Discussion #2
24 Hour Writing Log
Most people in the class were able to agree that the writing log helped them to see the extent to which they write during the day. They were shocked to see that their logs were pages long with many texts, emails, notes, snapchats, instagrams, facebook posts, tweets, and more. In my case, I learned the opposite. I had expected to have a writing log down to the floor. I admit that I pick up my phone far too much during the day, and I had thought that I would fill my log up quickly with snapchats, texts, and emails. Somehow the day that I recorded my literary activities I was completely inactive. It wasn't intentional, I just spent most of the day reading textbook pages and notes, and highlighting information as a means of studying. I barely communicated with anyone through writing for the entire day. Even the notes that I took in class were shorter than usual. It was as is the professors knew that I was completing this assignment and wanted to skew my results!
Discussion #7
Find a relevant social media post that has been posted on your feed by one of your friends / followers / connections. Read the post and take a screenshot of it. Summarize the basic features of the post, such as the person who posted it, the social media platform it was found on, the literal (and/or intended) argument of the post, and the action(s) that the rhetors want the audience to take after reading it. Describe and analyze rhetorical appeals: ethos, pathos, logos, and rhetorical timing (kairos)/ historical context.
This social media post was composed by Barack Obama and reposted by my friend Liz on the social media platform Twitter. The author is not calling for action in the post, but rather trying to praise the survivors for their efforts to improve gun laws. As a democrat, Obama is spreading a positive message about the policies he believes in.
The well-known credibility that Obama holds, his ethos, is that he was the President of The United States of America for 8 years (2008-2016). He is well-versed in politics and has a fairly unique perspective on current events, as not many people know the government better than the presidents. While he does not explicitly state his credibility within the tweet, it is unnecessary as the public is already well aware of his accomplishments. He has over 104,700,000 followers, about one third of the population of the United States.
Obama uses pathos in his last phrase “I’m proud of all of them”. He uses this phrase to let the audience know his stance on the activities of the Parkland survivors and to elicit a similar response in the audience. Other words such as “killed”, “refused”, “pushed”, and “violence” are useful persuaders in the emotions of the audience. When readers see these words within the text, they are more likely to react in the manner that Obama had intended.
The logos in this tweet is held in the majority of the text. Obama describes how the students were active within the political community and how their actions led to “meaningful new gun violence laws” in America. Obama didn’t, however, support his claims with specific examples of events the student participated in and laws that they helped to pass. An uninformed audience should consider doing research to evaluate his claims. The audience as a whole is highly likely to believe this logos without research due to the ethos of the author.
The kairos, or timeliness, of this post is that is was posted on the one year anniversary of the Parkland shooting. Many people are already reflecting on the event due to other news outlets and media covering the topic. By posting his thoughts on this anniversary, he is more likely to be heard as people are open to hearing about the event that day. The audience may also have been searching the topic and this tweet could have been suggested to them.
I really enjoyed completing this discussion which is why I chose to include it in this portfolio. The Parkland Shooting hits very close to home for me, not only as a Florida resident, but as the friend of students who went to and go to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. This tweet by former president Barack Obama was such a stark contrast to the reactions of our current president. The way that Obama handled the situation by including his own feelings of pride for the survivors made this tweet a very gratifying one to analyze.
Discussion #8
How is your own unique linguistic profile displayed in your writing? Consider influences such as the languages you speak, your regional and social dialects, and your past educational experiences. How do these affect the language and rhetorical features in your writing? Use two course concepts with citations. You must include a Works Cited page to receive credit.
My linguistic style has been influenced by many different regions and districts of education. Having lived far west in California for a large portion of my childhood, I adopted a pattern of speak most may call ‘valley girl’. While this speech has been transformed by the various other regions I have lived in, it is still a heavy influence of my writing style.
My cultural background has also heavily influenced my linguistic style. Having a british family, I have adopted a slightly more formal form of language than is typical in the United States. I used to have a British accent when I was quite young which was fazed out slowly through the American education system. To this day I still spell words differently such as behaviour, colour, cancelled, etc.
Living in Virginia for three years exposed me to an incredibly foreign linguistic atmosphere. The way my teachers and classmates spoke in a small, rural, southern town surely influenced my writing techniques (though I would never have allowed it to influence me intentionally and I resisted at all costs). Despite not completely succumbing to this alien form of language, the vernacular of the town has shaped my literacy in its own little ways.
Being from a multicultural and military family, I have been exposed to many different discourses as author James Gee might say in reference to his article What is Literacy? Gee defines discourse as the environment that a rhetorical situation takes place in (18). Having lived in numerous regions of America, learned multiple languages, and been exposed to innumerable cultures, my writing and the linguistic style within it is a hodge podge of unidentifiable characteristics.
The combination of all of my different backgrounds is reminiscent of the intertextuality that runs throughout all writings. In James Porter’s Intertextuality and the Discourse Community, he describes intertextuality as the way in which all rhetoric is interconnected and forms a web or network of literacy (34). If we consider that drawing from each culture is like referencing many sources, there is a certain intertextuality that all of us draw from within ourselves every time we put pen to paper.
Works Cited
Gee, James. “What Is Literacy?” Journal of Education, vol. 171, no. 1, 1989, pp. 18-25.
Porter, James E. “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community.” Rhetoric Review, vol. 5, no.
1, 1986, pp. 34-47.
This piece helped me immensely on creating my second major paper. I also enjoyed analyzing the way that my life has influenced my writing style.