As of right now we haven't started the paper portion of the project yet, but that is our goal today. We decided to use a wordle, an interview, a magazine cover, a poem and a recipe. A major obstacle we are facing right now (apart from the mountains of work pouring in from every class) is that we have a hard time deciding what we want to do. I just completed our magazine cover, and I believe that Jenny did the wordle. Today we got done our genres and by thursday we will have the written portion done. Thank God I like writing, I have plent
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Magness, Rose. "Sex Education." Personal interview. 20 Nov. 2012.
Out of class blog entry: Kuhn states that "the need for visual literacy is firmly tied to events and circumstances in the world; that is, that the ideals and practices we profess in the academy are inextricably linked to students’ lives and issues of access to societal power." As a composer of argumentative visual literacy, how do you plan to enact societal power in your work? Do you agree with Kuhn's assessment of visual projects in the writing classroom? Explain (don't summarize or C&P from her).
To compose visual literacy that is argumentative, the thoughts of society have to be in the work. Society has a power of its own, the thoughts and ideals that become arguments and subjects worth of arguments have members of society that back it. A way to incorporate societal power into a work is to use recent and credible sources. When quoting someone make sure that the person did in fact say that quote, and that the person is reputable and well known in society. A male teenager in Zimbabwe would not be a reputable source in discussing menopause and the effects of aging in women in America. Topics discussed must also spark an interest in the reader. If the reader doesn't feel anything, and form of protest or the need to change something, then there is no point in defending the argument and the subject is complacent. Without change the world would cease. I agree with Kuhn's assessment of visual projects in the classroom. Students often will work by themselves on projects rather than introducing themselves to their classmates, thus they learn nothing of collaboration or how to work in group settings for future references. (In one of my classes, I am the student who never collaborates with anyone). Students also do the bare minimum in projects just to get the project done as quickly as possible, get the grade and move on. Visual projects help writers learn how to enhance their writing on a multi-level scale. Much of writing is done online now, with visual appeal added to the mix. No longer is writing done in plain text books. Websites use design and images to enhance text and draw readers in. It is beneficial for writers to know how to do I believe that there is a higher level of motivation when doing multi-modal projects. The multi-modal project that we did in this class was my first experience with multi-modal projects, and it terrified me. I was motivated to do better because the idea of using more than one mode appealed to my creative side. I am okay with doing essays, years of writing has made me immune to it. You learn the formula for how to create the "perfect" essay in high school, and it becomes a cookie cutter process. Having the option to embrace as many different aspects and be as creative as possible in an assignment is almost a challenge for the student: show me what you can do, not what you've been taught. Try something new, be different. The most successful genres and modes I've seen in the projects would be the prezi presentations and the creation of recipes and wordles. The most unsuccessful I've seen were the six word stories (but I could be biased, I like longer stories as a creative writer). I think the six word stories were successful in some cases, in small uses, but overall I think the use of other genres were more interesting and beneficial. My role as a composer in the multi-modal project is to take different modes and genres and compile them into an interesting project. I have to make the different components work together to form a new, bigger truth and have the viewer understand the parts separately as well as together. The purpose should bring the author and the audience together. The author needs to understand the audience, and the aud
Alexis Karas
WRT Rhetorical Analysis of Adriana Foster Professor Mangini My rhetorical analysis of Adriana Foster’s project will analyze the elements of her project that help to get her message to the audience. The analysis will include the aesthetic appeal, modes of communication, messages, and the mediums used to convey the message. Rhetorical situation includes the speaker, the audience, and the intended message. There are a few speakers in the project, one of which I believe is Adriana in support of Obama. Others include Malala Yousufzai, Marie Folks-Hampton, and possibly the viewpoint from a homosexual. The genres supporting these speakers are a fifty-word story, two short stories (one of which references an article), and tweets and six word stories. The audience is anyone who is a potential voter in the election, as well as anyone who wishes to be informed about President Obama’s political viewpoints on the issues mentioned. The message of the project is pro-Obama. The issues covered include equal rights for gay marriage, women’s rights, freedom of speech/thought, and being an informed voter. Her intended message was to get people to vote because their votes make a difference. The speaker Malala Yousufzai is a credible speaker because the author includes the link to the original article discussing her attack by the Taliban. She also includes a picture from the article. The short story of Marie Folks-Hampton appeals to reader’s emotions by gaining sympathy for a rape victim. The author appeals to the audience’s logic by writing the six word stories about voting for the first time. The only way to change something that you want changed is to get involved and vote. The best appeal to the audience is emotional: the audience feels sympathy toward the young girl who needs an abortion, and the young girl who was shot for voicing her opinions. The modes of images, words, and especially the sound of the spoken word poem impact the emotions of the audience. The listener can feel the passion behind the words spoken in the poem as it is read. Narration is used as a rhetorical strategy throughout the project. The author narrates the spoken word poem, and two characters narrate their own stories. Persuasion is also used in the introduction and in the six word stories. Again, the reader can see how passionate the author is when she writes about the power of voting. Some of the genres used in Adriana’s project are six word stories, tweets, pictures, fifty word stories, spoken word poems, word collages and a prezi. By recording her spoken word story she lets the audience relate on an auditory level, adding another aspect to attract the listener. The spoken word poems inspire the viewer to be passionate about voting in the election and making a difference. The fifty word stories incite emotions in the viewer to feel compassion toward the speakers, to agree with their viewpoints. I believe that Adriana did a great job creating characters that readers can feel compassionate about. The computer was the main medium used in Adriana’s project. She also used website on the internet to create some aspects of her project. In particular, she used Prezi, Jing, and Twitter. Adriana also used screen shots from an iPhone for pictures in her project. To create the fifty word stories and six word stories she used a word processor on the computer and pasted it directly onto weebly. Weebly is the website she used to put the whole project together. The modes she used in the project were words, sounds and images. The main use of sound was in the spoken word poem. The images used were for humor purposes (the Big Bird picture) as well as to give the stories visual aspects. Words made up most of the project, particularly the fifty word stories and the six word stories. The six word stories were effective at times, but I think there may have been a few too many of them. The most powerful aspect of the project was the spoken word story. It draws the reader in and captures their attention from start to finish. I liked the color scheme of the web page: the white background was not distracting and the pink words hinted at a feminist viewpoint (which she has, since she is in fact a girl). This also helped support most of the characters throughout the project since they were female. I think the neutral background was a good choice because the project covered a few different aspects of the election. I think the sections of the project should have had some form of dividers to section off the genres. I also think that the genres should have had some kind of order, maybe a running theme of how the author felt about each subject (or how the characters impacted her decision to vote). Adriana’s project did a good job of getting the message (to vote) across to the audience. Her project would attract anyone who is pro-Obama, and particularly women who can relate to the different characters. The only thing I would add to the project would be a running theme of how each political standpoint/narrator impacted the author’s opinion on voting. Won't be in class tomorrow (today?) because I've been dying all weekend. Finally going to see the doctor tomorrow. After they can get me to breathe easily again I can finally put up my finished rhetorical analysis. #worststudentEVER
Someone let me know what I'm missing =( medium: how physically you are getting the message. (speaker on computer)
mode: what is used to get the message out. (voice) genre: (essay - original narrative) In the projects we did in this class there were definietly things specific to a particular culture, especially in the case of the gay marriage projects. As a culture we still associate homosexuality with rainbows and many of the images were done in technicolor hues to give the "homosexual" vibe. When I'm writing, particularly on Facebook or Twitter, I consider carefullythe double meaning of my words. Often, passive aggressive people will write vague things on social media sites to express their feelings. I am one of those people (well for some things). I usually take the lyrics to songs and use specific words or lines that suit my needs and post them. I know that the person that it's directed at will never see or understand it, because some people are just unintelligent. Or women expect too much in the way of cognitive thinking. I think that pictures can better convey messages than words can because words can have a double meaning and pictures show exactly what they are talking about. For instance, children's books have pictures to help children better understand what the book is about. Children often cannot read well by that point, and words mean very little to them. They understand the action in the picture and can learn what the words mean through use of the pictures. Considering the meaning of images definitely helps in understanding difficult readings. In lab reports and science text books the language is often difficult and clinical, with a jargon that the reader needs to learn and understand in order to understand the text itself. Diagrams and drawings help people learn scienc like when learning abuot the parts of a cell. They also help builders when the drawing is of a blueprint. If the directions were written out they could be unclear; a visual image is absolute. Five issues that affect me: student loans birth control gay marriage drug abusers slipping through the system How can reading Kress's "Reading Images: Multimodality, Representation and New Media" help you to write a better rhetorical analysis? Do you agree with Kress when he says, "Words are (relatively) vague, often nearly empty of meanings; by contrast images are full, ‘plain’ with meaning"?
In "Reading Images: Multimodality, Representation and New Media" Kress discusses the fact that words have different meanings in different societies and cultures, but that pictures have direct meaning because they are visual. He uses the example of looking for food in an American airport, where he sees the sign for Bar & Grille. Grill represents fresh food and grilled food, and bars in America represent alcohol. Writing can only represent so much, for example: reading someone say "you did what?" in a tone of incredulity as opposed to "you did what?" she said incredulously. Words can only be used to describe things for which words already exist. To draw something from our imagination we would have no words to describe it if it were totally new. A picture can show the object exactly as we see it in our heads. I agree with Kress when he says that "Words are (relatively) vague, often nearly empty of meanings; by contrast images are full, ‘plain’ with meaning" because often there are words with more than one meaning. In one part of the world a friendly greeting could mean something completely disrespectful in another part of the world. Things that you dream up in your imagination might not have words to describe them, and thus no way to tell someone else about them. The only way to do that would be to draw a picture. In The Wild Things by Dave Eggers, he draws pictures of the monsters in the margins to show what they look like because words don't do them justice. Reading this article can help when writing a rhetorical analysis because Kress focuses on the fact that pictures say what words sometimes cannot. "A picture is worth a thousand words" would be a good way to describe it. Focusing on what the pictures are saying in our rhetorical analyses would help get the better idea of what the project itself is saying overall. Questions: Do you think that pictures can better convey your messages than words can? Does considering the meaning of the images help you to better understand things you are reading about (particularly in text books)? Does considering the meaning of the images chosen in the projects you're doing your rhetorical analysis on help you to better understand the projec In this article rhetorical analyses are described as being an extended version of reading comprehension tests, but with more focus on the way the text works. You look at the different parts of the text and how they come together to work (or sometimes not work). The key terms listed in the article are:
Rhetorical situation: The setting in which any act of communication takes place. Rhetorical situations typically consist of a speaker, an audience, and a message. They are also connected with elements of culture (other texts, ideas, speakers, and readers, etc.). • Appeals: The ways in which a text seeks to engage its readers. Common approaches are appeals to ethos (the credibility of the speaker), appeals to logos (the logic of the message), and appeals to pathos (the emotions). • Rhetorical strategies: Methods of communicating the details of a message. Common strategies include narration, analysis, description, comparison, and persuasion. • Genres: Categories used to classify, engage, and compose texts. Genres estab- lish conventions that create expectations. Texts meet and adapt these con- ventions as they deliver their messages. • Medium: The materials and mode of transmission used to create and deliver a message. • Text: Any item crafted by humans that communicates a message. Famil- iar texts include essays, stories, and advertisements. A number of less familiar texts (films, songs, video games, etc.) can also be analyzed rhetorically. • Visual analysis: Examining the rhetorical dimensions of images. Visual analysis considers arrangement, balance, contrast, emphasis, cropping, size, shape, line, color, and other elements of images. (Above terms taken directly from Chapter 7 Rhetorical Analysis) When analyzing pictures a lot of the steps are the same. You start with a "broad" look at the image, and then you focus on the smaller details. This will lead to questions and finding rhetorical strategies for looking at the picture. Start by focusing on the medium and genre of the picture. Pay attention to the framing of the image and the use of light in the image. Look at how the elements of the picture are arranged. THe author suggests imagining a grid over the picture to help thinking about placement of specific elements. Keep a note of elements that stand out in the picture, and the focal points of the picture. Another great section (that would be pointless to regurgitate, so I will paste it here for further use) is the author's strategies for understanding rhetorical analysis. |
AlexisMaster of Fine Arts from Vermont College of Fine Arts, Rowan University alumna, sister of Theta Phi Alpha, and future YA author extraordinaire. Archives
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