ENGL 450: OCTOBER 29th Post

http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/938/chp%253A10.1007%252F978-94-007-2363-4_19.pdf?auth66=1351528674_86b2230a47d58d504ba7fa4959d88f5d&ext=.pdf

ENGL 450: October 17th Post

Without a doubt President Obama won. The media will try to spin it and make it seem closer than it was, but it wasn't. Once again, Mitt Romney had the chance to give us the facts of his plan and he passed on that again. Really! We are 21 days out!

And Mitt Romney's handling of women's issues was atrocious - Binders full of women, IF women work (If, I beg your pardon), women should be home cooking. Did not give a direct answer on equal pay for women. Even if the contraception debate is not high yield for every female voter, his missteps in this debate are too huge to overlook.

He miscalculated the Libya attack, and thought he had the kill. The major “haha” moment and that backfired majorly. Oops.

I have been laughing at the media narrative since the first debate, about Romney's momentum. News Flash - we do not elect by national polls in this country, it is done by states, and in that regards, Romney's so called momentum was really much ado about nothing.

In terms of Aristotle’s “delivery”, Obama and Romney both seemed to focus on looking much more lively and upbeat. Obviously, this format was much better for both candidates, because it seemed more natural. Obama did flip 180 degrees, he looked much more involved and I think the media will really bite on that and suggest his momentum win. 

WRIT 450: Presidential Rhetoric Assignment, Delivery

While watching the first presidential debate of the 2012 election, I decided it would be interesting to visually analyze both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama while they debated. Clearly the subject matter is more important than the visual cues, in this case, but humans are extremely social beings and we rely a lot, especially in American culture, on the media and all the visual aspects associated. Plus, I’m sure both Obama and Romney have been extensively trained on public speaking, so analyzing their visual cues might lend a deeper insight on their political campaigns and future ideals.

I remember reading different psychology texts about James Borg, famed for his abilities to “read” people purely off the physical signals they unconsciously sent out while communicating, that concluded humans, while communicating, rely on physical cues at an astonishing 93% and verbal cues for the remaining 7% to understand what someone is saying or feeling. That ratio doesn’t change because of a television set, as long as viewers can see both Obama and Romney’s upper bodies while they talk, viewers will still rely mainly on physical cues to better understand each politician. They might watch for hand signals, eyebrow twitching, mouth movement, eye orientation, overall calmness or anxiety from body twitching, and the list goes on. All this to say, we never really think twice about any of these things, but they are vital components to our overall judgment of both of the politian’s character.

 “…delivery has great power, as has been said, because of the corruption of the audience…for to speak in one way rather than another does make some difference in regard to clarity, though not a great difference; but all these things are forms of outward show and intended to affect the audience…” (Aristotle on Rhetoric, 196).

This concept of delivery is really the focal point, in terms of rhetoric, that I’m aiming on both Obama and Romney. Obviously, the way in which a politian debates should not be the sole reasoning behind any vote, but in today’s society a sizeable fraction of American voters could be swayed by a convincing debate.

Mitt Romney from the start was the aggressor; from 9:40 to 12:37 (in the video below) Romney launches his opening attacks on Obama. Which is understandable, it’s a debate. What I found intriguing was that for the duration of Romney’s opening debate he focused on looking at Obama, and never really looked at the moderator or the camera until he was eventually cutoff. Almost as a father lectures their children after they’ve gotten in trouble.

  

Like a lion stalking its prey, Romney never breaks eye contact with Obama. Admittedly, it does help drive home Romney’s points, and to this extent it gives Romney a strong platform to build the rest of his arguments off of.  He comes off as driven, intelligent, and more important he works at showing Americans that he’s serious. In regards to Aristotle’s concept of delivery, this fits right into the idea of establishing ethos and appealing through pathos.  

Both Obama and Romney display how different kinds of hand gestures can help demonstrate different points. From about 0:20 till around 5:30 in the above video both Romney and Obama use a plethora of different hand gestures:

-0:44 – Romney points his finger while describing debt being passed down generations (interestingly he points right at Obama).

-0:56 – Romney uses three fingers to illustrate the different ways to cut a deficit, he follows that up with using quite a few different hand gestures to explain his theory. No matter what Romney was explaining, right or wrong, it would be hard to differ with him because his hand gestures are so convincing.

-3:54 – Obama discusses a deficit reduction plan and uses his hands to figuratively show a 4 trillion dollar sum of money, which makes the number a little more conceivable to viewers. Then he follows up with laying out his website that depicts his deficit reduction plan by making gestures that point out the simplicity of his site and its easy accessibility.

For the majority of the debate, Romney seemed to be more energetic with his hand gestures, which translated into more energetic ideas. I’m almost positive he planned on presenting himself as energetic, because Obama, who seemed more laid back, did not seem as lively when describing his ideas. This may not seem important, but if it sways just one voter than it was worth the politian’s effort.

Similar to the first video, Romney’s glare persists. The vast majority of Romney’s allotted time was spent looking right at Obama, as if the election had become personal to Romney, and Obama was his sworn enemy.   

Throughout the third video (above) while Obama uses his allotted time to speak, he chose to “speak” to the audience/moderator, he only glimpsed at Romney when he referred to him. Similar to the first two videos, when Romney spoke he focused on Obama. A growing trend became clear, whenever Romney spoke to Obama, Obama inevitably looked down at his podium. Examples in first video – 9:46, 15:16, 15:31, 23:21 second video – 6:03, 6:48, 11:33, 12:38 third -- 4:24, 6:25 forth – 6:20, 6:50, 10:45, 13:00 fifth – 1:37, 9:27. Compared to Romney, who barely ever looked down, Obama appeared to be either disgusted by Romney’s face, uninterested, bored, or just inferior. Neither of which are desirable traits, especially for a possible future president.

Videos four and five, shown above respectively, continue the trend of Obama looking down and Romney looking Obama square in the face. I’ve learned through interviewing that when a person looks down it generally means the person is not very confident. While on the other hand Romney almost never looks down, and when he is speaking he seems to be always looking right at Obama. Paired with that, Romney’s energetic hand gestures, and authoritative voice presents a politian who appears to be in the presidential race for the betterment of the American people, which is ideal for any presidential candidate.

These aspects of delivery are playing huge, unseen, roles in our current presidential election. The majority of voters will vote along political lines, no matter how any presidential debate goes. But, to those swing voters; these debates could be the deciding factor. Even in modern-day 2012, ideas and concepts derived from Aristotle’s time period on rhetoric can be applied today. 

On a side note, if the roles were reversed, and Obama was the strong energetic candidate that kept looking Romney square in the eyes, and Romney always looked down and seemed uninterested, but they said the exact same things as the original debate, would the general consensus of the “winner” have shifted in Obama’s favor? And if hypothetically it would, than the true power of rhetoric could be seen, because then purely based on visual appearances, any well trained debater could win a large variety of debates. 

WRIT 372: October 9th Post

Here’s some great information I found regarding writing science profiles, I think the information below is invaluable to anyone who is a little lost in this assignment!

•  When choosing your subject, don't overlook the person who may seem ordinary on the surface but who is quietly remarkable in some ways.

•  Use straight description sparingly. You don't want the effect of simply cataloging the things about the person that meet the eye. What you're after when you use description is the sense that outward appearance reveals or belie inward traits. For instance, habitual tossing of a head of long, luxurious hair or fingernail tapping may be worth mentioning as significant indicators of character.

•  In the descriptions you do use, try to appeal to different senses, if possible.

•  Use narrative liberally. Through narration, the individual may be shown in action. And as a part of telling the story of some of his or her experiences, it will be perfectly natural to have him or her speak in his or her own voice, through dialogue. You'll have "instant concreteness" and the most lively and convincing form of evidence for the dominant impression you are trying to create. Dialogue contributes to the narrative illusion of reality, and matters like a person's vocabulary and his/her grammar can be revealing.

•  Consider using the opinions of others in your profile. For example, the reaction of a person's children to his or her homecoming or of employees to his/her arrival at work can tell us a lot about him/her.

•  Control your tone carefully, as it is  very important in creating an effective character sketch. Consider early on in the writing process whether you want to write from a middle distance to your subject, from "up close," or with detachment. In the final stages of revision, be alert to the subtleties of word choice which largely create tone.

•  Avoid the temptation to moralize tediously about the character's vices and virtues and to over-sentimentalize, especially with beloved characters. This is particularly important when writing about everyday heroes.  Moralizing and over-sentimentalizing your subject will make your essay difficult to endure, and cause your audience to turn against your subject.

•  Don't describe the subject through only one incident, but instead, through a combination of incidents. If you focus too heavily on one incident, you run the risk of writing an essay that's a narrative about a particular event rather than a profile of an individual subject.

•  Since your profile is based on at least one interview with the subject, you'll be tempted to organize your essay in the order you asked the questions. Resist this temptation as it will make for a very boring essay. Instead, examine the answers you receive to those questions and see what sort of image of the subject emerges, then weave those responses into a more complex picture of this person. Return to your subject and ask follow up questions if you need to. And certainly never, ever organize your profile essay in question and answer format. This format is generally very disorganized and difficult for the reader to navigate.

•  Do not be an authorial presence in your profile. Do not frequently visibly ask your subject questions to which s/he has answers. For example, your essay shouldn't contain many statements such as "And then I asked Mr. Jones if he felt self conscious about going through other people's trash in order to find discarded shoes." Instead, you should make yourself as writer of the essay disappear. Mr. Jones, for example, should merely state that he never really feels self conscious when people see him going through the trash extracting discarded shoes as he disdains the opinions of others. See the difference? A good way to check and see if your authorial presence is intrusive is to go through the essay and circle all sentences that begin with the pronoun "I." If you have more than three, then your presence is becoming intrusive.

ENGL: 450 October 8th Post

 The presidential debate was chalked full of different kinds of rhetoric that we have covered over the semester thus far. In particular, enthymemes were used in abundance to drill home ides without saying them outright.  Obama talked about different subjects that pointed to how rich Romney was without saying it upfront, this developed different ideas in the audience’s minds without forcing these ideas down their throats. Romney also used different enthymemes to plant certain ideas into American’s minds. He talked a lot about the economy and how it needed to be fixed, but he never said outright that Obama was a bad economist. Certainly though if Americans believed every word he said about Obama and the economy, then they would have had to believe it was Obamas fault. 

Throughout the entire debate it seemed Mitt was the aggressor and Obama just didn’t want to be there. Its possible Obama was watching all the news coverage before the debate and believed this to be a win before the debate even started. Romney (already debated multiple times this year) seemed to be pressing the moderator and Obama equally, almost as if he was on a mission to show America he was serious and Obama was a joke. This was surprising because typically Obama has been an extremely smart debater; he showed this in the last election.

"It looked like Romney wanted to be there and President Obama didn't want to be there," noted Democratic strategist and CNN contributor James Carville. "The president didn't bring his 'A' game."

            With that said neither candidate really secured any noticeable lead in the race from this debate, but nearly 67% of international voters believed Romney won while Obama only received 25% of the popular vote. This came as a surprise as most people thought Obama would have had this in the bag because of the vast history he has in debating and politics.

            I did find it interesting how moderator Jim Lehrer had almost no control over the two candidates in terms of the debates direction and time frame. I wonder if this is some kind of rhetoric being used by the two candidates? It did end up having great affect on the eventual plot of the debate.