Freewriting Paper 2

"What the odds don't know is this isn't a math test. This is a completely different kind of test. One where passion has a funny way of trumping logic." That is my favorite quote from the Nike advertisement. The commercial gets to me by playing with my emotions, or by using pathos to connect to the audience. It inspires me to never give up or quit trying. That everybody can tell me that I'll never make it no matter how hard I try. As an athlete, the biggest inspiration to me is to tell me I won't be able to do something. A few summers ago I had to have knee surgery because I dislocated my knee playing lacrosse. I was told that I would never be able to run again or even be able to jog again. Running is my passion and hearing that only made me want to run more. I kept working in physical therapy and now I can run 5ks and even out run my high school cheerleading coach. These advertisements inspire me to do even more and to not give up on my biggest dream which is to run a marathon. The only thing I'm worried about is I don't know how I'm going to write 4-5 pages on just how these commercials play with your emotions..

Outline for Paper 2

Thesis: These two Nike commercials try to sell their product by using rhetorical devices such as pathos to appeal to the consumers emotions.

 

Outline:

Paragraph A: Intro

 

Paragraph B: Analyzing Audience

1.      Article [a]

2.      Image [a]

3.      Article [b]

Paragraph C: Analyzing Pathos

1.      Article [a]

2.      Image [a]

3.      Article [b]

Paragraph D: Analyzing Images/Appearance of Video

1.      Article [a]

2.      Image [a]

3.      Article [b]

Paragraph E: Analyzing Background Music

1.      Article [a]

2.      Image [a]

3.      Article [b]

Paragraph F: Conclusion

Analyzing and Ad

The two commercials I have chosen to analyze:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPkyPdubqDs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niHSWYE-PLI

The first ad is from this year and the second ad is from 3 years ago. They are both Nike ads so obviously they are advertising the same product. Since I'm an athlete, when I saw both of these ads they really inspired me. They connect with their audience using rhetorical devices through pathos. They appeal to your emotions. Figuring out how they accomplish this is going to be the tricky part. What I’m going to figure out is how exactly they inspire people. I know it inspires me since I’m an athlete and every athlete has struggles they have to overcome but I don’t know how it appeals to people who don’t play sports, does it even appeal to them at all?

My Writing Process

I am very competitive and athletic so the way I approached my paper was almost in the same process I would do before a race. Step 1: Free Write or "Brain Storming"; this could also be taken as a warm-up lap, something to get the juices flowing and ideas to form. Step 2: Outline; could be taken as stretching before a race, thinking about how your going to accomplish your goal and how to approach the final product. Step 3: Moving from idea to rough draft; or gradually picking up speed to keep up in the race. And finally Step 4: Rough draft to final draft; or pushing through and giving it your all to make it to the finish line or making final adjustments to get an A. Thankfully this is an English assignment and not an art assignment.

Writing Process For Paper 1

What worked- Free writing! At first I was very nervous about free writing because I have always written in a certain format and structure but by free writing I was able to express my ideas easier and I think I wrote better too!

What didn't work- The only problem that came with free writing is that I think I didn't know how to organize it. In the end I went back through and rearranged some paragraphs so hopefully the paper flowed well and made sense.

Paragraph for Peer Review

Are we born believing in God? A very simple yet complex question. In the world today you have a million different opinions being thrown at you. You can’t go anywhere or listen to anything without someone forcing their view into your mind. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a reliable, unprejudiced source that wasn’t influenced in wrong ways? A place where people could share their opinions and exchange their ideas in a civil manner? I think I have found just that source. A blog called Big Questions Online. I plan to figure out how they keep the blog open-minded and what about the writing keeps the blog from taking a certain side. This blog speaks to open-minded individuals using unbiased and open opinions to discuss controversial questions.


The reason I chose this paragraph is because I feel like I do not grasp the reader's attention fast enough. And also because I feel as though I'm not being specific enough with what I'm trying to say.

In-Class Writing

WA’s “Moving From Idea to Thesis Statement” (p.228-231)

·         How can you use your idea to “take a position” in your thesis? I can use my idea to take a position in my thesis by closely examining Big Questions Online and looking at it from every perspective to start an argument rather than just stating my opinion.

·         Since we have moved far along in the writing process, how do you think this has affected your thesis? Has it strengthened it? How do you think you can further develop your claims? By reading writing analytically my ability to write has already increased tremendously. Through out middle school and high school I was always told to write a certain way and was honestly never very good at it, but by reading all these different texts and discussing how to write thesis statements in class, I feel like I am already a much more experienced writer than I was before because now I know how to express myself in a paper without using a certain outline.

·         How does thinking about your ideas as “working theses” give you freedoms similar to other writing types we have discussed in class? Thinking about my ideas in this way gives me freedoms similar to other writing types because the ball is in my hand and I get to choose where to go from here. Freewriting has been my favorite part of this assignment so far because there are no restraints on what I can do and my thoughts can just flow freely.

·         Compare and contrast strong and weak theses, using specific examples from your paper. Construct a weak version of your thesis. Now construct what the textbook defines as the strongest possible thesis you can manage. Weak thesis: This blog speaks to open-minded individuals using unbiased and open opinions to discuss controversial questions. Strong thesis: Although many blogs nowadays shove their opinion into your head on certain issues, Big Questions Online, one may consider starts open-minded and un-biased discussions on controversial issues through out the world.

·         Describe the “feature or features of what your subject means.” Big Questions online is all about fostering discussion on controversial issues. It's audience is people who want to explore the world deeper than what meets the eye so their features are deeper moral issues that don't have one right answer.

·         In what way is your thesis “an idea in need of an argument?” My thesis is an idea in need of an argument because I state that some think it is an unbiased blog but maybe someone else sees tension and bias throughout the blog that I don't see.

Try This, 11.1 (p. 230)

·         Find the “tension” in each example, using the information on page 229.

o    ...IS as radical a campaign as the original...

o    .... It makes life worse for EVERYONE...

o    ... A self set apart have SURELY been felt...

o    ... habitat as NECESSARY for doubtful...

o    ... HAS gone much too far...

o    .... ARE precisely the opposite....

·         Define the “primary idea” and the “Back Pressure” for each example.

o    That "Nice Pants" is as radical as the original.

o    The cosmetic surgery may make some people happy but makes life worse for everyone in the end.

o    The history of the modern era building may be an exaggeration but the consequences have been felt in every field of inquiry.

o    Too often planners and engineers would justify creative destruction of habitat as essential for doubtful utopias.

o    Time to bring middlebrow out of its cultural closet because it makes us appreciate high art.

o    The connection between the idea of place and the reality of cellphones in not encouraging.

·         Try to construct a “straw man” out of one of the examples. How can you make the strong thesis into a weak thesis?

o    Straw man for example 2: Cosmetic surgery makes life worse for everyone and will make you regret every getting the procedure done and therefore be a waste of time and money and want you to never go out in public during the daylight again.

 

The Blog I Chose To Analyze

The blog I chose to analyze like I have stated before is Big Questions Online. The purpose of this blog is to explore questions of human purpose and to spark discussion through these topics in a unbiased way. The audience of this blog would be people who want to investigate deeper meanings of the universe than what is just apparent to the common eye which could be a very broad audience so to say. This website is a publication of the John Templeton Foundation which funds inter-disciplinary research about human purpose and ultimate reality. The foundation gives away about $70 million per year in research grants and programs and accepts online funding inquiries twice a year. The visual organization contributes to a reading of the blog's "rhetorical situation" in many ones. First of all, the website portrays it's exigency by showing the "Favorite Discussions" big and bold right in the center. This shows what the website is all about and what keeps the website going. Which leads to the second thing that relates to the rhetorical situations, the audience. The audience as I have already stated is people who want to explore true meaning in the universe. The constraints of the website are that even though people can comment on discussions and give their opinion, each comment must be approved before being posted. This changes the way I think about the website even though they state that comments will only not be posted if they; disrupt the flow of conversation relating to the article under which it is posted, is off-topic, harasses or abuses other members of the community, is libelous, obscene, or offensive, encourages or condones unlawful activity, contains personal contact details (other than a URL) or advertisements, or is repetitious or spam. But how can we know for sure that is true?

Respond To A Reading

My favorite reading that we have done in Unit 1 so far has been "Why I Blog" by Andrew Sullivan. The part that really hit home for me was when he said, "On my blog, my readers and I experienced 9/11 together, in real time. I can look back and see not just how I responded to the event, but how I responded to it at 3:47 that afternoon. And at 9:46 that night. There is a vividness to this immediacy that cannot be rivaled by print. The same goes for the 2000 recount, the Iraq War, the revelations of Abu Ghraib, the death of John Paul II, or any of the other history-making events of the past decade. There is simply no way to write about them in real time without revealing a huge amount about yourself." This quote just made me realize how feelings are truly expressed in blogs. I guess it appealed to me so much because my cousin was killed on 9/11 so hearing him refer to that made me realize how blogging is so much more than just writing online. It's raw material that can't be expressed in any other way. I also liked how he specified the exact time he reacted to all of those situations. It marks true emotions on what happened on those days. That's something that nobody else can write except for you. It would be interesting to go and find those posts to see how others felt that day.

Intro, Thesis, & Outline for Paper 1

Intro: Are we born believing in God? A very simple yet complex question. In the world today you have a million different opinions being thrown at you. You can’t go anywhere or listen to anything without someone forcing their view into your mind. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a reliable, unprejudiced source that wasn’t influenced in wrong ways? A place where people could share their opinions and exchange their ideas in a civil manner? I think I have found just that source. A blog called Big Questions Online. I plan to figure out how they keep the blog open-minded and what about the writing keeps the blog from taking a certain side.

 

Thesis: This blog speaks to open-minded individuals using unbiased and open opinions to discuss controversial questions.

 

Outline:

Paragraph A: Intro

 

Paragraph B: Analyzing Audience

1.      Article [a]

2.      Image [a]

3.      Article [b]

Paragraph C: Analyzing Ethos

1.      Article [a]

2.      Image [a]

3.      Article [b]

Paragraph D: Analyzing Layout

1.      Article [a]

2.      Image [a]

3.      Article [b]

Paragraph E: Analyzing Discussions

1.      Article [a]

2.      Image [a]

3.      Article [b]

Paragraph F: Analyzing Arguments

1.      Article [a]

2.      Image [a]

3.      Article [b]

Paragraph G: Conclusion