TOW #7 IRB Post "We Just Up and Left"

This is another chapter from my IRB, My Kind of Place, called "We Just Up and Left". It describes the author, Susan Orlean 's visit to a mobile home park in Oregon called Portland Meadows Mobile Home Park. She starts out with a story of a man who used to own a hundred cats in a trailer and then recounts stories of many other people who lived in the park at one point, but then left. Orlean describes the trailer park itself, which is secluded and unnoticed from the main road. She presents an anecdote to introduce the managers of the park. Then she goes on to reflect on trailer parks in general, how they often have dreamy sounding names and seem to attract disaster, how a trailer is the cheapest form of shelter, and how it is also the most mobile. One woman Orlean talked to who used to live in a mobile home park in Colorado said "'When the wages dropped in the sixties, we just up and left... Up and left.'" Most of what makes up the chapter are anecdotes, stories of different people who Orlean met in the trailer park. She describes how they came to the park, what their life is like there, and how they are part of the community. This helps Orlean to present an unbiased view of life in a mobile home park. There is a lot of existing prejudice about mobile homes and the people who live in them, because trailers are cheaper housing. By introducing the reader to different, real people, Orlean helps to break some of these stereotypes. Anecdotes are the most effective way to achieve her purpose, to give the reader a different view of mobile home parks. This also is incorporated into the overall goal of the book itself, which I believe, again, is to show the reader the often hidden, potentially stereotyped communities of the world in an unbiased light. This widens the reader's horizons and opens their minds. She uses anecdotes in all her chapters throughout the book and by writing a different chapter on each different subculture or phenomenon. Altogether the reader is presented with varying stories of different people and events, both with each chapter and within each chapter.

TOW #6 "Brown By The Numbers" College Information Brochure

This weekend I went to visit a few colleges and one of them was Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. While there I picked up a brochure called "Brown By The Numbers" offering basic information about Brown University. The brochure includes an introduction to Brown, a lot of statistics and facts about the university in several different categories, a brief description of the campus, a collection of images, and an explanation of how financial aid is managed at the school. Ultimately, the purpose of the brochure is to pique a potential student's interest and to get him or her to apply to Brown. It uses a variety of different strategies to appeal to college-searching high school students and their parents. The main appeal generated is ethos, and the brochure uses a lot of statistics and numbers to do so. For example, it provides the student to faculty ratio, the breakdown of class sizes, the racial and regional breakdown of the class of 2017, and the amount of financial aid distributed to students this year. All these numbers are facts that prospective college students and their families are considering, and it boosts Brown's ethos to show off small class sizes, a diverse student body, and it's generosity with financial aid. Some of the numbers it offers create appeals to pathos and logos as well. For example, Brown advertises that it was ranked fourth in Newsweek's survey of the happiest college students in the US. This appeals to the ethos of prospective students, because they desire a school where they are going to be happy, as well as logos because the logic dictates that if Brown's students are happy, and one attends Brown, one will have a happy college experience. Though the numbers are the main focus of the brochure, it also appeals to ethos and pathos in it's introduction by comparing college education to a journey, and then characterizing the "academic journey" at Brown versus at other schools. For example, the brochure states "students at Brown have more opportunity to define their own education than do students at any other American university," (p. 2). According to Brown, at other schools the journey is predefined and never changing, but at Brown it is open and flexible and based on students decisions. This appeals to ethos, because it argues that Brown has more opportunities for students than other colleges, and it appeals to pathos because it bases it's argument on the assumption that students desire choice and freedom. Finally, the brochure provides images to illustrate it's facts and arguments.

Here is a link I found to an online copy of the brochure: http://www.brown.edu/admission/undergraduate/sites/brown.edu.admission.undergraduate/files/uploads/BrownByNumbers.pdf

TOW #5 "100 Women: What chance does a young girl have?" Visual

This was a video made by BBC for it's "100 Woman Season", a program running for the month of October that explores the reality of life for women across the world in the twenty-first century. The video points out ways that life has improved for women and how equality has increased, and it also calls attention to the injustice and inequality that still exists. It uses bold text and simple animation to communicate information. The video begins by reminding the audience that there are 3.5 billion women on earth: half of the world. From there it represents the woman and the journey she takes in today's society with a recurring simple red figure. Despite the differences in women and their situations across countries and cultures, we are united in our triumphs and our challenges. To communicate these triumphs and challenges, the video presents statistics, accompanied by animation of graphs, maps, and other figures. The animation is simple, but makes a statement, effectively accentuating the statistics. These statistics appeal to both the ethos and pathos of an audience. They certainly build up the credibility of the video. For example, the video cites statistics from UNICEF, UNESCO, World Health Organization, and other such respected and credible organizations. The statistics show both improvements and injustices, such as the increasing rate of girls attending primary school, the high numbers of teenage mothers, the rate of sex trafficking and abuse of women, the lower wages of women than men, and the increased rate of women's presence in government. The statistics appeal to the pathos of the audience because they plainly show the dramatic injustice that still exists in our world. However, they also communicates hope because of the achievements that have been made and the changes we can continue to make in the future. Finally, slightly dramatic background music and subtle sound affects help illustrate the statistics and give the video a polished feel. This builds up the credibility of the video because it looks professional, as well as helping to illicit an emotional reaction in the viewer through music and sounds that demonstrate the statistics. Though I think the video probably appeals more to women, I think it is also designed to bring attention of these issues to male viewers. This video definitely achieves it's purpose, to shed light on both the progress that has been made as well as the injustice that still exists in the lives of women.

Here is a link to the video: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-24402849

TOW #4 "Tea Party Leaders Announce Support For Deal In Exchange For Malia Obama"

This week I read an article from The Onion reporting a (fake) offer from the Tea Party concerning the government shutdown. According to the article, the Tea Party said they would agree to the budget bill if they were delivered President Obama's firstborn daughter. The article, like all those published by The Onion, is obviously satirical in nature. Being a fairly liberal website, it is not surprising to see The Onion making fun of the very conservative Tea Party in the midst of political stalemate that caused the government shutdown this past week. This article appeals mainly to pathos through its use of humor. The author of this article uses extreme exaggeration; his or her characterization of the Tea Party leaders is reminiscent of the archetypal sorcerer or witch character in fairy tales. For example, the article states: "'The girl. Bring us the girl,” said Congressman Steve King (R-IA)... 'The bill may pass, but the firstborn shall be ours.' 'Heed our bidding,' added an unblinking Phil Gingrey (R-GA). 'And thy wish shall be granted'" (p. 3). The idea of a trade for the firstborn child is an allusion to such stories as Rapunzel and Rumpelstiltskin. This connects the leaders to the creepy witch antagonists and thus, as politicians, makes them seem ridiculous. However, the article is not built solely on pathos: ethos is automatically established in this case because The Onion is a well-known satirical website. Obviously no one expects their articles to be true, but they can expect a good laugh and a striking political statement. I think the purpose of this article is to point out the stubbornness of Tea Party politicians concerning the failed attempt to pass a new budget and make those politicians seem ridiculous. Through the use of exaggeration and illusion to appeal to the pathos of the audience through humor, while also maintaining it's ethos as a leading source of satire, this article easily achieves its purpose.

The article can be found at this link: http://www.theonion.com/articles/tea-party-leaders-announce-support-for-deal-in-exc,34101/?ref=auto