Libraryfest!

So Library days.
Topic
Issue/Problem  Solution
Audience.
we are the bridge between youth and old guys sitting on the council.

Narrowing Topics:
reasons (instant gratification vs. the faith building process)
ask questions
take piece by piece, ask yourself how you can be more specific; what do I really mean when I say this?
Ex. "youth" = "16-22"
answers to questions
specify general words like "faith" especially if different churches define faith differently.

the secularization (reliance upon science, pushing prefrences between good choices, technology, separation of church and state, logical education, still influenced by enlightenment) of society (american society, schools, government, news) is deminishing the validity of religion. (youth learning to distrust things that cannot be proved, need for tangible evidence and data. philosophy that religion is used to keep people down, give people power and money)

Growing agnostic class
distrust of organized religion
spiritual but not religious.

Interlibrary loan, Get it at BYU

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-mcswain/why-nobody-wants-to-go-to_b_4086016.html
• http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2013/october/state-of-american-church.html
• http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/164787-thom-rainer-13-issues-churches-2013.html

BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE: A NO MAN'S LAND, OR "INTERDIGITATIONS"?

• Delivered in Kearney, Neb., Sept. 20, 2012
• "He Blinded Me With Science": Science Chauvinism in the Study of Religion.

Manipulation...bwahahahaha!!!

Style Academy #4
Manipulating Parts
I expect that this will show me how to use syntax and sentence order to make my sentences more powerful and impactful. I'm hoping to learn how to add more variety to my writing and make it more interesting to read.i know that word order and sentence order is powerful, but i'm interested to see how they play with it; you really can't play with syntax and word order too much while writing prose or else sound like Yoda you will, which is obviously not the most professional way to come across, especially in an academic paper.
So, the video teaches that every sentence is made up of two major elements: main ideas and modifiers. The position of the modifiers, as openers, closers, or interrupters, can determine their importance to your reader; for example putting a modifier in the closer position will cause it to stay in the reader's mind because it's the last thing they heard in the sentence, but the interrupter, put in the middle of the main idea, is seen as subordinate or simply adding fun extras to the main idea of the sentence.  a modifier placed in the interrupter position does have merit, however, in that it makes our writing sound more conversational and is effective in referencing things that were brought up earlier in the piece. you can make a modifier a main idea, or a main idea a modifier, depending on what effect you want to have. you can also have multiple modifiers and main ideas in the sentence and create patterns with them.
It's all about how the modifiers effect the main idea of the sentence and how important that modifier is to the point that you want your audience to believe, and what you want the audience to take away.

Exercise

Main: Snowden self-indulgently short circuited the democratic structures of accountability.
Modifier: he was putting his own preferences above everything else.

• Opener:
• Putting his own preferences above everything else, Snowden self-indulgently short circuited the democratic structures of accountability.
• Interrupter:
• Snowden, putting his own preferences above everything else, self-indulgently short circuited the democratic structures of accountability.
• Closer:
• Snowden self-indulgently short circuited the democratic structures of accountability, putting his own preferences above everything else,

Reflection

So the Rhetorical Analysis was an interesting paper to write. I was expecting something horribly dry, which it is more boring than the opinion editorial was, which is understandable because they are completely different genres with completely different purposes. The purpose of the opinion editorial was mainly to persuade, and in order to do that effectively I had to entertain my audience, and I also had a lot more freedom of form than I felt like I had in the Rhetorical Analysis. The purpose of the opinion editorial has an element of persuasion, but mostly it is analysis: what did the author do in his attempt to persuade his audience, was it effective, and why? I was not necessarily trying to entertain my audience, but rather give them an accurate analysis of this piece of rhetoric. Besides a difference if goals, these two genres have very different audiences. The difference between the two styles really highlights how important the audience is to writing. The audience wants different things depending on what they are reading. If you try to simply inform a reader during an opinion editorial, they will stop reading it, but if you try too hard to entertain a reader reading a rhetorical analysis, the reader will stop reading because you are aren’t giving them the information they asked for. It was somewhat of a challenge to write these two papers back to back, but I also learned a lot from it.

                Some challenges that I had with the rhetorical analysis and some things I learned from it was that I needed to use the article a lot more than I thought I did. In beginning writing, “summary” is almost like a dirty word. You turn in a book report and get a “C” because it was just “summary.” So, going into this, I assumed that I wasn’t really allowed to summarize at all, which wasn’t true. It’s a hard balance to achieve between summary and analysis. Another way that I could have more effectively used to article to support my analysis of it was using quotations more extensively. Again I was nervous to use quotations, because, like summary, they can just be used as space filler; however, I learned that having quotations really strengthens and contextualizes your argument, making your analysis more effective. Another tool that makes your analysis more effective and allows you to analyze effectively is asking yourself “why” about everything the author does. “Why does he use a question here?” “Why is he drawing this comparison?” Thinking about why the author was doing what he was doing, and why it affects the audience in the way that it does is really at the heart of analysis.

                This was a challenging paper to write, but I also learned a lot about how to analyze and how to support an analysis using the article, and the importance of genres and writing to the correct audience. 

Uneasy Celebration: American Justice and Divine Mercy

Amy McLean

Kaleigh Spooner

WRTG 150

October 24, 2014

Uneasy Celebration: American Justice and Divine Mercy

I grew up in America during the war on terror. I was only 6 years old in 2001 when the twin towers were hit and our country suddenly became immersed in a war on terror, and America was changed forever.  I grew up listening to concerns about Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden on the news and around the dinner table. I remember when Saddam Hussein’s regime was overthrown and he was killed, and everyone said that Osama bin Laden was even worse, and that if we could get rid of bin Laden, we would win the war on terror. That was not necessarily true, but that was the public consciousness. When I learned that bin Laden was dead, I saw the news footage of thousands of people on the streets of New York, standing on each other’s shoulders, waving American flags and celebrating bin Laden’s death. I remember thinking that it was a little wrong, because I remember how outraged people were when rumors went around after 9/11 that people in Arab nations were celebrating the attack and death of Americans. The roles were now reversed.  I thought that maybe we weren’t sending the right message to the world by being so excited that someone had died. Because of this, I was hesitant to celebrate the Death of Osama bin Laden, even though I knew that he was an evil man.

Like me, Patrick Clark also has a moral hesitation to celebrating at bin Laden’s death, and he, in his blog post American Justice and Divine Mercy: Thoughts on Osama Bin Laden’s Death, successfully persuades his readers, predominantly Catholics like himself, to feel the same. He does this by using rhetorical questions, comparisons, and strong appeals to authority.

Clark’s essay consists largely of rhetorical questions, starting with the very first sentence, “First, should we consider it anything more than a blind coincidence that this momentous attack was carried out on Divine Mercy Sunday?” drawing his readers attention to the coincidence, and asking them to evaluate its significance . He proceeds to ask his readers many questions throughout the essay, each bringing up new ideas and parallels that Clark’s readers probably haven’t thought about.  So this begs the question: why phrase these new ideas as questions? Why not simply state them as facts or thoughts or beliefs of the author, since he seems to think of them that way? By phrasing these ideas as questions, Clark accomplishes two distinct purposes. First, Clark knows that his ideas may be new to his reader, so by presenting an idea as a question, he implies that the reader has the option to accept or reject it, while at the same time implying that he, the author, whom the reader trusts, has already accepted this idea, which is incentive for the reader to accept it. For example, “is it appropriate for Christians to feel a little uneasy with the outpouring of ‘solidarity’ among the American citizenry in the wake of bin Laden’s death?” Clark uses this question to make his readers believe that Christians should be uncomfortable with the solidarity, because, although a reader could answer “yes, that is entirely appropriate,” the implied answer is “no,” and a reader will feel uncomfortable if they do not agree with that, especially if they have agreed with the implied answers to any of the other questions Clark poses.  Second, questions, especially rhetorical ones, beg to be answered. By asking the reader a question, Clark is asking them to actually think about what he is telling them, rather than accepting or rejecting them at face value. These questions encourage readers to think and come up with their own opinions about America’s reaction to bin Laden’s death.  Posing the question “what are we to make of this jubilation?” requires an answer, and immediately the reader’s brain starts working to provide that. This is one of Clark’s main purposes: to get his readers to think about, and hopefully accept, his conclusions and ideas. Clark also uses these questions as an appeal to logos, because as his readers ask themselves these questions, they realize that that they have opinions that they have not thought deeply about, which are not logical, and thinking about the issue is the logical conclusion. This all plays into the genre of religious rhetoric that Clark is writing in. Religious rhetoric is characterized by moral arguments, which Clark’s clearly is, and often includes rhetorical questions with the intent of encouraging the audience to think more deeply about the message.     

Another rhetorical device Clark uses to convince his readers that the celebration at bin Laden’s death is immoral and unchristian is comparison. Clark draws comparisons between bin Laden’s death and Christ’s death.  “Can we reasonably and in good conscience associate the bullet-hole in bin Laden’s head with the hole in Jesus’ pierced side, from which divine justice and mercy poured out upon the whole human race?”  These parallels that Clark draws are exaggerated, suggesting that by celebrating bin Laden’s death, Americans are either downplaying Christ’s death, or exalting bin Laden to a role of savior, neither of which is the intent of the celebrators, but by making these comparisons, however exaggerated, Clark effectively villainize the celebrators as opponents of Christ. Therefore, Clark implies, any true follower of Christ, who opposes comparing the Lord to a mass murderer, should agree with Clark’s idea that the celebrations at bin Laden’s execution are wrong. This plays to the genre of the piece in that pieces of religious rhetoric normally glorify and honor the deity of the religion, here Christ. Clark surprises his readers by almost seeming to break with the form and characteristics that they were expecting in his essay. This accomplishes the desire of gaining the reader’s attention and sympathy. Attention because it is outside of the form that was expected and sympathy because Clark implies that he is not making the comparisons of Christ to amoral figures, but rather those celebrating are the ones that are profaning Him. Clark’s audience are then more likely to unite with him ideologically because they do not want to be an enemy to Christ, which is how Clark, through these exaggerated comparisons, seems to characterize those celebrating at bin Laden’s death.  The religious audience will also feel rage when they see their deity unceremoniously compared to a mass murderer. Clark plays off of this anger by directing it at those who are celebrating at bin Laden’s death. This shows how these comparisons are overwhelming appeals to pathos, playing off of the moral feeling and gut reactions of the readers when they see something sacred seeming to be held in such irreverence by those who celebrate bin Laden’s death.

Patrick Clark strengthens and backs up his highly moral, and guilt-based, argument with strong appeals to authority, among them the Bible, St. Faustina (who instituted the Catholic holiday of Divine Mercy Sunday, the day that this attack was coincidentally carried out), and Pope John Paul II (who was beautified, meaning made a saint, on the very same day that bin Laden was killed). By choosing these authorities to reference and quote, Clark uses sources that his audience is familiar with, and that are extremely kairotic, since bin Laden was killed on the Divine Mercy Sunday set apart for the beatification of Pope John Paul II. Clark’s audience is already thinking about these people, and already respects them, so by quoting them, he appeals to something comfortable and familiar, and audiences are more likely to accept something that they see as comfortable and familiar, rather than completely new information. Another purpose of Clark’s appeals to authority is that it gives his argument deeper import. If he, a Catholic blogger, says something, there is no real reason to believe it, but if the pope says it, then believing it is essential to eternal salvation. By quoting these authorities, Clark is able to convince his audience that there are important spiritual reasons to believe his ideas. The last purpose of Clark’s appeals to authority is that these people were well respected, and are held up as saints and examples in Catholic culture and doctrine. As such, Catholics trying to become better look to them, their beliefs and their lives as examples and try to emulate them. By quoting them, Clark implies that if Faustina and John Paul II were still around, they would agree with him and support his argument, and encourages his Catholic audience to follow the example of these venerated saints and agree with him as well.

In conclusion, Clark successfully uses rhetorical questions to make his audience think about the moral issues attached to celebrating bin Laden’s death , comparisons to evoke strong emotional responses, and appeals to authority to convince his readers that there should be some sort of moral and religious objection to celebrating bin Laden’s death. 

Original Blog for Justice and Mercy

So I just found the original article "American Justice and Divine Mercy" by Patrick Clark ( http://catholicmoraltheology.com/justice-mercy-and-solidarity/ )that I am writing on. It's really interesting to see what other people thought about the celebration at bin Laden's Death. The blog also linked to other forums ( http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?p=7825229 ) That show that Clark was not the only one to draw the parallels he did.

Thesis Proposal

                In Patrick Clark’s article American Justice and Divine Mercy he effectively accomplishes his goal to persuade his readers, predominantly Catholics like himself, that there should be some moral hesitation to celebrating at Osama bin Laden’s death.  Some of the major tactics that Clark uses are rhetorical questions, parrelellism, and repititon, and appeals to athority.

                This essay is full of rhetorical questions. One of Clark’s main purposes is to get his audience to deeply think about this issue, so the questions are extreamly effective. These questions also serve to highlight disparities between what the readers believe about Christ and his death, vs. what they believe about Osama bin Laden and his death. Clark uses it as an appeal to logos, revealing the logical fallacies in his reader’s own thinking, and also as ethos, defining the morality that he believes his audience should be living by.

                There is a lot of grammatical parallelism as well. This is effective because it highlights the comparisons that Clark is making. It is an appeal to logos, again serving to highlight the fallacies in his readers thinking, and to Pathos, because it makes us feel guilty and uncomfortable that we are feeling and thinking this way.

                The repetition in the essay highlights the important points and ideas; several words are repeated in almost every paragraph: mercy, justice, jubilation, solidarity, Divine Mercy Sunday. This is also an appeal to Pathos, because these are all words with a strong emotion attached to them, and sometimes different emotions in religious vs. political contexts and repeating them in both contexts brings all those emotions into the mix.

                There is also overstatement (in comparing bin Laden’s wounds to Christ’s- that’s a little extreme), strong appeals to authority, allusion to bible and saintly sources, and very religious diction.

God Bless America! Appeals to Ethos, Pathos, and Logos in Romney's speech

Purpose: To persuade listeners that Romney’s Mormon faith will not make him a bad president

Romney uses ethos very effectively in his speech considering that one of the main purposes of the speech is to establish his ethos: his credibility or his ability to govern despite him being a minority faith. Another way that he uses ethos is that he cites the example of John F Kennedy, and says that he, Romney, is just like him: an American running for president, not a religion running for president. What this does is it draws a parallel between him and a beloved president who was a religion that was not necessarily liked in America’s protestant culture, so if Kennedy could be a good president, so can Romney. One other appeal he made to Ethos was that he was raised on American/Christian values, which shows that he is a moral person and not different from other religious people in America.

Some appeals that Romney made to pathos include his statement that liberty is a gift from God and Americans have sacrificed more for liberty than any other nation, and that hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost to preserve freedom. What this does is that it evokes a sense of mourning for those America has lost, while at the same time uniting them in pride and patriotism. Another, very effective thing that Romney does is that he ends his speech with “God Bless America” which, as well as having religion as a closing comment, is a typical way for presidents to end speeches and it evokes a huge sense of unity and patriotism.  

Logos is the backbone of the argument, so many of the other appeals I’ve mentioned could also fall here under logos. Another one I noticed was that Romney makes the point that even though the specific beliefs of all the diverse creeds are different, there is still a common sense of morality that unites the people, the good old American values that are shared by every religion. Also, throughout the speech he makes appeals to different authorities mainly by quoting past presidents such as John Adams and Abraham Lincoln. This reminds listeners that our government has always been founded on faith, so Romney is really not that different after all.