Nguyen,Chau+Minh

Here is the attachment of my final reflection paper.

Below is my annotated bibliography and reading journals.

Journal 4/1/2014 The reading that I have read over the past few weeks have helped me understand rhetoric a little better than I have come to understand. The most interesting ones for me are the readings on feminist. Especially, after my presentation on the reading comments. It allowed for me to see a different perspective on rhetoric on feminism. There is a strong desire to raise above oppression and gain as much power and status as a man. Yet, in the reading by Barker, "Wanted, A Young Woman To Do Housework" if felt as if the writer who is a female writer for other females treated other females as if she was a man. Her home is her business and no matter what happens in any aspects of life, the woman will have some say or control in how she wants something done. There are women who are content with the submissive lifestyle, but there are women who dies to know she can President someday or do a "man's job". She already act in those roles when taking care of the roles in her home, so there is an ability to take it beyond her home and into the business world. Men and women can think and express their emotions differently, but a women can be trained to think like a man, just as a man can sympathize with a woman's feeling. The reading of feminist in the Gulf War was also another interesting read. I have never thought about the feminist group of people that would discriminate among other female groups based on race and cultural background. That there are many categories in defining a person's social status. First, we have the rich 1% white man, then the middle class white man, then the poor white man and all other color comes after or appear less superior. How odd is it that the color of a person's skin may appear more pure than another? It really is like we feel more secure when the sun is out and there is light, but when it is dark and no light we are afraid and assume all bad things will happen in the dark, because it is unfamiliar to us. How must we think that way if animals have adapted overtime to survive in the dark? I suppose after over 200 years of slavery that is why people of dark colored skins are slowly rising above the middle men, but will they every reach the top 1% rich? Hegemony may not allow it to. And above all this, your gender defines how much money you make and your social status. This really blew my mind. The reading on The Limitation of Rhetoric helped better understand what rhetoric is. I have always thought it was the idea of being a good persuader. Instead here I find that there is more to just being a good persuader. According to Aristotle, "rhetoric ceases to be the technique of persuasion and truly become the art it was originally held to be, an art, however, which sustains itself only in and through its involvement with dialectic" (137). This just means to me that there is a greater sense for truth seeking and that sometimes there are no definite answers to any one question that is worthy of developing into a thesis or masterpiece. Having "knowledge, existence, communication, and value"(139) are the key points to rhetoric. Knowledge is understanding that is valued from its past, present, and future (it's existence) and the ability to express it (communication) via oratory, art, magazines, feminism. However, it wants to be portrayed there must be some sort of worthiness to that specific topic. The reading on Visual Rhetoric in Political Cartoons: A Structuralist Approach by Ray Morris helped me understand that "visual rhetoric, similar to that of visual semiotics, assumes that art is a language and that the success of linguistic models is strong evidence that this metaphor should be applied to visual communication" (196), Knowing that there is a relationship between the artist and the viewer helps better understand "they implicitly claim access to inside knowledge and a position that the person is skimming their cartoons in the daily paper lacks" (196). The imperatives of rhetoric that follows the four conditions of 1. adaptation, 2. division of labor, 3. pass on successful behaviors to newcomers, and 4. loyalty to a group. Applying these four conditions are the successes of continuing a relationship of unchanging. The authors applies the four types of knowledge which I never thought about when realize I apply them sometimes in my daily life. These are separated into two groups and again two subgroups: Group one is is part of the group studied and the other is a group detached from the group studied. The two divisions under these two groups are knowledge as base for action and desire as base for action. When the group is part of the study and has knowledge it is practical knowledge, but with desire it is an emotional knowledge. For observers who are detached from the group with knowledge it is considered intellectual knowledge and with desire it is political knowledge. All these are found and applied toward visual rhetoric for a better understanding of the image and in this example for the poilitcal cartoons. The "visual process of semiotics also concentrates on the perception of art in psychological terms"(199). And to go even deeper the condensation, "involved the compression of a complex phenomenon into a single image that is purported to capture its essence graphically. While combination, "refers to the blending of elements and ideas from different domains into a new composite that remains clearly identifiable as something that contains each of its constituents. These elements then comes to a domestication in popular art by taking something abstract, unfamiliar ideas, persons, or events turns into something familiar, and concrete. Taking all these concepts to break apart a picture to look deeper into the images of what is portrayed helps better understand the social position the artist is placing. Most of the time if the reader is simply skimming the picture he will overlook the deeper meanings of the message if he has no prior knowledge of the particular politics. Having background knowledge helps a rhetoric become a better rhetorician.

Now that we have gone over and discussed rhetoric, I am beginning to think that the paper I work for 100B is still considered rhetoric. At the end of our discussion, you asked us to write what we thought our definition of rhetoric was and mine was rhetoric is the ability to persuade or change others thoughts/feelings/beliefs according to one's own credibility and evidence. My job was to critically analyze the song, "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke. I talked about the underlying examples of oppression in women, how the lyrics had no significance meaning in a person's life, and how the song made the summer's number one hit in 2013. The song itself only had a catchy beat and attractive people to look at in the music video. The idea of rhetoric needs to change a person's attitude, beliefs, and values and I feel the song made it to number one without changing any of those aspects for their consumers. Because I have taken the pieces apart to this puzzle, I have grown a dislike for this song and feel the song did not deserve or is worthy of placing number one last summer. For me personally, the paper was critically analyze as rhetoric, because it changed my attitude, beliefs, and values for the song as a whole.
 * Was the text you examined, in fact, rhetoric? Justify your answer using what we've read so far.

I think that my study can teach someone to not just simply take any information as is, because they are being persuaded in every aspect of their life knowingly or unknowingly. I would say my readers are more aware and will choose carefully to pull apart a great masterpiece and be able to truly give reasons to why a certain work is deserving to be considered great.
 * What does __your__ study teach someone about how the message studied worked as rhetoric? (If it didn't, freely admit that and explain what it did do.)

The assumptions I made about the critical process and critical product was that I wanted to make sure the criteria I had for what rhetoric means matches up with what I wrote down in my paper.
 * What seem to be the //assumptions// __you__ were making //about the critical process// and //critical product//? (This asks you to do some analysis of your analysis--"going meta")