Refugee Rhetoric

The context of this political cartoon is the recent push by many governors to prevent refugees from Syria to settle in their states. The audience of this cartoon are the people who oppose letting refugees into the country. The cartoon is meant to remind them that the Europeans who first came to America from Europe were refugees from religious persecution in Europe, and that without the help of the native Americans who already lived in America, they would probably have perished. In order to understand the cartoon, the audience needs to have knowledge about how America came to be settled by Europeans.

Background Research

This is the link to my research about the decreasing use of the curveball in professional baseball.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nostri-imago/4946926845

Initial Thoughts about Audience for my Argument

There is no such thing as the general public because everyone has different tastes and interests, which means that no matter what subject you are writing about, there will always be people who cannot be persuaded or who did not care about your topic.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mhatrey/6968211400

People who are not nihilists but are open to the idea of becoming one, or people who are interested in the different philosophies that people live by are likely to be interested in my topic and argument. Most people have at least heard of nihilism but many are unlikely to be familiar with what it really is and will have a limited understanding of it. Anyone who enjoys the informing themselves about issues using the medium I will use to make my argument could encounter it. People who believe that everything in life has meaning and that we should care about it might oppose my argument. My audience will need to understand what nihilism is in order to understand my argument.

My Proposed Public Argument

When thinking about what topic to work on for this project, I decided that I did not want to do a technical paper about something in my field. I decided that I wanted to do something more informal because I've always liked writing and arguing informally better than writing formally, and I think I'm better at it. This led me to search for a topic, but I initially came up blank.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/cote/158082293

 I thought if a possible topic Thursday night while watching The Big Lebowski before I went to bed. In the movie, "The Dude" and Walter are antagonized by a group of nihilists; I have always thought nihilism is a vastly underrated philosophy for living one's life. This gave me the idea to write an argument about how nihilism should be adopted and practiced by many people. I then thought about what medium would best this argument. After much thought, I decided that either a TED Talk or an opinion/editorial column would be the best medium to express this view. Both are mediums that allow an argument for something to be made in an informal way while still being an effective means of communicating an argument. Currently, I have not decided which one to use for my final project, and may not for a little while longer; I might draft both and choose which one I think is better. It'll really depend when I have a good idea or realize procrastination is no longer an option.

Change of plans, I will actually be writing a piece to be entitled, the Wrongful Death of the Overhand Curveball, which will detail why the overhand curve has fallen out of favor in major league baseball and then argue that should not have fallen out of favor and that it is the most effective pitch in baseball.

Analysis of a Public Argument

The tone of the letter is very formal, this tone conveyed by formal word choice and language. The author chose to use a formal tone to show her respect for a government official.

the author uses the formal tone and the convention of writing directly to a person in the formal letter. The formal letter is an appropriate choice of genre for the author's argument because it allows her to convey her opinions to the governor herself.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jan_Brewer.jpg

She establishes her ethos at the beginning of the letter by saying that she is a freshman at the University of Arizona. This is not effective because an experienced government official is unlikely to listen to a college freshman on matter of policy.

Her claim is that cutting medicare is not the best solution to the state's budget problem and would hurt more people than it helped. She supports this claim by offering alternatives to the budget cuts that she believes would be more beneficial to the state than the current plan would be.

Her call to action is to prevent cuts to medicare. It is clear what she wants from the letter; everything in the letter relates back to her goal of preventing cuts to medicare.

I would have suggested she provide more concrete evidence to support each of her proposals to prevent cuts. I would also suggest that she spend more time explaining why the current plan is not the best plan available. Also, this letter could have benefited from statistics supporting her ideas.