang English: A type of informal English I use to talk to my friends and cousins. An example would be “Yo where you at?”.

Texting English: The English language and grammar that is used when texting. Example would “wbu” which means what about you.

Bengali and English: The use of both Bengali and English in one sentence or statement.

The graph above shows data of different languages used by me from October 7-8.

The graph above shows the different languages used by me from October 12 -13.

In conclusion based on my data, my use of languages really varied from weekends to weekdays. I anticipated these results because during the weekends I am usually at work and a lot of formal and semi-formal English is used. During the weekday, I use a lot of texting English and also slang and semi-formal English because I am away from work and more around family and friends. This data really helped me realize that code switching is something I do on a minute to minute basis. It also gave me a little understanding of what discourse communities I belong to, though I still believe this is too little of a sample to show what discourse community I am part of.

References:

1. Swales, J. (1990). The Concept of Discourse Community. Boston: Cambridge UP.
2. Lowi, R. (n.d.). Codeswitching: An Examination of Naturally Occurring Conversation. In (pp. 1393-1406). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press