Jacob Giovagnoli's Weblog

This blog is on the campaign ad /a for Barack Obama in which he uses his mother as an example while talking about America’s health care plan. Barack talks about how his mother died from cancer when she was 53, and how during her last few months of life her fears weren’t of her death and family but how she was going to pay for health care. He goes on to say that the problem begins in washington and it is there that it needs to be fixed, he believes he is the person to fix the problems in washington. Barack is all over ethos in his commercial as he uses it in two different ways. The first is that he is an authority in the issues of health care in this country through the experience with his mother. she was dying of cancer and her thoughts didnt revolve around her dying but on how she was going to pay for her medical bills which shows he has experience with the problems americans have to face when dealing with the health care system here. The second is his statement that washington is broken, we are lead to believe him as he is a senator and would have a great deal of experience in dealing with washington, and knowing what is wrong with them. The second thing the commercial contains is logos, this is a pretty easy one to spot as he is very open with his logic. barack states that there are issues with the health care system in America as can be seen with the instance of his mother, and that the current leadership in Washington is leading it in the wrong direction therefor they should be replaced. finally he uses pathos pretty effectively by giving a story of his own that we can relate to. He shows himself as someone that has had to deal with the health care in this country and therefor can relate to all of the other americans that have had to deal with the horrors that are american health care.

The essay reviewed here is titled “The Language Police: Can we Stop Them?” by Diane Ravitch. The author is trying to argue that it is unfair and unconstitutional to censor the books that go into the schools for the children’s benefit. She does this using ethos, pathos, and logos very effectively. She uses ethos when she lists different authors that have had their literature censored without their permission, Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451 had 75 pieces taken out of it for the sake of political correctness, and he was very against this. The book itself was about book burning and censoring the books to make everyone happy. The author effectively uses Pathos in her statement as well, she talks about how when we limit what the children can read we are limiting experiences for them and as such limiting the thoughts they can form and in a sense censoring their freedom, and as such making you feel bad for the children. Logos is something the author uses at high amounts toward the end of the essay. She talks about how we live in a free country and as such we have to deal with insulting things and the lack of political correctness as a price for freedom. We may not like everything said but there is nothing you can do about it when you live in a free country, the best way to deal with this would be something along the lines of the statement “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” The author used the three tools of a good argument very effectively she started with famous authors to give herself a voice of authority, then brought in some emotion to get the reader to want to continue and ended with some logic so the reader can come up to the same conclusion with all of the evidence. She did a great job with her information, quotes, and tone to create a very persuasive essay.

The three important parts of a good argument are Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Ethos is trying to persuade someone by using someone the audience would trust the opinion of, like in the toothpaste commercials where they say 4 out of 5 dentists recommend this brand of toothpaste. Pathos is the attempt to get people to agree with you by getting them to feel a positive emotion with what you are stating, beer commercials use this the most often showing the product in a comedic situation so as to make it seem fun or enjoyable. Logos is in my opinion the most ethical approach as it uses logic to persuade the audience. Give reasons for listening to what i have to say, not just listen because i am authoritative or funny. Car commercials do this most often when they list off a bunch of things that the car advertised has, be it gas mileage, price, or something you probably don’t really need but would be nice to have like heated seats. When writing an argument since you usually aren’t an expert in the field of topic in order to sound authoritative you should quote someone that is, and use their arguments for your cause. Its important to sound authoritative as if you want people to trust you, you need to sound like you know what you are talking about with in depth knowledge of both sides of the argument. Some good strategies when appealing to emotion are to find a group of people and appeal to the emotions of that group. If you are marketing a movie to rebellious teenagers you may want to show scenes of intense action and violence, or if you were marketing to children you would want to make whatever you are advertising look warm and cuddly so the child could feel close to it, as in something like Barney. If you concentrate too heavily on emotion it is possible that you will distract from what is being advertised and while your commercial will be remembered your product will not, i remember a commercial in which someone was cooking in the kitchen when a cat knocked over some spaghetti sauce and became covered, (the cat was white), and so the guy picked up the cat and had a knife in his other hand since he was cooking, when someone walked in on him looking like a cat killer. I dont remember what was being advertised in the commercial even though i remember it very well. You can use logos to support a claim by showing how the claim can be related to the every day life of someone, like when talking about global warming the scientists tell of how the melting ice caps will cause the oceans to rise and flood areas like florida, and when your home is in danger of flooding you are far more likely to heed the advice of the scientist. Logos is very important to an argument, because if someone can not find reason to believe what is being stated than they will certainly be far less likely to accept the claim. Ethos, Pathos, and Logos are not at all separate from each other, when using logic people become emotionally involved, and a lot of times when using pathos a figure is being used that the audience is emotionally involved with, like when using a professional athlete to advertise food, being professional he can probably eat whatever he wants and chooses that, while at the same time hes a hero so it makes you feel more like the hero when eating what the athlete eats.

The Claim in an argument is its thesis, it states the point that is to be made by the argumentor. The claim is followed by Support, or evidence provide to prove the claim. Evidence is any specific information related to the claim, it is what the support is comprised of. Finally the Explanation is when you take all of the information that you have stated and you relate it to the claim, give reasons why the evidence is significant to what you are trying to say. The article by Crichton was to me, something i had believed to some extent for awhile, although it goes further as i believe a lot of science has become a religion. I believe he is incorrect on some of his statements though, like his one about global warming as it is clear that the ice caps are definitely receding, and i have a hard time believing smoke be it second hand or not is not going to harm you, and i dont know that pesticides such as DDT are good for the environment as anything with the purpose of killing on a large scale is going to have some negative effects even if they aren’t directly hurting people. Crichton has a very frustrated tone it seemed to me, he was talking about how newspapers and magazines weren’t covering the truth about a lot of the topics. He is trying to get the readers to question their beliefs in regards to environmentalism, so they dont do ridiculous things that have no benefit. Crichton’s main claim is that environmentalism is a religion, he even compared its beliefs to those of christianity, he made some supporting claims too, such as the claim that DDT was eliminated while it had no negative consequences and in doing such as all major religions do, environmentalism killed a grandios amount of people. Crichton supports his claim with an abundant amount of reasoning using mainly things that have not been proven true, such as DDT and Global warming, while downsizing mans impact on the earth such as stating that the ground covered by urbanization is only 5%, and he said that the sahara desert was shrinking not growing, and conversely the polar ice caps were growing not shrinking. He also claimed that the decline in population growth was evidence that doomsday predictions often correct themselves and as such the environmental issue may take the same path. I believe that his evidence is spotty at times, such as the claim that the decent in population growth is evidence for his claim, as the rate of growth is circumstantial as right now events such as the last boom was due to WWII and as such another crazy event could spark more growth, countries like China have also limited the number of children a family can have which does a great deal to slow growth when 1/3 of the worlds population resides in china. Global warming is also almost definitely a real threat, the ice caps are definitely shrinking and polar species mainly the polar bears are suffering from this. He chose to not cite his sources as they are easy to look up and it would just take up a lot of space, not citing his sources has undoubtedly hurt his claims in my mind, you cant state second hand smoke has no negative effects and not provide proof to this. Crichton made a strong case about environmentalism being a religion however many of his other claims were false or at least questionable and as such the readers may want to question their individual beliefs but i believe they are on a better course than Crichton is with his claims.