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1/21/08 College Rhetoric I/ Mrs. Wendt Assignment 1 1/21/08

I’m sure that everybody and anybody reading this would agree that swearing relieves stress and is seen as an important emotional outlet. This information is covered in “WTF, Swearing at work is good for business”, a blog written by Dennis Baron. He also talks about how swearing ties closer bonds to friends and co-workers. Mainly because swearing is not always used in a negative or abusive sense but also in casual and friendly conversation. Common sense tells someone when their relationship with another person isn’t strong enough or that it isn’t the right moment to use swear words (i.e. dealing with a customer, in a conference, giving a speech). Dennis Baron does a good job in giving logos and pathos, or appealing to the readers mind and emotion by giving good example and details that were specific and clear. He gave quite a few example of how swearing can be viewed as more than just words used when something negative and unexpected happens. Like how it gives a sense of team spirit, when one shows their anger about a play. How it reinforces social relationships between employees and creates a sense of community. Or that it gives a more relaxed attitude and even people with high society jobs should do it every so often. Baron seems like a credible man. His examples are backed with important information and he even tells where he got it from. The only thing he didn’t really show a reliable source was in his second to last paragraph. Here he talks about how pilot’s famous last words, recorded on their black boxes before crashing their plane is, “Oh [expletive deleted]! Saying that nobody wants their last words to be so unmemorable. Baron does an excellent job making the article have a sense of humor which shows that he isn’t very strict about the topic himself. However, the feeling that he doesn’t necessarily agree with the topic completely is evident. In the closing paragraph he talks about how cursing isn’t always team building after giving an example of Julius Ceaser’s famous last words to his friend and killer, Brutus. Saying, “Et tu, Brute?” which basically means, “WTF”.

JOURNALS: 1/15/08 In the past you have probably never paid attention to whether or not you were appealing to your readers' logic, emotion, or character. Go back and think of times when you have written and have done so. Do you have an idea of how to appeal to your reader? What of these three appeals will you need to work on the most? Are you good at giving examples? Are you pretty logical? Do you know how to sound like a good, moral person? Spend some time writing about these three appeals and how you perhaps compare to the author you are analyzing and how you measure up and what you need to work on.

I wont lie to you, i haven't written to many things that were to be read by someone other than the teacher who would be grading it. Besides a few letters to friends and family, but then its easy to appeal to my readers logic, and emotion because I know them personally. The only time i can think of appealing to my reader is in a persuasive paper. I remember in tenth grade my teacher gave us an assignment to write a paper about something personal (but not to personal) that we had to somehow try and make it relate to everyone in the class. My paper was about how one day during the summer of 1999 I went down to the City Park in my hometown to go swimming with friends and my mom drove me down there. While she was sitting on the shore talking to her friends I would dive off of this tall pole into the shallow, rocky water, purposely ignoring the "No Diving" sign. Well needless to say I dove in and bounced my head off of a well placed rock and left a two inch split right on the top of my head. I swam back up and after about ten seconds some kids told me my head was bleeding. But I was already on my way out of the water because blood was pouring down my face. Taping on my moms shoulder was all it took for her to freak out and grab my towel ment for drying my body and use it as a turban as she rushed me to the car and then the hospital. Needless to say I got nine staples in the top of my head and learned a valuable lesson. I tried to make it relate to everyone because a mother's love should be the strongest thing in the world. Whether you life is in jeaperdy or whether you'r knee is scrapped and all you need is a band-aid and a kiss. Mother's are always there from the first day of kindergarden to the first day of college, not only to support your new beginning but to humiliate you by bawling her eyes out. I think that if I'm givin the right topic to talk about I can appeal to a reader. Because everyone can relate to some kind of topic in some sort of way, it's just a matter of finding the right words to say and the right examples that everyone can find a little bit of themselves in. Also it helps if you sound like you know what your talking about, so basically, if you sound like someone that the reader can see as themselves. It gives more of a bond between the author and reader, allowing the reader to feel more like instead of reading some strangers paper they are reading something they could see themselves writing.

2/06/08 When you wrote paper number two on the definition of a word, what specific argument strategies did you use? Why did you choose these specific strategies? Did you feel that they helped you organize your argument, or did using them make it more difficult for you to write? Why do you think this was so? How do you feel about your logos, pathos, and ethos in this piece?

1/27/08 Main Entry: 1dirty Pronunciation: //adjective//Inflected Form(s): dirt·i·er; dirt·i·est1 a**:** not clean or pure, morally unclean or corrupt dirt·i·ly //adverb// dirt·i·ness //noun

1/31/08 "BRUTE" Webster says that a Brute is someone with the characteristics of an animal, in quality, action, and instinct: and not working by reason. I personally believe it is, "Somebody that lacks reason and respect towards others". In "Brute", a first-person story by Richard Selzer speaking from personal experiance as a doctor working late at a hospital. Its starts with him just finishing with another patient and was he was very tired. When a group of cops come into the hospital carrying a man, Selzer says "The man is hugely drunk-toxic, fuming murderous-a great mythic beast broken loose in the city...". It took four policemen to restrain the huge black man from overpowering them. And on top of that the man needed medical attention that could become life-threatening if not tended to.

Selzer tried to assist the man in his less than fortunate state and at first you can see his compassion. " I begin to cleanse and debride the wound. At my touch, he stirs and groans. :Lie still," I tell him. But now he rolls his head from side to side so that I cannot work...". The man is disrespectful even when he needs the doctor's professional attention. Even being as intoxicated as he was, alcohol is not an excuse for being a brute. If I was intoxicated and blood was blinding me from a 12 centemeter laceration across my forehead, I'm sure the last thing on my mind would be how do i get out of here. The man spits and curses for hours. Selzer leaned forward and told the man to "hold still" again, but the man responds in a clear, feirce voice, "You fuckin hold still". Once it became evident that the man would NEVER cooperate with him under these circumstances, Selzer became aggrivated and went to the cupboard and got from it two packets of heavy, braided silk suture and a large curved needle. Piercing both ears of the man with the needle and sewing the man to the table with a stern warning that if he keeps moving he will rip his earlobes off. The man finally becomes still, not afraid of losing his earlobes but maybe he finally realized there is no hope in winning. Clearing the blood from the black mans eyes, Selzer leaned over him again and said, " Now you fuckin hold still". That sounds like something a brute would do, but to me the man had it coming. I think the doctor might have gone a little overboard but, it's not like the man wasnt asking for it. Selzer tried treating the patient like a human-being and found out it wasn't getting him anywhere. He only acted with force when there was no other way. His actions were not devistating or traumatic to the man, peirced ears doesn't compare to a gashed forhead. Though it might have been over the top, I wouldn't consider Selzer's actions brutish but rather, aggressive helping.// 

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This is a difficult topic because we dont want to leave the country unwatched. Once we pull out it'll allow the iraquians to start rebuilding their terrorist organizations and they could start attacking countries again. Thats why I dont think America should pull out of Iraq completely if people want the troops home I think the most we should do is reduce the number of active soldiers and make it more of a situation of stabalizing the country and not a sit and wait for reconing.=====

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No matter what we do Americans will burn fossel fuels. Because we are cheap and dont usually care when it comes to making money. I do like the fact that they are making more eco-friendly cars. However, cars are not the only thing throwing pollutioon into the sky. These cars will make a considerable difference in the environment but remember, cars are made on something; a conveyer belt which can use fossel fuel to run. I really want to stress that I do want American dependance on foriegn oil to decline but I dont see it going that way fast.=====

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3) What should be done about schooling and education? It is said that about 1.2 million students dropped out of High School in 2007 (http://schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6439502.html). That means that only 70% of student bodies graduated last year. However I dont think we should increase the budget of all the schools that have huge drop-out rates every year. I personally came from a class D school. We had multible drop-outs but those who dropped out, wanted to. They were failing all of their classes, we never saw them in school, they were always in trouble. Increasing a schools budget doesnt help motivate the students. The only reason we should increas school budgests is for those schools that are class D. The ones that run out of white printing paper and have to resort to either printing on colored paper or dig into another fund set aside for something else. THhe schools that cut teachers that have been working in the same classroom for 10 to sometimes 30 years or more. Those schools need the money not the class A schools or class B.=====