II

Since I’ve been getting a little behind with the journal, it’s hard for me to remember what we did the first three or four classes; so, I’d like to think about what I’m going to write as some kind of overview of what we’ve done up to now. After this entry I guess I can compromise with myself and start writing on a “daily basis”(no guarantee, though).

Let’s see, if I understood correctly (if I’ve been a good observer), for the past 3-4 weeks we’ve been covering topics that are essential for society to maintain good expression and communication in between all kinds of people. By saying this, I’m talking about Writing, Language, Rhetoric, etc. And all these topics have been covered up with two particular tools: discussion and perspective. We’ve been using a graph (the f*ck#ng graph! like Zach said) to map out certain problems along with their appropriate/logical solutions, and we’ve been analyzing how sometimes we involve unintentionally with them. This has been very interesting, because even though some times we address topics like “being a believer” (which at times like these it is very hard to discuss in such way that does not offend or sound disrespectful to others) the graph always seems to “balance” everything. Thus we all end up agreeing with one side or another without having to get stubborn and argue about which side is better or “perfectly” correct. At the end it is human behavior and the best thing we can do is to be tolerant.

Also, after two or three classes we started analyzing, in a rhetorical way, texts and especially various pieces of advertising. This was something new for me. Yes, we all are aware that most of the advertisements and television commercials are intended to persuade you so that you can buy products, so that you can become a consumer; but here in class we’ve been doing it more thoroughly. Every little piece that constitutes the ad/article is separated and analyzed individually, allowing us to understand and criticize its pros and cons. How useful, right?

This is actually one of our major assignments: pick a text/essay/article and rhetorically analyze it. Let’s see if Gallop’s “Close Reading” article helps out here. Since I still haven’t found what I’m going to analyze, I better leave this blog and keep looking around.