Blog Week 5A

Visual rhetoric is used to give the viewer visual images.  For example, when you see a picture of the American flag, what comes to mind?  First, you will notice the American standard color, "Old Glory Red" and "Old Glory Blue"along with the white stripes and stars.  The blue rectangle canton that holds the fifty whites stars, represent the fifty states that create the United States.  The thirteen stripes which represent the original thirteen British colonies which first colonized America. Any proud American should know what the significance of the colors represent, red - hardiness and valor, white - purity and innocence, blue - vigilance, perserverance, and justice.  You may also visualize the flag representing the land of the free, the land of opportunity, and most of all freedom.  Freedom is the most powerful right we have as Americans.  Some countries object on our variety of freedoms and would rather go back to the 4th or 5th centuries.  Freedom is what makes America, GREAT!   

Gazes are pictures, paintings, drawings, statues, and other visual aids to help the audience visualize. Rhetorical visual gazes can be described in many different forms. The main visual gazes that we as a class discussed, the first gaze is the 'familio' gaze reminds us of family memories or a small group of people you know very well.  It is the intimate memories that bond us.  Second gaze, the 'national' gaze for example where were you on 9/11/2001, when the Twin Towers fell?  It is tied into a common culture.  The third gaze, 'world' gaze the infamous Mona Lisa is taught through our world history classes along with who painted the portrait, Leonardo daVinci.  A 'consumer' gaze is targeted a certain audience/shopper.  How the item is presented to grab our attention.  The gaze is based on how we shop.  Another example is a 'travel' gaze, targets travelers and the activities you do during vacation or trips.  The Grand Canyon, Hawaii, and Japan are all exotic trips one can take to set on the travel gaze.  Finally, the 'political' gaze, especially right now when you hear about politics, you imagine Obama and Romney, and their race for the presidency.  There are many other gazes for different categories, however these that I have mention are the primary gazes.  I hope I have given you a visual and a understanding about rhetorical visual gazes.

Blog Week 4A

The benefits for writing a paper that pertains to cause and effect will help your paper flow smoothly when explaining how something happened.  We analyze why it happen, in order to predict what will happen.  There is no effect without a cause and vice versa.  The thesis statement tells how the cause and effect relates to one another.  On the other hand, there can be a contributing cause to set the main cause to roll the ball into the effect.  This is called 'Post-Hoc Reasoning' which is not necessary the main cause to bring about the main effect. 

Cause and Effect helps the reader to comprehend the material in which is being read.  Asking questions will help determine the main idea and the contribution ideas.  We analyze a paper to predict what the outcome will be.  It is in our nature to predict, especially when reading an article, a paper, or even a book.  The cause and effect guides us from point A to point B. 

Blog Week 3B

The importance of having a peer review is, to help us become better writers.  Hearing what you need to execute from a professor can be overwhelming or sometimes all you hear is Charlie Brown's teacher.  Your peer's can alleviate some anxiety that may occur when having to produce a paper.  You must be ready to have an open mind before peer review and learn to accept any kind of positive criticism your peer's may have for you.  I personally believe peer review's are an excellent idea.  A fresh pair of eyes are sometimes all you need in order to correct, change, or take out to create your masterpiece.

Blog Week 3A

Ms. Zambrano's article contained the rhetorical tools mutability/plasticity, piecemeal, windows of opportunity, and open-ended closure.  I wil explain how these tools made the article flow smoothly and adequately. The author refers to King Arthur's fictional character's popularity throughout history is still be written about to present day.  Ms. Zambrano's sets up her essay in chronological form to give the reader a crash course on the historical Arthur to the fictional King Arthur, revealing many of the stories always resort back to King Arthur. 

The first tool, mutability/plasticity describes Arthur's stories containing the ability to be rewritten or reshaped for a particular audiences.  Ms. Zambrano gives examples, some audience will not quite like the romance element of Arthur but are more into the goury side of Arthur.  Therefore, the writer will remold the entire story in order to maintain the audience's attention.

The second tool, piecemeal illustrates how Arthurian narratives are written from various sources one piece at a time.  Ms. Zambrano explains how the bits and pieces of Arthurian narratives work and not the individual tales.  Thus, going into the third tool windows of opportunity.  This tool is used to fill in the blanks with the imagination of the writer.  The writer can take what ever piece they want from Arthur in which they feel is incomplete.  Writers usually retell and tell stories because they feel that they can tell the story better and history has a tendency of repeating itself.

The last and final tool, is the way open-ended closure desmonstrates if a reader wants more of the story, then he/she will have to invent the rest of the story to his/her liking.  Ms. Zambrano describes Arhurian narratives are constantly evolving from bits and pieces, history, imagination, or what is perceived as incomplete by the writer.

Blog Week 2B

As I emphasize the importance of applying narrative elements in reading comprehension.  It is critical for all to learn and retain comprehension strategies in order to dissect readings.  Comprehension strategies must be taught at an early age and must be practiced on an everyday basis.  In doing so, this will give readers and writers clearly an advantage in a 'self-regulated fashion' to enhance comprehension in school, work, and life.  The more knowledge one has the less problems will occur comprehending.

The various structural elements are the setting, characters, plot, and theme.  Utilizing the strategies will help the reader break down the plot, which has four parts.  The plot consists, the problem of the story, the response of the character(s), what action was taken, and the outcome.  There are also the subplots, which are the individual episodes.  A narrative must encompass these elements to uphold structure.  Without structure you will lose your audience. 

Blog Week 2A

Paragraph one should cover the importance of narrative as found in the class readings.

The importance of a narrative is used to tell a large story, whether fictional or non-fictional.  A narration must be kept in chronological format to transition smoothly for the reader.  Verb tenses must also be carefully used whether the story is in past, present, or future.  The writer will then set the base of a well-constructed story.

Paragraph two should be a discussion of how these rhetorical tools are used to reach a desired audience.

The rhetorical cannons are helpful tools to captivate the audience by invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery, explication/implied, analyze the obvious, and familiarity.  With these tools the reader will have a better understanding of the writer's story.

1. Invention - Creating a story in order to captivate the audience. 
2. Arrangement - Having the story in chronological order for a smooth transition for the audience.
3. Style - How the story is told
4. Memory - Can be used as mnemonic device for the writer to keep a chronological order
5. Delivery - To give interest to your audience
6. Explication/Implied - Explication is to give details to your reader and implied is communicating with your audience without being direct but understood.
7. Analyze the obvious - The characters, plot, setting, and theme.
8. Familiar/Strange - Familiarity is which the reader can relate to the writer and strange is an odd experience to the reader.