Week 5 Links

Common Errors from the first essays
Sample Outline for the presentations (Oct 6-13)
Blank Rubric for Peer Review Day (Oct 4)

Webcomic: Identity Shift
Video: Things Guys Say to Lesbians
Video: Things Bisexual People Are Tired of Hearing


Music Video: Girl in a Country Song
Music Video: In for the Kill

For Thursday:
Video: How to Tell Someone They Sound Racist

Next Week:
Start working on your rhetorical analysis if you haven't done so already. Here are some tips:


Watch the ad once. Now watch it again and take notes, allowing the ad to loop. Read your notes, maybe let the ad loop some more if you want. Write one or more (complete, grammatical) sentences in response to each of these questions:
1. Who is the author of this piece/the creator of the message? Do a Google: who is responsible for this particular ad campaign for Hyundai?
2. Who do you think is the intended audience? Do not simply say "people watching the Super Bowl" or "black people" - there is more going on here. Which kind of people is the advertisement targeting and why, in your opinion?
3. What is the message this advertisement conveys, beyond simply "buy Hyundai"? Why do they want you to buy Hyundai? Also: What does this message say about black fatherhood, masculinity, sexuality, etc.? Think about how race intersects with other cultural lenses.
4. Make some claims about design choices: what decisions did the creators make about what you see, what you hear, what you read, what kind of text, etc.? Why do you think they made those choices specifically?
5. Make some claims about design strategies: What kind of impact does the advertisement have in terms of ethos (authority - techniques to make us feel the ad comes from a trustworthy source of information, the sense that the ad is 'legit'), pathos (emotion - techniques to make us feel good or bad in order to convince us to accept their message), and logos (argument - techniques to appeal to our sense of reason and logic to convince us to accept their message)?  Why did the advertisers use those appeals to convince us to buy Hyundai?
6. What constraints or limitations affected their decision making process? Why could they not make certain choices, include different strategies? These can be any number of things: time, resources, what year it is, what politics are in place, all sorts of contextual issues, etc.