The Everyday Style of People

I don't get out very often, meaning I don't often explore other areas. I often find myself on the same path, following a routine that drives my daily activities. So in times when I find myself outside of La Crosse, I can't help but notice all of the different people and the styles that they dress themselves up in.

When I went to Chicago several weeks ago, there were so many different people with different get-ups that intrigued me. Everything seemed classy to me no matter what they were wearing. Was it because it was so different from what I'm used to? I am constantly surrounded by college outfits here in La Crosse and if I'm not running into students its usually 40 years and up. In Chicago though, it's a range of everybody and the diversity is so much higher. It's kind of weird how just a few hours of driving can completely change the dynamic of the environment in terms of people and how they dress, which is kind of a genre within itself. Fashion greatly depends on the accessibility of each article of clothing. In La Crosse, we've got the typical brands of clothing such as American Eagle, Old Navy, etc. In larger cities there are much fancier places and the people that shop there have much different budgets. For instance, I was watching a video where these famous YouTubers went on a shopping spree for each other with no budget. Between the four of them, they totaled $10,000 worth of accessories. That is enough to pay almost half of my student loans and they spent it on clothing. This was out in LA so the style there is much more expensive than that of La Crosse. When I spend $80 on pants, I cry on the inside. These YouTubers spent $490 on a pair of sunglasses and didn't bat an eye. Pretty darn crazy.

Extended Protection Plans at Menards

One of the tasks of a cashier at Menards is to do our best at selling Extended Protection Plans for specific items that Guests are purchasing. This has always been a challenge for me because most of the time I can only get "okay, so this item qualifies..." out before the Guest interrupts me with a crisp "no." You can definitely say that my skills at selling EPPs are pretty darn low and I don't think John Menard is too happy with me for that, but I honestly blame the Guests because they don't even let me finish my sell phrase before they answer. That's my excuse anyway.

What I need to do if I want to sell more EPPs is figure out a way to catch the Guest's attention right away. They typically here the phrase "this qualifies for" and they immediately reject the idea of an EPP. They're right for denying it because they can just return it and Menards will most likely honor that return. So what do they have to fear and why do they need this EPP? They don't really, it's just a way for Menards to make more money. That doesn't deter me from my mission though because them buying those gives our store a better rating which brings good things to us employees.

This gets pretty tricky because I'm trying to get someone to spend more money and that's not what everybody wants to do. I have to convince them that this EPP is going to make them sleep better at night knowing their product is covered for damages and other miscellaneous things that could happen. I haven't been able to think of anything yet, but I'll certainly need to utilize some of the tools from this course and my rhetoric courses because this requires the art of convincing others to do something they didn't originally want to do.

Web Content as a Genre

Web content is something we run into everyday. There are many different forms and styles of content on the web and each one has to deliver something unique in order to separate itself from the rest of the crowd. Yet, there's a mission for each website and in order to complete that mission there needs to be a layout that is both effective in displaying the information of that website and in getting users to do something with that site either through interacting with it or whatever it is the owner of that content needs audience members to do.

Jumping back to the La Crosse Distillery Company, you can see how their style is transferred to everything involved with the company, whether that be their menu, history pamphlet, website, etc. Everything they create fits the company's standard format in order to make sure that any piece read by a potential customer can recognize the company and its branding.

Taking a look at their website, you can see their style almost immediately. The color scheme is the same and the stories they include continue their signature theme of being local to La Crosse and the resources around this city. Their website is clean and the content is targeted to be to the point. The classy feel of the restaurant can be found in their website as well and that's how they get people to recognize them in any format.

Take a look at this page on their website and tell me that this doesn't feel fancy: https://lacrossedistilling.co/fieldnotes-gin/

The sharpness of the images and the clean/easy-to-read just drives that classy feel across. You can tell that everything they do is carefully thought of and I think that's what makes them high class.

La Crosse Distilling Company

My girlfriend, Annie, and I went to the La Crosse Distilling Company this past week for drinks and it was an awesome experience. This new location just opened up a few months ago and we wanted to see what they hype was all about, not to mention we are both fans of good gin.

What we found there was a fresh new building design that really made the place unique. It was clean and classy on the inside and you could tell simply by the water glasses they brought out. The individual glasses were pretty normal, but the water container for the table was in a bottle that looked similar to that of the gin that the company makes and sells. I could immediately tell that this place was specifically curated to fit one theme, much like other restaurants, but this one went the extra mile. Everything felt classy even the menus we received, which were made of a slab of wood and a menu rubber banded to it. It's pretty neat to go to a restaurant type business that isn't a chain restaurant and see how much more money they are willing to invest in their decor and style. You don't see stores like Subway doing that and it's because they don't have to do much to gain attention. These newer more unique businesses have to be classy in their style in order to attract more customers and I can say that the La Crosse Distilling Company did just that. They defined themselves with a style that makes people feel like they are dining in a 5 Start location and that's what's going to make people want to come back.

Billboards

Billboards are something we see frequently and they are almost everywhere we go. Just on my way to Subway for lunch today, I walked past 10-15 billboards (for the record, I'm counting store signs as billboards; image below as an example).

Taking the above example into consideration, I found it interesting how many different signs there are and how each one is unique to the store that it belongs to. I would think that the rules regarding store signs is that it has to be representative of the store it belongs to, but unique enough to stand out from the rest that surround it. So there would be a lot of things to consider such as font, color, how much text, images, what kind of content to display, etc. That's a genre I constantly think about as I pass signs and billboards.

Video Game Remakes - A Type of Genre?

One thing that I've noticed as I grow up is the number of remakes to things like Disney movies, board games, and most of all video games. Pokemon is a game that I love to play and no matter how many times I tell myself not to buy the new one when it comes out, I usually end up doing so and it's usually because of one thing: it's a remake of a game I used to play years ago. My Pokemon game playing career started when I was 10ish and it was the Fire Red and Leaf Green games that I fell in love with. I continued to play each generation after that which soon led to the remakes of older generation games. Now, in 2018, the remake of Fire Red and Leaf Green has come out and it has caught my attention immensely.

I'm playing with the idea of a game remake being a genre within the genre of video games (so I guess a sub genre) because there are rules and strategies involved with making a remake. Considering audience is important because with Pokemon, its a kid's game as well as a game that adults would play because they used to play it when they were kids (like me). So not only does it need to entertain new players, it also has to have enough nostalgia for older players to feel like they are playing an updated version of the game they used to play years ago. I'll probably end up buying the game and trying it out because I can't resist and so I hope that it lives up to my expectations.

YouTube Video Titles

YouTube thrives on views. Views are what keeps the business running by airing ads in videos that people are forced to watch through unless they pay for premium membership. Out of the millions of videos out there, what's going to draw millions in to watch your own video? This is the challenge that YouTube creators have to face when creating a video. You might have really good content, but that doesn't get display on thumbnail for the video so each video has to have some sort of creative/click-bait title that will bring a viewer in.

Click-bait titles are some of the most annoying things in the world. I'll see things like "You won't believe what happened when he did this" or "Watch Donald Trump slam this reporter." Those sound like amazing titles and I feel like I could find enjoyment from watching a video like that. Yet, when I click on those video links, I am disappointed by the end because the language of the title suggested that something cool was going to happen, when really its super scaled down when you watch the video. Trump almost never "slams" the reporters, he just avoids their questions and calls them Fake News. Is that the definition of slamming? No, I would expect something out of the ordinary or unique to that one situation, not what he does in almost every other press conference.

So there's a style here that requires certain rules to be utilized. First, the video has to actually have some sort of connection to the title. You can't just throw something random in the title just to get someone's attention. In the form of click-bait, the title has to be somewhat true, even if it is over exaggerated. Lastly, it has to be exciting enough to catch someone's attention. With all of those in mind, you can create effective click-bait material.

Genre of Sale Items at Menards

I run into this issue frequently at Menards where a Guest comes up to the register and believes that something is on sale for this price, but what the Guest misses is that the sale comes after you mail in a rebate to get the sale amount off. This is a tactic used by Menards to get people to buy something because they feel like they are saving money, which only happens when that Guest mails in the rebate form with their receipt and then it takes 6-8 weeks to get that rebate back. What's worse is that the rebate can only be used in a Menards store so really Guests are saving money at all. They are just keeping the money within the Menards circle.

I define that as a genre because it's a type of writing that only exists within retail stores. The language is carefully chosen to get Guests to think that they would be wasting their time to fill out this rebate and then wait 6-8 weeks all for $1. It's clearly written, but it's worded to sound like a lot of work so the rebate dies away and Menards still makes money. So are you really saving Big Money at Menards? The only saving Big Money is John Menard and he has PLENTY of money as it is.

Ironic?

This random thought popped up in my head the other day and it was about irony. Would it be ironic for someone to be killed by an ambulance? I would argue that it would because irony is about what you expect to be the opposite of what happens. In this case, you would expect the ambulance to save someone, but in this case the ambulance actually killed someone. So if my definition is true, then yes it would be ironic to be killed by an ambulance. However, it could also be seen as just bad luck, but because it is specifically by an ambulance, then I would think it's irony. That's my thought process anyway.

Video Where Trump faces Reporter

A pass time of mine is watching Donald Trump face off against reporters. He has long been someone who stands against the media and has managed to turn a large portion of the United States population against the media as well. So I find it kind of fun to watch him battle against reporters and watch him stumble on his own comments. A lot of what he says seems hypocritical and it seems to undermine his own arguments/beliefs. For example, in this scene where he faces off with a CNN reporter (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDQPPBRW2ik), Donald Trump makes some comments about the reporter that he himself often displays [00:02:02 - 00:02:10]. He calls this reporter rude and claims that it's not okay to be rude to others, but by doing so he is in-turn being rude to the reporter by cutting him off, not answering any of the reporters questions, and by saying that this reporter's work is fake news. There's clearly some hypocrisy here and I don't know if Donald Trump is doing it on purpose to divert the attention away from himself or if he is just not that smart.

My Symposium Findings

I unfortunately didn't get to stay for the entire session of the Symposium that I attended, but I did manage to catch one of the speakers. They had written a story that was about their favorite memory. The speaker brought us back to this special moment and provided the best detail that they could. This memory, to them, was something of value, but to us we had no connection to it which the author had to develop in order for her audience to understand why that memory had value. In order to accomplish this, she had to rely on metaphors and other figures of speech so that we could find some sort of relation to what she felt through our own examples of what she was describing. By the end of her story, I could kind of grasp the importance of this memory and while she described it to us I tried my best to relate a memory of my own so that I could fully comprehend the importance.

There’s a little bit of a challenge in presenting something like that to a crowd of people you most likely don’t know. How do you prepare something like that and get everybody on board with what you’re trying to describe. Not to mention, these were ENG 110 students, so it was most likely the first time they presented something like this to a crowd of strangers; I can imagine the nervousness of trying to attempt something like this. Nonetheless, this speaker did a phenomenal job and while I could understand the value of this memory to her, I could also go back into my own memories and find something similar which was pretty neat and reflective.

I have one pondering question in relation to the genre of this student’s writing. Because they are just starting their college career at UWL, I wonder how much of this piece remains true to the style that they used all through high school. Has this course changed anything in their writing or are they still utilizing the tools that they’ve used for most of their writing? I don’t think I would be able to pick that up just by listening, but it would be interesting to see how their writing evolves from this one moment to the time when they are close to graduating. That would be the only way that this style of writing would be limited, but I don’t think that’s a journey they will take to understand until they take ENG 313.

Magic the Gathering

Magic the Gathering is a card game that I play once in a while with some friends of mine. It's a game of creatures and spells with a goal of defeating the other player's life points. This game has been around for a long time and it continues to produce new cards, rules, etc. This game is always evolving which makes me think it's going to last for a long time.

Something that I found interesting about the game can be found within the cards. Each card has an ability that you can cast against your opponent and the wording of that ability is very unique. For example, a card might say "target opponent loses 3 life" and another might say "at the end of your opponent's turn, cast this spell for 3 mana to draw a card," etc. In order to fully understand Magic and the cards that come with it, you have to be able to read the wording of each card carefully and interpret it correctly. Some of the cards have vague instructions and it comes down to the player to fit that into the game. An annoying one that I run into frequently is when someone's card lets them activate an ability at the end of an opponent's turn. My friend Ethan would do this to me a lot where I would say "my turn is done" and he would respond with "before your turn ended, I activated this card" which technically wasn't true because he had said that after I had already declared that my turn was done so he couldn't have done that, but because Magic plays off the cards and happens instantly, it really becomes an after thought or rather explanation of what had happened.

It's kind of confusing, but the language that Magic uses is very specific and you have to be familiar with that in order to understand what's going on in the game. In a way, the text on these cards serve as its own genre which is pretty neat but also pretty darn annoying.

GIF Conversations

Have you ever heard of a GIF conversation? I'm not sure if they are a prominent thing, but they sure are interesting and I love engaging in them. My group of friends and I all share a chat and we frequently rely on GIFs to continue a conversation. Sometimes it's an occasional GIF here and there, but sometimes the entire conversation will take place only using GIFs. I tried to screen capture some examples from my phone to represent what I mean, but I was unable to do so, unfortunately.

GIF conversations are pretty neat because there are some rules and expectations in play in order to use them effectively. In order to use a GIF in a conversation, it has to fit properly. For instance, you can't be talking about video games and then drop a GIF about a panda swiping a ton of stuff off the table. Well, that could actually work if you used it right, but you get the point. The GIF has to be able to carry on the conversation and be relatable, otherwise it won't be received well by the other end of the conversation and you might look like a fool.

The GIF also has to make sense in order to use them correctly. If you drop in a GIF that references something and the other person doesn't understand it, then the GIF is lost on them and the conversation will either stop or awkwardly continue. This is kind of a hard thing to do because typically the GIF relies on the words that are scripted onto it, but there are times when you're mostly focusing on the reference that the GIF is making and that heavily depends on if the other person knows what you are referencing in order for it to play out smoothly.

Lastly, you don't always want to use GIF conversations. It's definitely one of those things where you want to use it sparingly so as not to bog down the conversation to only using GIFs for a long period of time. Sometimes this works out perfectly and you and your conversation partners are able to pick out the perfect GIFs to make a conversation happen, but most times that doesn't work out. Not to mention searching for the right GIF can be difficult and can make people not want to respond after a while. So there are plenty of rules and expectations to keep in mind when using GIFs in a conversation and I think that alone makes GIFs and interesting form of language.

Disruptive Public Art

I'm not an artist by any means and so when I started thinking about this project, I had no idea what to do. When we received our first snow fall that actually stayed for more than a few hours, I got the following idea:



This is located right outside of my apartment building on the side walk that receives a decent amount of traffic. What is written in the snow is the following: "Snow does not equal the negation of Global Warming's existence." There are some squiggly lines around it and a cloud to the left.

Like I said, I'm not the greatest artist in the world, but I think there is some meaning behind this art. As our world faces the consequences of global warming, there are many who believe it exists and many who do not. It's definitely a tough thing to notice because it spans over time and obviously we weren't around to see what it was like a thousand years ago. Yet, there is plenty of evidence that shows global warming's existence if you're willing to look a little bit harder at the world around you.

Snow is one item that non-believers use to prove that global warming doesn't exist. To them, snow wouldn't be possible if the Earth was getting warmer and so when the snow comes down in all of its glory they claim that global warming can't exist. However, that is not the case and it has been proven to be so.

I think this piece of "art work" is disruptive because it's in an area that people walk by and it takes a stand on a serious topic. It's straight to the point and doesn't leave room for interpretation. It's also putting my opinion out there, even though it isn't signed, it will make people think about the topic and layout their own opinion on the matter.

Now, there's nothing really tricky here, language wise. I interpreted the point of this assignment to use language to be disruptive in a way that is obvious rather than trying to make people think too hard. The only thing someone would need to know in this instance would be the symbol in the top row to mean "does not equal" while the rest of the art is easy to interpret. I suppose, however, that the audience would need to know of the existence of arguments that claim snow to be the evidence of global warming's non-existence, but other than that I can't think of a reason why someone who walked past this wouldn't understand the message inscribed in the snow.

Improvement wise, I was thinking I could have used some sort of color to outline the text in the snow, but I didn't really have anything that would be environmentally friendly to lay down so I decided to just use the element that was provided to me and that was the snow.

The symbols around the snow don't really mean anything in particular. I originally had just the sentence in the snow, but then when I asked for feedback on it, a friend of mine said that I should draw something around it so it would appear more art like. My goal here then was to just add something to make it more art-like, but someone might be able to take the curvy lines to represent heat which would be relative to global warming and the cloud to the left could mean something, but I didn't have any intention behind it when I put it there.

Overall, I think there is a powerful message behind this because it's out in public and it challenges people to think about global warming and how we take our winters for granted. With that said, my work is done here and now everyone believes in Global Warming...right?

Examples of Figurative Language

I managed to find some examples of figurative language in several songs by one of my favorite artists. His name is Garrett Borns and he has some decently famous songs. One of them, called "Electric Love" has a phrase throughout the song that goes "baby you're like lightning in a bottle" which would be a simile. He has several of those throughout the song and I was mostly able to find only similes, but I find it interesting how music writers lean on figurative language because all we can hear are the words of what they are singing but we capture none of what they are imagining when they write those lyrics. So not only do they have to sing in a beautiful melody that makes us sing along with them, they also have to be able to inscribe some kind of imagery and that comes from the use of figurative language.

The ability for artists to place a message within a song is also something that has been prominent through the ages of music, especially nowadays. Music can serve as an opportunity for an artist to lay out their thoughts, opinions, or beliefs to the public without receiving too much backlash because only those who understand the lyrics well enough will be able to understand what they are trying to say. Songs created by Beyonce, such as "Lemonade," or by Cardi B, such as "Money," have some value behind their words and they resemble a story of sorts. They all use figurative language in someway to describe where they are coming from and what they mean by their lyrics so that we as an audience can understand them and create an image of what they are telling us through their voices. It's a pretty interesting way to use figurative language.

Mood

Language is fluid and always changing. It doesn't take much time for something new to be introduced that eventually worms its way into everyone's understanding. One example, which I just learned the other day, is the use of the term "mood" in a conversation. Let's set up the scene.

I work at Menards as a carryout and so as I was walking my way outside after bringing in some carts, two other employees from the Building Materials department stopped me saying, "Hey Tommy, you're an English Major, come over here and help us out." Naturally curious, I walked over to see what's up. They started by asking me what mood is defined as: a noun, an adjective, etc. I claimed that "mood" is a noun because it is a thing that people feel. What type of mood turns into an adjective or descriptor, at least in my opinion. I inquired further about this topic and what brought it up, which the two humans responded with this scenario:

"I've been texting this girl lately and so I sent her a video of me at work saying 'it's a slow day so I may as well watch some fantasy football' which she responds with 'mood.'"

So the issue here was that this Menards human had no idea what mood meant in this context. Was she saying that she was in a mood? Or was there something wrong with the video? The three of us couldn't figure it out until we asked a younger person than us. They informed us of how "mood" is short for saying "I'm in the same mood." For example, if you see an image of a bubble bath and you're in the mood for a bubble bath you would say "mood" to signify that you could go for a bubble bath.

I'm not sure how long this use of the word "mood" has been around, but I find it fascinating on the lengths we will go to shorten an already short phrase into something even shorter. Are we being lazy? Is it really that difficult to extend the phrase out a little bit? Will the future consist of three word sentences with three words being the maximum that you can use? These are the questions that are running through my head now.

dBrand's Use of Language

dBrand is a rising company that has flourished in the new age of phones. With glass becoming a popular material on the back of expensive smart phones, people want to make sure that material doesn't get scratched or become damaged because fixing that is also very expensive. So this company produces skins that are applied to the phone to protect it from scratches that we run into every day. This company has a very interesting tactic, however. 

If you check out dBrand's social media accounts, you'll find many fans. Dig a little deeper and you'll find some posts from dBrand themselves but the content in those posts is slightly less conventional than other companies. Rather than playing nice and being civil on their social media accounts, dBrand can be ruthless. Posts with vulgar language, problematic statements, and other customer throw outs. What's interesting about this tactic is that most people would be horrified at this kind of post, yet there are thousands of followers that love this kind of content and actively support the company for their posts as well as the way they handle customer service.

I think this company is able to continue on because its target audience is younger people who love this kind of reaction from companies. Older generations are used to companies bowing down to every complaint while I believe younger generations tolerate it a little more. The above image is an example of a fan of the company actually asking for this kind of treatment. dBrand does this that are out of the ordinary compared to other companies and for some reason their fan base is large enough where they can get away with such vulgar language.

Audience Paired with Writing

After reading this article and completing the first draft of my self-analysis project, I can definitely attest to the idea that audience influences the way you write. When you look at the purpose of writing, it’s clear that someone will be reading that piece of writing someday. Even if no one does and you’re the one that revisits that piece of writing, you’ve just written something for an audience. So really, there’s no such thing as writing with no audience; even when you journal.

How does audience affect your writing, though? I’m going to use the journal style to try to explain my thinking on that. When I write in my journal, it’s typically about private things that I need to get off of my chest but don’t want to tell anyone about. If that’s the case, then it would seem as if I’m writing without an audience in mind. Yet, when I write in my journal, I find that I am actually formatting my entries to not be too revealing or have something that I wouldn’t want someone else to read later because even though this journal is private and I wouldn’t willingly show it to anyone, the fact is that eventually I will not be around to safe guard it and someone will read it one day. Whether that be future generations of my family, a random stranger, etc., someone will read that journal; hence an audience.

So even my private journal can’t be private because I know that eventually someone will read it. That goes for everything that goes down on paper or onto a document. It might be difficult to find or access, but someone will be reading it. Think of Shakespeare or the even the Bible. Those are two examples of ancient text that still exists today, and people are reading it, interpreting, and revolving their lives around it. An audience extends far further than many might think and so it definitely will affect how you write; whether that be the style of your writing, the content of your writing, or even the quantity of your writing.

This definitely shows in the documents that I analyzed for my project. Each paper had a different audience and you could see that in my tone, length, etc. It also affected how much time I put into each assignment. The website took longer than the essays because it was something many other people might use so I wanted it to be the best that it could be. The essays were for a grade, yet I wanted to impress the professor, so my style and organization changed. Audience has everything to do with writing because that is why we write: for other people to read it.

Academic Discourse

The main point of this article seems to be about how we change the way we communicate based on the environment or context we are placed in. David Bartholomae specifically looked at college entry essays from students who were still in high school and analyzed the way they responded to questions about creativity and what it means to them. Each of the 500+ essays Bartholomae had to analyze had a different approach to answering the question and it went beyond what the answer was specific to how they approached the answer.

Bartholomae discussed one of the essential points of writing for a writer is “building bridges” between their point of view and their readers (Bartholomae, 9). It’s essential because if a writer is to answer a question for someone, the reader must be able to understand what the writer is trying to say. It also helps develop authority for the writer by showing the reader that they know what they are talking about. It’s almost like developing a line of credit for the writer so that the reader doesn’t dismiss the idea all together.

Each bridge has different needs, however. The writers, in these cases, are writing for a broad audience (colleges) and so they have to be able to fit a lot of needs into their writing in order to impress said audience. Bartholomae, for example, wasn’t looking for the typical structure in writing to determine if these students were worthy of college acceptance, rather he “was looking to see what happened when a writer entered into a language to locate himself (a textual self) and his subject,” and he was “looking to see how, once entered, that language made or unmade a writer” (Bartholomae, 12). It’s difficult to know what your audience wants to see in your writing, so most writers have to take a broad stance and try to hit everything at once, which is kind of what these college students were doing in their essays.

After going through this reading, my understanding of academic discourse is that it is how we change our tone in writing to match the academic atmosphere we are in. For example, if I am writing for an English course, I will write my opinion in and discuss it where as a history paper would be strict facts without using the pronoun ‘I’ throughout the paper. My style and tone change based on the audience for which I am writing and think that is what Bartholomae finds in academic discourse.

High-Middle-Low

What I’ve enjoyed most about this class so far is how it has helped me analyze my own writings and given me ideas on how to further shape what I write in the future. Today’s lesson is the high-middle-low styles of writing and each of them has its own time and place where some work better than others.

High style writing, in my opinion, is the elegant form which people will use when they want to appear sophisticated and powerful. It’s a tough style to use sometimes because it can create confusion or mumbled words if used incorrectly. The examples Lanham uses come from powerful world leaders such as Churchill during the World War as well as other examples. He finds several of the following in one of the passages that is using high style: diction, anaphora and climax, isocolon, alliteration, the epic catalog, ploce, etc. Each of these turns a writing into high style by making a normal way to say it into a more sophisticated, smarter sounding way. Compared the low style of writing, it can be much smoother and sound more educated. Low style writing takes the conversation approach where the entire piece will be casual and straightforward. You’ll still find metaphors, analogies, etc. in a low style writing, but it’s much more relatable to the audience as they are things that most people would catch onto, where as high style takes the approach of “you must be wise enough to catch these references/understandings.” Then, of course, there’s the middle style which is mostly a combination of the two.

Those are my understandings from the reading. Taking those ideas and applying them to my writing, I’m not sure that I have used them frequently. I think the times that I have used them depended on the audience and the topic. For example, I can picture myself using high style when I’m trying to prove that I know enough about a topic or to show that I am on the right side of an argument. The closest example I can think of for that is if I was writing about my white identity and I was reflecting on the history of whiteness in the United States of America. I would want to use the high style to show that I know what I’m talking about. For the low style, I would most likely use that in a writing where I was trying to convince someone of an argument of mine. To make sure people understand what I am talking about, I would want to use figurative language that the audience would most likely understand rather than confusing them with words they may not know right off the bat.

I don’t know that I would use one of these exclusively, however. I believe that most people would want to use a mixture of the two in order to sound educated as well as not to be too sophisticated that the audience becomes confused. Harnessing both of these techniques would benefit any writer and it’s definitely something I am going to pay attention to now.

Apple's Use of Language

Apple just recently hosted their keynote event where they presented the new iPhones for 2019 along with several other pieces of technology. Apple is very much a flashy tech company that aims to put elegant and rich feeling technology into the hands of average Americans. The design of everything in their company screams fashion trend and people buy into it because it is the quickest and easiest way to feel wealthier with this tech. It's easy to feel that way when the new phone can cost anywhere from $750 - $1100 a piece. Not to mention the material of the phone and the design of it is indeed elegant. I mean look at this phone:

It truly is a gorgeous device and people feel empowered by it. However, some might take a little extra convincing and this is where Apple really steps up their game.

Apple's website is another example of elegance and refinery. They have mastered the ability to sell their devices with words alone. In a video that displays the new set of phones, the narrator uses words such as "uncompromising,"expansive super retina display," "most durable glass ever developed," "reinvents," etc. They are using powerful words to show just how unique this new iPhone is and pushes viewers to feel like they need this ultra powerful device that their lives must surely require. Apple even uses some of the grammatical tools we recently learned about on their website. For example, they use  a polysyndeton to describe their phone design: "A beautiful new gold finish, achieved with an atomic-level process. Precision-machined, surgical-grade stainless steel bands." Looking back at those examples, they may not be polysyndetons, but they are powerful statements nonetheless.

This kind of language use is important for companies because they need to make users feel empowered by these devices and it also urges customers to purchase the next phone, no matter how old their current phone is. Apple does a phenomenal job with this and I must admit that it even makes me want to purchase an iPhone and I'm a Google fanboy. Language is truly a powerful tool.

My thoughts on "Rhetorics of Speaking and Writing"

What I love most about written language is its ability to communicate through time. Anything I write down now can be read again in 10 years or even further. I could leave advice for my future relatives after I pass away or leave them stories of my life for them to look upon and see how much the world has changed. Someone could even discover the cure to a disease and even if we somehow disappeared and a new generation of humans found it, they would eventually be able to understand what that cure was. It’s quite amazing really.

There is one draw back when it comes to written language and it’s that there is no context to go with the information stored on that piece of paper. The Chapter discusses this issue a little bit and talks about how Face-to-Face interactions can give a lot of contextual information vs something being read on paper. For example, when we read documents from hundreds of years ago and we see something rather different than what we do today, we might think that it’s barbaric or maybe even better than today’s standards. However, without being able to see the context that these writings were written in, we truly have no way of knowing what the actual feelings of the writer were or if the actions were deemed normal back then, etc. It’s tough to truly know what exactly these authors meant and yet we pretend like we know exactly what they intended.

I think the Bible is fine example of this kind of interpretation. The Bible was written a very long time ago and hundreds of years later we still utilize it as a base for our actions. We read it, interpret it, and then go about our day as if everything we do is justified based on those interpretations. The Bible was used as an excuse by slave holders back in the day to punish slaves for their “misbehavior” and thus it allowed severe cruelty to exist when there shouldn’t have been. This is but one example, however it goes to show that while the ability for written language to pass on information for years to come can be great, it also has its drawbacks and that’s interpreting the context in which the information was written.

After reading this chapter I found myself wondering: how do we make sure that language down the road doesn’t present misinformation or misinterpretations? Is that possible at all? The chapter also discusses the potential of audio recordings and what we are able to glean from them. Unlike written language, audio recordings allow a listener to hear an accent, a tone, an attitude toward a thought, etc. There’s a whole new wave of information that can help develop context from just sound. Face-to-Face is obviously the best scenario in which the correct context can be obtained due to visual of surroundings, facial expressions of the speaker, etc.

Written language may last longer than other medias, but with the way technology is advancing, video recordings may be more accessible than writing in the future. Our ability to store electronic information is getting better and I even remember reading about the idea that scientists are working on figuring out how to store information on DNA strands so that if anything happens where physical or electronic copies are no longer available, information will live on within us and will remain accessible for much longer periods of time.

It’ll be definitely interesting to see where written information takes off, but for now I am content with being amazed at how we are able to communicate with one another with just a few words on a piece of paper.

September 6, 2018 (In-Class)

What are some of your writing habits and are they okay? What would you like to improve?

I think some of my writing habits are okay, but I also think they are a bit repetitive. For instance, my essay structure is typically the same and the way I style my paragraphs is often similar. I think I could also stand to put a little bit more effort and time into my work than I currently do. I typically wait for the last second to do my writing and thus my work is rushed and not as great as it could be. With that said, I am pretty decent at writing in the last minute. I typically manage to walk away with a decent grade when I write my essay the night before and I think it pushes me to pump out ideas and the format of the essay. I should pair that with a proof read afterwards, but I don't typically do that.

Apparently I enjoy using the word 'typically'. Anyway, the toughest part about continuing a thought from an in-class exercise is I don't remember what I wanted to write about. Thus, I'm going to leave this one right here.

September 4, 2018 (In-Class)

What is good prose style?

I'm going to be honest here by saying I'm not exactly sure what prose style is. It has come up before in other English classes that I have taken, but it's never been studied by myself. So, winging off of the collection of knowledge from my other courses, I'm going to say that good prose style is the format of writing that best matches the surrounding context. This would include punctuation, slang, vocabulary, etc.

An example I am thinking of would be an advertisement for a company (let's go with Menards). The text there is short & sweet, but powerful enough to inform & attract guests into buying something or learning more about that item. I think this would categorize itself into advertisement content and that type of content requires a special type of prose style. Item descriptions can't take up too much space on the page so editors have to choose the quickest (and most accurate) way to inform the reader of the item while at the same time being able to sell it to them, or rather make it worth it for the guest to come into the store and purchase the item.

With the above example, they're can't be room for any grammatical errors, which there aren't many cases where that would be okay. However, in this context, it is vital because that advertisement is representing the company and because the guest is most likely not already in the store, it would be difficult to get them there if the outgoing ad is riddled with poor writing.

I guess what I'm trying to say over all is that a good prose style depends on the situation. There are going to be some cases where sloppy writing is well received and other areas where it is not tolerated. Maybe I'm completely off on this question, but I think it's definitely something to consider when writing a document, no matter who it is for.