Surveys vs. Interviews

After reading the material for Wednesday on surveys & interviews, try to think how you can use each method of primary research for your project. Imagine that you had time to do both a survey and an interview.

1. If you did a survey, what type would you choose and why? How do you plan on overcoming the disadvantages of the type of survey you select (as outlined in your reading)?

2. If you did an interview, how would you encourage your interviewee to provide the information that is most useful to you? How would you keep track of the answers during the interview? What do you think are some of the pitfalls that you need to avoid in interviewing people?

Definition Criteria

After reading Chapter 9 from Everything's an Argument, briefly discuss what criteria you might use to define the italicized terms in the following controversial claims of definition. Feel free to focus on just one or two of them.

1. Burning the nation's flag is a hate crime.

2. College sports programs have become big business.

3. Plagiarism can be an act of civil disobedience.

4. Satanism is a religion properly protected by the first amendment.

5. Beer is a health food.

6. Campaign contributions are acts of free speech.

causal pic

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cuasal pic

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this causal claim is saying that the reason we went to war is not because we had bad inteligence but because the president is not too inteligent

Causes & Effects in Cartoons

The chapter on causal arguments begins with a cartoon (p. 207) that, as the text points out, "takes a tongue-in-cheek look at the causal relationship between the cost and the quality of health care" (p. 206). Take a few minutes to find at least one cartoon online that makes a causal claim. Please explain to us what the causal message is and copy/paste the URL to the cartoon, so we can check it out.

Journalistic approaches

In chapter 2, Glassner tells us about one journalist's reaction to the reporting of workplace violence, that of Erik Larson. What does the account of Erik Larson's article reveal about journalists' reporting as it concerns workplace violence, specifically, and their approach to the reporting of crime in general? Why, do you think, is Larson's style of journalism so important, and why aren't there more journalists -- print and electronic -- like him?

Feel free to reply to this posting or to each other as the discussion proceeds.

Fallacy examples

The biggest fallacy that I think of when political activists say something like,"If we don't rid ourselves of the patriot act, the government will trample our rights of privacy." The patriot act allows access to people's homes with wire taps and searchs without a warrant. Now in reality this is rare, and is only applicable to "drastic cases" of possible terrorist activities. Though I don't think our constitutional rights will crumble. I think that this fallacy has a point in stating that where does someone draw the line when it comes to what the government can do. Though fallacy in general is usually mostly false, it sparks in us a skepticism that is healthy and should be explored in every situation, by an intelligent person.

Fallacy Examples

Focusing on the fallacies discussed in chapter 19 of the textbook, please think of an example when you have seen/heard people use any of those fallacies. Tell us about it:

What did they say? Which fallacy did they use? Was it effective or not? Did anyone notice the fallacy and call them on it or not? In what situations are you likely to use the same fallacy?

ethos, pathos, logos

In passage 1, my first impression was that the passage was conveyig a sense of logos, due to the statistics that Rich used. After reading the passage again, I also feel that it could be pathos. The audience could feel sorry for women and their inability to read. In the second passage, Bernstein is definitely showing ethos. He has the credibility to back up his words.

Ethos, pathos, logos

Please look at the 3 passages and think of the rhetorical appeals: ethos, pathos, and logos. Each quote might have more than one appeal used in it. Please try to tell us what appeals are used and which is the dominant one in each passage. You can discuss all the passages in your response or just one or two of them.

Passage 1:
"...it is well for us to remember that, in an age of increasing literacy, 60 percent of world's illiterate are women. Between 1960 and 1970, the number of illiterate men in the world rose by 8 million, while the number of illiterate women rose by 40 million. And the number of illiterate women is increasing."
-- from Adrienne Rich, "What does a woman need to know?"

Passage 2:
"The Asian culture, as it happens, is something I know a bit about, having spent five years at Harvard striving for a Ph.D. in a joint program called History and East Asian Languages and, after that, living either as a student (for one year) or a journalist (six years) in China and Southeast Asia. At least I know enough to know there is no such thing as the 'Asian culture'."
-- from Richard Bernstein, The Dictatorship of Virtue

Passage 3:
"And what, exactly, do I mean by 'guys'? I don't know. I haven't thought much about it. One of the major characteristics about guyhood is that guys don't spend a lot of time pondering our innermost feelings..."
-- from Dave Barry, "Guys vs. Men"

Audiences & Appeals

Chapter 4 begins with an example of a spoof ad on p. 66. Look at more spoof ads on the Adbusters Postcards page, focusing on the ones dealing with Calvin Klein products (Obsession for Men, Obsession for Women, and Reality). You can see a bigger image of each spoof by clicking on the thumbnail. What argument is each one making? What is the purpose of the ads? Who are their intended and real audiences? Can we have different messages conveyed by the same image to different audiences? How does the pathos appeal play out in each spoof?

Note: Adbusters is an organization that attempts to expose the influence of corporations and consumerism on popular culture by making spoofs of various corporate ads. You can read more about them here.

Please use the comments link to respond to any or all of the questions above.