Plagiarism and Citing

This week’s readings mainly talked about plagiarism. Plagiarism is the unauthorized use of information or an author’s ideas, thoughts, or wording without citation of where you got the information from. I’ve been taught throughout my years not to ever use information or ideas without citing my source. It can be a hassle sometimes, but the penalties for plagiarizing are hefty when you could just cite the source. Plagiarism is against the law and is not taken lightly anywhere these days. The readings didn’t just talk about plagiarism; it also explained the ways to cite sources so you don’t have to worry about plagiarizing information. I haven’t really memorized all the ways to cite each type of source, but if I don’t know how to cite something I just go to easybib.com. It makes citing sources easy because you can just put the important information in and it’ll put it in the right format. Just know to never plagiarize…cite your sources.

Semana Dos

We have been learning about the unlimited different situations that rhetoric is used to persuade people every day. Pictures show many different aspects to numerous situations. They can be used to advertise a product or just remind people of good/bad times. This week’s readings illustrated a number of techniques that photographers use in order to get a specific point across to the person looking at the picture. The reading described why a photographer might have certain zoom, brightness, or angle to a picture to create a specific emotional response from the viewer. The picture above may seem to be a romantic photograph of a couple kissing in the street not realizing there is a riot going on, but that is just the way the photographer captured the image, to make it a sort of ironic situation of peace in a time of war. In reality, what the photograph does not detail is that a riot police officer had knocked the girl down and her boyfriend came to her aid. The methods photographers use to capture images are meant to sometimes make situations flow with a specific cause like the above picture showing "peace in a time of war".

Old Spice Commercial

Ch.1 & Ch.2

Rhetoric is a term that can be used to define any technique used to persuade a certain audience to believe or follow the ideas or beliefs of the writer or artists who created the rhetorical message. The most effective way to persuade your audience successfully is by understanding your audience’s likes and dislikes and what visual techniques (colors, shapes, sizes, etc.) would most likely influence your audience to see and want to know more about your product or idea. Many advertisements use rhetoric to make a specific audience buy the business’s products. Political cartoons use rhetoric to create different emotions within the reader of the cartoon, to make the reader think deeper into the subject. 

Logos is a rhetorical device that uses statistics or facts to persuade an audience. Pathos is a rhetorical device that appeals to a person’s emotions. Some examples of pathos are in commercials such as the SPCA commercial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lFm2o4nAEc). In this commercial the use of a slow, sad song and pictures of injured or helpless-looking animals are used as pathos because it appeals to people’s emotions and makes the viewer feel bad and want to help the cause. Ethos is a rhetorical device that appeals to authority. Examples of ethos include, Nike’s swoosh, the Burger King’s king, Wendy’s red-headed girl, Apple’s apple, McDonald’s golden arches, and many more. There are many rhetorical devices used to persuade specific audiences to buy a product or believe in an idea.