Let’s Discuss Rhetoric
Blog 8
The Final Blog!
Blog 8: Workshop 4
Our final project in class is to create an interactive narrative. From the start, I knew this was going to be a challenging project to me because I am an indecisive person. My idea is to create a narrative about lifestyle and nutrition for college students. The story will walk the college student throughout their day, and they get to make decisions about when they wake up, what they eat, and if they work out or not. Their decisions would affect their class participation, energy levels, ability to do more things through out the day, and overall happiness.
Making the narrative was harder than I thought it would be. Using Twine is not as daunting as a task as I thought it would be, but I had to be careful with my language to connect my story boards together. It was hard to connect the decisions together to get the results I wanted at the end. There also was no way for me to keep track of the decisions the player would make through out the game and I had to figure out how to do that. This was the difficult and timely part. I had to make a story path for each decision which turned out to take me extra time.
During the workshop I found out a few unsettling things. First, I couldn’t get my story to publish and play. This was extremely frustrating because I have had multiple technical problems with my computer in this class which has prompted me to start over on my previous projects and it was looking like that would be my same outcome this time. For some reason my computer did not support Twine, so I had to move my story to Google Chrome and transfer all the content over to that browser. This was a setback but was manageable and I didn’t lose my work. The further I go in this class; I find technology harder to use. Things like these remind me of the “Bag of Snakes” article about how technology is assumed to be super easy to use and my generation can figure it out in seconds. This is false. Technology doesn’t work in a split second. We must program it to do what we want and that takes time and learning how to do.
The other unsettling thing I found out through feedback was that my story line did not have a clear cultural significance. My idea to explain the importance of lifestyle, nutrition, and diet to college students was not as clear as I thought it was. I wanted to teach players the effects of food choices and exercise has on their bodies and how colleges can limit these decisions. My message was more of a “fat shaming” idea and that was not my intention. From here I could choose to redo my story and add more decisions that would teach about how colleges can limit student’s resources to healthy food and activities that then can affect the way students behave, their mental status, and their social life. Or I could scrap this story and create a new one.
I decided to start a new story. I am going to create a story about how people in the service industry, specifically waiters and waitresses, are treated poorly by restraint goers. This idea has a clear cultural significance, I can create a detailed and interesting story, and it is relevant to my audience because we all go to restaurants. I am planning to walk the player through a meal at a restaurant as if they are the customer and give them decisions regarding how they will act to their waiter or waitress. I will have two decisions for each story board that are either positive or negative reactions. I am limiting the amount of decisions because working on my first story, when there are too many decisions the story boards get confusing and it is hard to link the decisions to the results. After I walk the customer through their meal, I will switch the player to a new character as the waiter or waitress. The player then will go through their day and receive the reactions the customer made during the first part. At the end of the story I will explain how customers effect waiters and waitresses’ days and income. Sometimes bad service is due to a bad day, poor working conditions, and small mistakes.
Hopefully my new story will be clearer and culturally significant in a positive way. This project is one that I need to devote much of my energy to. Working with technology is hard and I need to make sure I have enough time set aside for this project in case I have another technical issue. This project is also about making decisions, being aware of my bias and decisions and my prospective. I need to take all these things into account when making this project and its process narrative.
Best,
Arianna
Blog 7
Understanding Perspective can Influence Rhetoric
Blog 7: “Straight White Male” and “Queer Female of Color”
The article “Straight White Male,” by John Scalzi, and the article “Queer Female of Color,” by Lisa Nakamura, play off each other but discuss very different things. “Straight White Male” is an article about white male privilege but written to explain the idea to white males without offending them. The other article discusses the rhetoric used in “Straight White Male” and analyzes the piece.
“Straight White Male” is a short piece posted as a blog to John Scalzi’s blog website. He gives his credibility when he tells his audience that he is a straight white male. The idea of him explaining to other straight white males that their experience in the world is tremendously easier than any other societal group is innocent. But there are underlying themes that Scalzi did not notice due to his societal standing. Writing is about choices and how those choices effect the audience to convey a message. Scalzi’s message is simple. But because he uses a straight white male lens, he may not understand why his writing could have rubbed some the wrong way. When writing, it is important to analyze my own perspective on the issue and try to understand other perspectives for my writing not to be bias. By creating a non-bias piece, I can build on my credibility and logos rhetorical tools. This will help my audience feel comfortable that I am addressing all viewpoints of the issue. Scalzi failed to do this. The one thing I did like about Scalzi’s piece is that he explained his message in a way that his targeted audience could better connect with. This is something I need to work with in my writing. Explaining my message in different ways for my entire audience to understand will strengthen my credibility and writing. I sometimes write in a way that only I can understand, but I need to include all my audience and some of my audience may not understand my writing best through my personal viewpoint. This goes back to analyzing my perspective and gaining more perspective of others for me to convey my message more clearly for my entire audience to understand.
Lisa Nakamura’s article discusses her opinions on Scalzi’s article. She mentions that the piece is offensive and that Scalzi’s own viewpoint is reflected in his writing causing some bias to appear. She mentions Scalzi’s article exemplifies white male privilege. Scalzi was trying to explain white male privilege by saying it is a default setting in a video game. He does explain the concept in a respectful way but ignores that fact that he is using white male privilege as he writes. Nakamura explains that using the metaphor of the default setting for white male privilege is just letting white males ignore their privilege as if its hereditary. I enjoyed Nakamura’s article because it did point out how the audience perceived Scalzi’s work, even if that is not the way Scalzi intended it to be read. This proves that analyzing your audience and understanding different viewpoints can help strengthen your writing and build on rhetoric.
Reading these articles while working on my podcast project has helped me understand that every decision, I have made on the project effects my audience and their notion of me. There is bias in my podcast because the role I am taking on it the project allows there to be bias. I made this choice because it strengthens my credibility. I am supposed to be a TCU student communicating to my community all the great aspects of TCU. Therefore, there will be bias towards TCU because it would be contradictory if I did not favor TCU over other schools. By creating this bias, my audience can understand the clear message I am trying to convey. Understanding different viewpoints can also strengthen my project. The podcast is about football and not all the audience will be football fans. My group edited our podcast to make the sports sections more interesting and understandable. We add in questions and explain concepts in non-football terms for our entire audience to understand, not just the football fans. This helps with our rhetoric because the message can be comprehended by the entire audience.
Rhetoric isn’t just about ethos, pathos, and logos. Its about making thoughtful decisions and understanding how those decisions will impact the audience. Understanding and analyzing biases also plays a role in rhetoric. Biases can help build on a message or can hurt the message because it negatively impacts the audience.
Best,
Arianna
Blog 6
Another Workshop, More Feedback
Blog 6: Workshop 3
Today we discussed using rhetoric theory in our projects and why it is important to use it. Throughout this project, I have been thinking about what rhetoric theories would help strengthen the podcast. In class, we discussed the importance of why the rhetoric theories are used in our projects. I did not think much about this aspect; therefore, this workshop was helpful in showing me how to incorporate rhetoric theories correctly.
Giving feedback to the other group helped me understand how each rhetoric theory can be done in different ways but still be effective. It also jogged my memory on all the rhetoric theories we have learned in class. With the feedback we had to provide, we also had to state why the theory is important to the piece. This is the part that I need more practice within my own project. Giving feedback on this aspect was a bit difficult but it opened my eyes to what I need to work on in my own project.
The feedback given to my group was helpful. I agree that we need to be more expressive and enthusiastic with our voices. The feedback mentioned that we did not use the pathos appeal, which I disagree on. We added music to draw our audience in, we used personal examples and experiences, and we included imagery when talking about the football game plays. To build on this aspect we can add in more style to our voices and sound effects. The feedback mentioned that they want more debate for the sports podcast. This podcast is not about sports, its about TCU. I do not know enough about football to debate about it during the podcast. The section is meant to be informative. But to amp up the sport parts of the podcast, we can add other hosts asking questions to create a more balanced atmosphere. In our introduction, my group should mention that we are TCU students to add to our credibility. This was something I was debating to add but I thought it would be redundant because our podcast’s audience would already know that if they are avid listeners. The introduction does mention that we will inform our audience about the TCU and Baylor football rivalry, which is the message of our podcast.
All in all, my group received helpful information that we can use to improve our podcast. In our next workday we may need to record some parts over again and add in new parts. This might take some time, but it is important to include these rhetoric theories to help strengthen our message. After doing this workshop, I have a better understanding of what need to include in our project and now I am ready to use rhetoric more appropriately in the podcast. The workshop also gave me a better understanding of what my group needs to include in our process narrative. Consciously thinking about the importance of rhetoric will gives me a head start on the process narrative and, again, will strengthen my podcast.
Best,
Arianna
Blog 5
Let’s get this Podcast Started
Blog 5: Workshop 2
We have started a new project and that means we had another workshop. The project assigned is to work in groups to create a podcast or video and use rhetorical elements to communicate with an audience. Today’s workshop was to share the group’s plan and ideas of their projects.
My group is making a podcast about TCU and our episode that we will create is about the TCU and Baylor football rivalry. We chose this topic because we are all TCU students and know about TCU football culture. This topic is also relevant to our audience and to us.
For homework, I made an outline and rough plan for the podcast. I included the structure of the podcast, our key points, who will be talking, and how we will flow through our content. I then wrote up tasks each person in the group is responsible for. The tasks relate to what the group member will be saying in the podcast. Creating the outline and plan helped me feel less overwhelmed with the project and gave me an idea of what I need to be doing to contribute to the project.
During the workshop I relayed the outline and plan to my peers. Having made the outline and plan before made this easy to do and I was able to clearly state my thoughts to the class. The tough part of the workshop was not feeling like my group was on the same page. I communicated with my group to go over the plan and outline but during the workshop, I noticed that was not done by the other members. The feedback we were given was to find specific dates for work time, find intro and outro music, get consent forms, and we were complimented on our engaging titles. This feedback was helpful because I forgot to plan out those little things that are important to the project.
A big area I want to focus on is how to incorporate rhetorical elements into the podcast. The group can build on Ethos and credibility by talking about how we are TCU students and attend TCU football games. We can also talk about the research we have done to let the audience know that we have other sources that confirm our information. Pathos can be brought in with the intro and outro. The music, language, and tone of voice will help create a certain mood for the audience to relate to and engage with the podcast. Word choice through the podcast and personal experience and examples can also help build Pathos. Bringing in statistics about football will help build Logos in the podcast. The surveys Caroline and I do will also build Logos because we will be discussing data we collected from TCU and Baylor students. Because we are making a podcast, visual rhetoric cannot be created but we can create aural rhetoric with our tone, pitch, volume, and sound effects. These will help our audience stay interested and help create mood with the audience.
Best,
Arianna
Blog 4
Podcasts: The New Thing
Blog 4: PCCH: “Captain Marvel” and BWB: “The Swanson”
I have never really been a fan of podcasts but this year it seems like podcasts are the new thing. Two of my classes this year are requiring me to make my own podcast. I have listened to a few podcasts before for class, but I wouldn’t call myself a podcast girl. Making two podcasts this semester has felt like a dauting task but after listening to and watching the podcast and vidcasts this weekend, I am feeling a little less overwhelmed.
The structure to podcasts is simple and have a similar framework to an essay. The “Captain Marvel” podcast by Pop Culture Happy Hour on NPR structures their podcast with an introduction, a few main points or body paragraphs, analysis within those main points, and a summary and conclusion. The set up felt like a basic essay format. The introduction explained what the theme of the podcast is and who was speaking. It also mentioned the topic of the podcast and a little summary of it. Then the podcast went into the main points or discussion points. The people talked about how they would rank the movie, the lead role, the emotional appeal to the movie, other players in the movie, and what the future of the movie would look like. The discussion points were not summarizing the movie but were analyzing components of the movie and adding to the story. There were personal opinions brought into the podcast that would further expand the audience’s ideas and perspectives. The analysis was the meat of the podcast. It offered new insight for the audience and kept the podcast interesting and thoughtful. Then the podcast ended with a summary of what the podcast went over and a conclusion wrapping up the conversation and letting the audience know what was coming up next.
The strengths of the podcast included its analysis and interaction with the audience. Again, analysis is the most important part of a podcast because podcasts are meant to shine light on something new that the audience can learn from the people speaking in the podcast instead of just giving a summary. This podcast also wanted to know what the audience was thinking and had a link for the audience to give feedback and ask questions. The only weakness I saw with this podcast was that the speakers did not build their ethos. I did not receive much background on who was speaking and why I should be listening to them. I dislike podcasts for this reason. I do not want to listen to people who have no expertise on the subject. The podcast could have been stronger if the speakers mentioned that they were movie critics or Marvel super fans.
The “The Swanson” by Binging with Babbish vidcast was different from the podcast as it had video and was much shorter. The structure of the vidcast was like that of the podcast though. It had an introduction, a main point or body, and a conclusion. The introduction was short and lacked information about what the vidcast was about. The body of the vidcast included only one point. It was informational as it was a tutorial but was fast and therefore, not effective in getting its message across. The conclusion summarized what had happened in the vidcast and told the audience what was coming next. I liked the podcast more than the vidcast because it was more informational, had more analysis and importance, and interacted with the audience better. The vidcast did not give me much information and I felt out of the loop on what was being discussed within it.
Listening to and watching these different mediums gave me ideas of what I want to do my next project on and gave me reassurance that a podcast or vidcast is doable. I will choose to do a podcast form my class project because I want to build my rhetoric with my audience better and I feel like I would connect stronger with my audience through a podcast.
Best,
Arianna
Blog 3
My Website’s Lows and Highs
Blog 3: Workshop
I have done workshops in my past English classes, but each class has been a little different. Some classes the whole class reviews the work together one at a time or worksheets are filled out from the peer reviewers. Today’s workshop was informative and helpful but didn’t include any of the busy work that my past workshops did.
I presented my work to my group and we went through my website and then my process narrative. The compliments I got on my website were encouraging. The website did present me with a lot of frustration, and I was worried that it would not be up to par with the rest of the class’ websites. I was told that the website looked nice and was put together. I wanted my website to be set up in a direct way and I achieved that through the feedback I got from my peers. The color scheme was also important to me as I was creating my website. I wanted to use colors that were calming and not distracting. Again, I think achieved this because the feedback I got mentioned how my color scheme was unified throughout the website and was a nice touch. I want the website to have a relaxed theme because I don’t want my audience overwhelmed when they visit it. Having unified colors and styles on my pages help create a website that is pleasing to look at and understandable for my audience. I was told that my About Me page was unique and interesting. I wanted that page to show my personality and, from my peer reviews, it did. The pictures and layout of the page helped achieve that. The About Me page is a huge chunk of where my Ethos comes from. I write about why and how I am a credible writer on the About Me page and set up the audience to be prepared for what is on the website. A change I was recommended during the workshop was to show my entire blogs instead of just the download link. The blogs show up only as links which can be confusing to my audience and go unread and unseen. I agree on changing my blogs to show the entire piece because I do think it is important for my audience to be able to find all my work clearly.
I was also given feedback on my Process Narrative. Most of my feedback was positive which I was happy about because I did put a lot of time into my Process Narrative to meet the criteria. In my Process Narrative I talked about building my website and the frustrations that came with it. I talked about a failure I had and how I overcame it. I also talked about how I wish I could have used a different theme on my website but had to find a new way to achieve that goal. I mentioned my emotional response to building the website. And I talked about how rhetoric was used within my website. A big chunk of my Process Narrative was on the website’s connection to rhetoric and I was proud that my peers found that to be a strong part to my Process Narrative. The feedback I was given about my Process Narrative was to go in more depth about my emotional responses to building my website. I agree with my peers because I briefly mentioned my emotions, but I could explain my feelings more and connect them to specific aspects of the process. Another piece of advice was to write about how the rhetoric is used on all my pages than just the About Me page. I agree with this feedback as well because I did forget to mention the rhetoric on the Home and Blog pages.
Overall, I enjoyed this workshop because I got valuable feedback that will make my website and writing stronger. I am excited to start tweaking and adding to my website along with thinking more consciously about using rhetoric in my writing more.
Best,
Arianna
Blog 2
The Truth in Speech
Blog 2: Hutto Jigsaw
In David Hutto’s article, “Ancient Egyptian Rhetoric in the Old and Middle Kingdoms,” ancient Greece and Egypt’s rhetoric elements were laid out and defined. The article mentioned skillful language is powerful and the fact that proper use of language makes a person good in their public and private lives. Though the article was informative, I could not create a connection to it until I stumbled upon the line “In contrast with Greek rhetoric, the Egyptian practice seems to be in line with Plato’s belief that searching for truth was more important than the sly persuasions of rhetoric” (Hutto, 228).
When I write I usually don’t think about if I am persuading my audience. I know persuasion is an important part to rhetoric and writing but sometimes I think of it as too pushy. For my big essay projects, I like to include multiple diverse pieces of evidence and analysis. This does build on my ethos and logos appeals, which turns out to be a driving force for persuasion. In my other pieces of writing I like to just write and use imagery and metaphors. But in all my types of writing I want to be truthful. I value truth and that is why I like to use a lot of evidence, statistics, quotes, and facts in my writing. But this also comes across as “sly persuasion” when my analysis is written alongside my evidence to prove my point. It is hard to present the truth while staying genuine. I am still trying to work on how to present an argument, persuade my argument to the best of my ability, and stay humble and truthful. There is a part of me that thinks that because I am arguing my side instead of just stating the truth my audience will think I am ingenuine. By taking more English and writing classes through my time at TCU, I hope I can figure out a balance between truthful evidence and the persuasion of the argument.
The article also talked about changing speech based on different audiences. I found this interesting because today we are taught to use the same rule to use different language for different audiences. For a lack of a better term, it is cool to see ideas in language stay prevalent through long periods of time. Changing word choice, evidence choice, and other aspects of speech when connecting with different audiences is something I have been practicing throughout my time as a writer and will continue to do so.
Best,
Arianna
Blog 1
Rhetoric can be Interesting!
Blog 1: Purdue Owl Vidcasts
I have only been familiar with word rhetoric for a couple of years now. In high school, my English teachers skimmed past it and I never really practiced it in my own writing. Through my TCU English and Communication classes I became more familiar with rhetoric and had the opportunities to practice with it. Even though I feel confident with the rhetoric appeals, the Purdue Owl Vidcasts did share more information with me.
The history of rhetoric was the most interesting Vidcast for me and taught me the most. The coverage of the Greeks’ traditional way of teaching speech through a class system to the Sophists’ more inclusive way of teaching gave me a better connection to rhetoric. I now have background on the history of the word, instead of just connecting Pathos, Logos, and Ethos with the word. The Vidcast over the history was appealing through its visual rhetoric. The clips and images enhanced the message. The content was also lively and informative at the same time.
Ethos and Logos have confused me in the past because I have thought of them as being similar. After watching the Vidcasts discussing the two appeals, I feel more confident in the differences between them. Learning through the Vidcasts that Ethos is a persuasion technique that creates trust between the audience and the writer is a different way for me to think about the appeal. When I use Ethos in my writing I will focus more on my qualifications, a way to build trust. In my communications class I worked a little bit on building my qualification by conducting heavy research in my topic. I now understand that I can also be qualified by choosing a topic that I have personal experience with. By doing this, I can prove to the audience that I am credible beyond just doing a ton of research because I had to. Logos also deals with credibility but a different kind of credibility. Using Logos in the past, I thought about using credible sources for my evidence. This is important but not all that Logos has to offer. Organization and clarity can also prove Logos and be persuasive because it helps connect the message together. I thought Ethos and Logos were similar because they both share the credibility component, but Logos has other parts to it outside of credible sources.
Visual rhetoric is important for communication because it is the envelope in which the message comes in. For me, visual rhetoric is the fun part of writing. I like to use different mediums to communicate because I get to be creative and use my artistic side. Throughout this English class, we have to use different mediums to share our writing. I am excited to set up the website that this blog post lives on because I can showcase my work in a way that expresses who I am by using colors, mediums within mediums, layouts, sounds, and images.
All in all, rhetoric is always used in writing because persuasion is a key ingredient to any message. I have learned and used these rhetoric skills in the past, but I am exciting to start creating better writing pieces by implementing these tools in better and new ways.
Best,
Arianna
Arianna Spring 