Questions for Discussion:

1. In this piece, Gould is attacking how scientists think. He is trying to discredit the many wrong assumptions that are made in the scientific community; or, rather, assumptions that were made. He states that a lot of the research done is faulty and inadequate.

Questions on Rhetoric and Style:

3. On page 352, Gould discredits the research and methods used during studies about women’s brains. Gould weaves his two sources together, one as a counterargument, the other to add to his argument itself.

6. Paragraphs nine through twelve are all talking about scientific methods and why they didn’t work. They are developing the point that the conclusions were wrong because the studies were faulty.

7. By elaborating so much about the application of this study to other groups of people, Gould is making his writing more relevant. He is making it more interesting and arguing a claim that he is making.

9. Gould ties both of his arguments together to his central claim that  “setting a biological value upon groups… is irrelevant and highly injurious.” So both arguments relate to this point and back it up.

10. Gould appeals to pathos by including the quotes from George Eliot- a woman forced by a discriminating culture to lie about her gender to be accepted. He also appeals to pathos by including shockingly ridiculous comments from so called experts about women’s brains.

11. This shift weakens the essay because it takes away from the consistency you would expect from a good writer. The inconsistency is distracting and unnecassary.

1. In paragraph one, Trubey makes the assumption that everyone in his audience has a TV and that many of them don’t know the effects it is having on them.

2. Because we as the audience know that the author is writing to promote TV Turnoff Week, we realize that he is trying to convince us that TV might be bad. For me as part of the audience it makes me skeptical because its almost sort of like hes trying to sell something to us.

3. The question at the end of the first paragraph serves as an introduction/segway into the article and it prompts thinking on the part of the audience.

4. Trubey’s use of classification makes his essay more organized and effective. It makes his argument appear more well thought-out.

5. When the author references a study but doesn’t cite the source at all, it does affect his credibility. It hurts his ethos. He appears juvenile and immature and it makes me not want to listen to his argument.

6. Some of the facts can strengthen Trubey’s argument. Some, on the other hand are irrelevant. They could have served him better had he used them in the actual written part of the essay and then cited the source. Then they would’ve served a more useful role in the essay- he could have tied them in and expounded on them further. Then he should have cited his sources properly.

1. By using one form of pop culture to examine another, some might think that Johnson’s argument is weakened by irrelevant data. I, on the other hand, believe that Johnson appears more well-rounded in his argument and less specific, centralized and concentrated.

2. Johnson’s charts about the TV shows convey a non-tangible/non-statistical idea into an easy-to-understand graph. They make it easier to compare different shows that he is talking about. It’s very important to know which show they are referring to if you want to understand the argument. The charts cannot stand on their own. No one could understand them because they are not labeled. But Johnson describes their purpose well.

3. I think that multiple threading, flashing arrows, and social networks kind of match up with attention, patience, retention, and the need to follow narrative threads. You use retention when a show switches from theread to thread and you have to remember all the background information of each thread on the spot.

4. Johnson presents counterarguments, such as when he says “Skeptics might argue that I’ve stacked the deck here by focusing on relatively highbrow titles”. So he basically comes right out with a straight ahead counter. He responds to it by analyzing less- sophisticated TV, like reality shows, and proves that he can prove his point with pretty much any category of show.

5. Johnson revelas the economic side when he tells us that companies have pressure to come out with shows that can be watched many times each. Because of this, they make them more complicated and nuanced and thus you have the “Sleeper Curve”.

A synthesis paper, to me, is a research paper on steroids that is also kind of an argument paper. A good synthesis paper uses strong sources, using quotes and citing work. Good synthesis writers cite work by people with differing viewpoints from his own. It also uses facts and statistics that are relevant and help the argument. Its important, though, to make sure that a synthesis paper has a lot of your own writing as the author. You should be writing about how statistics relate and you should connect points from a cited text to further your own argument. Thats what I’ve learned about good synthesis writing.

1. Robert Putnam establishes credibility by using many credible, relevant sources. He also establishes credibility by using lots of specific statistics early in the selection.

2. Robinson and Godbey were quoted in the text, saying “Television is the 800-pound gorilla of leisure time.” Needham was used in the text as well: “The number of Americans who reported a preference for ’spending a quiet evening at home’ rose steadily.” Im not going to type out the whole quote from Kunstler, because it is a long poem, but its the last paragraph on page 67.

3. The additional information establishes Putnam’s ethos as a well-researched writer and also appeal to logos for his audience. The information is relevant and interesting and furthers his argument.

4. In footnote 14, Putnam is proving that he is using real facts and statistics in the paragraph by telling us where he found hid information. Because these aren’t mainstream facts that could be found anywhere, such as an encyclpoedia or something, hes telling us where we can go to check his facts.

5. The information Putnam uses from the Needham Lifestyle Survey relates or connects the increase in television watching to the increase in people staying at home. He connects both trends with this statement: “The number of Americans who reprted a preference for “spending a quiet evening at home” rose steadily. Not surprisingly, those who said so were heavily dependent on televised entertainment.

6. Citing Kunstler has the effect of making Putnam appear much more balanced and logical in his argument. Because the Kunstler argument is more extreme, it makes Putnam’s seem conservative and not quite as “out there”. It furthers him in establishing a strong ethos.

7. Putnam’s notes and sources let us know that he really did his homework. He has read a lot of material and done a lot of research, and not only using people with the same viewpoint. This makes the audience more likely to consider what he has to say.

Merchants of Cool was a very interesting movie. It gave me a lot of food for thought. It caused me to become a little depressed, given the fact that i can now see I am a tool and a mindless pawn of the advertising scheme. That might be a little far. It did have an effect on me, though.

I believe that the movie and the dialectic model shown to us both are pretty accurate. The relationships and sub-relationships between society and yourself and the whole “feedback loop” very accurately portray what i see around me everyday. I think that some people successfully take control of the relationship between themself and society. Those people, however, feel a need to purposefully dress drastically different from their peers. This is ironic because in order to prove that they are not affected by “the crowd”, they have to observe “the crowd” and then make a decision based on how everyone else dresses. So, in a way, you could say that those who try to not be affected are still affected by those relationships.

You could illustrate it this way:

-A majority of people wear abercrombie/hollister or ae clothes at school

-Say a hypothetical person purposefully didnt wear any of those popular brands because they could see the relationships and how they got to be popular and so this kid wanted to be different. He chose to be different by wearing radical, extreme clothes that scare other kids away from him every day.

-Now what if everyone else had been wearing those scary radical clothes in the first place? Then this kid might be the one wearing popular brand name t shirts and jeans. So you can see, in some way or another, everyone is affected by the attitudes, schemes, and relationships described in “The Merchants of Cool“ 

1. Twain’s purpose in this piece of writing is to argue his point that people conform to the attitudes and standards around them.

2. By changing from I to we, Twain includes himself as a part of his audience. He also promts his readers to think about whether or not they agree with what hes saying. By using the pronoun we, Twain is kind of assuming that his audience has agreed with him at that point in the essay.

3. The anecdote about the young black philosopher adds excitement and is a hook for the reader right off the bat. What’s ironic about Twain using this story is that by uing it, he is admiting this idea of Corn-Pone Opinions was not his own. Twain got it by listening to someone. So in a way, the idea of corn pone opinions was a corn pone opinion. This sort of detracts from the argument, but not substantially.

4. Twain expands Jerry’s idea by apllying it on a larger scale and by qualifying it. The effect of the two numbered sections is an introduction to what Mark Twain will go on to write about in the essay. It also shows us that Twain’s ideas are different from Jerry’s.

5. The appeals to logos deal with fads and trends of the day like hoopskirts and bloomers and wine glasses. Twain talks about how these items came to be popular, why people use them, and how people view them. The subjects of these appeals strengthen them because these are things that his audience have seen firsthand. The references are relevant and logical, as they should be.

6. The irony of paragraph six is that Twain himself calculated and intended to conform to Jerry’s idea of Corn Pone Opinions in this very account.

7. Paragraph 13 is so long because Twain has a lot to say; a lot to argue about. There could have been a break between sympathies and Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. The subordinate clauses show that Twain is being logical, that he’s thought out his argument and has had firsthand experiences to prove his point. They strengthen his argument and also keep the paragraph from seeming as long as it actually was.

8. By using parallelism, Twain separates what men think they do from what they actually do. He is separating what should be happening from what is happening.

9. The capitalization of those words add to the drama of the end of the essay. Twain is trying to be extremely sarcastic in those sentences, but he knows perhaps some in his audience won’t know that. So he uses the capitalization as a clue to his overstated drama.

11. Examples of hyperbole are:

-when Twain says “We have seen it happen. In some millions of instances”.

-when Twain says “Some think it [public opinion] is the Voice of God”

These uses of hyperbole strengthen his argument by making it more dramatic and exciting.

Understatements:

-”in the distribution of rewards he was overlooked”. This is an understatement because there’s no way a little black kid was going to get some sort of reward in that environment simply for being a good speaker.

5.