Wednesday 5 September 2007
Ad and Cartoon
The ad is against genetic altering of foods. The cartoon is for it. The ad uses scare tactics like printing disturbing answers on the picture of the can. It states clearly what it thinks is wrong with biotech foods and orders us to take action. It’s an ad which means that its purpose is to interest and enlist people in it. It this time is taking action for labeling of genetically modified foods. The cartoon pokes fun i.e. mocks people. It shows a large self-righteous hippie withholding a fat ear of corn from a starving poor man. The hippie, who represents those opponents of biotech foods, is using his stand on the issue to prevent people from eating foods that might potentially be bad for you. But the catoonist is showing that the good of such foods can outweigh the bad; in this instance the starving man would much rather have biotech food than starve to death. The cartoon mocks the fallacies of the opposing side; the ad highlights the dangers of the issue and asks for action.
Tuesday 4 September 2007
Implicit vs Explicit Arguments
Note: I think I need to stop writing these at one-thirty in the morning. They get too long, and I'm too lazy to change them.
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Implicit arguments are arguments that are not stated directly and usually do not use the traditional media of argument, i.e. a written essay or spoken speech. They're things like pictures, poems, stories, etc., that the point of the argument can be inferred from, though the subject matter is set up in such a way that a specific conclusion is drawn. For example, the picture and poem on pages 5-6 are implicit arguments.
The picture shows how war is all friendship-forging and a deep, special bonding experience in the face of drastic but not insurmountable hardship. This is shown by the emotion of the two main men in the picture. They appear to be undergoing some deep emotional shared relief/happiness. They're also hugging, which is perceived as unusual for two men. That also indicates a close bond between them. However, they're of different generations (you can tell by their age and uniforms) so what bonded them is some greater significant thing, not just being together, but also being part of a generations-wide experience. And the younger man has lost his hand. That's drastic, painful and probably traumatic. But he's there and appears to be healthy and happy, so it doesn't appear that his hardships (and following that, the hardships of war) are forever or completely awful. All that is shown and inferred just from that one picture.
The poem is quite different. Because it's written, to me at least, the implicit argument is easier to see up front, without the book's guidance. It's implicit because the author never came right out to say 'War is bad, because it makes people die.' But by telling of the horrors of the men living through it, (the blood, the shells, the mustard-gas) he makes us feel that war /isn't/ such a glorious, heroic experience after all. The closest he comes to outright saying his point is the last four lines, where he says:
'My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori'
Stating that if people really knew what went on in the battlefield, they wouldn't tell their children that it was an honour to die for their country. And another implicit argument: the fact that children /are/ 'ardent for some desperate glory' means that some cultural influence has wrongly told them that war is glorious.
Explicit arguments are when there is, to quote the book: 'an ordered structure of thesis, reasons, and evidence.' (just a note- that last comma after reasons is bad grammar, I think). That means that explicit arguments are when people say what it is they're arguing about, why and from what viewpoint, the reasons that have caused them to think that way or will cause us to think that way and the evidence backing up those reasons. All of which should be presented clearly and precisely so it’s easy to understand what the argument is about. It's practically impossible to do that in a picture, but easier in a movie or a speech or a written thing. That's why most explicit arguments are speeches and essays.
~~~
Implicit arguments are arguments that are not stated directly and usually do not use the traditional media of argument, i.e. a written essay or spoken speech. They're things like pictures, poems, stories, etc., that the point of the argument can be inferred from, though the subject matter is set up in such a way that a specific conclusion is drawn. For example, the picture and poem on pages 5-6 are implicit arguments.
The picture shows how war is all friendship-forging and a deep, special bonding experience in the face of drastic but not insurmountable hardship. This is shown by the emotion of the two main men in the picture. They appear to be undergoing some deep emotional shared relief/happiness. They're also hugging, which is perceived as unusual for two men. That also indicates a close bond between them. However, they're of different generations (you can tell by their age and uniforms) so what bonded them is some greater significant thing, not just being together, but also being part of a generations-wide experience. And the younger man has lost his hand. That's drastic, painful and probably traumatic. But he's there and appears to be healthy and happy, so it doesn't appear that his hardships (and following that, the hardships of war) are forever or completely awful. All that is shown and inferred just from that one picture.
The poem is quite different. Because it's written, to me at least, the implicit argument is easier to see up front, without the book's guidance. It's implicit because the author never came right out to say 'War is bad, because it makes people die.' But by telling of the horrors of the men living through it, (the blood, the shells, the mustard-gas) he makes us feel that war /isn't/ such a glorious, heroic experience after all. The closest he comes to outright saying his point is the last four lines, where he says:
'My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori'
Stating that if people really knew what went on in the battlefield, they wouldn't tell their children that it was an honour to die for their country. And another implicit argument: the fact that children /are/ 'ardent for some desperate glory' means that some cultural influence has wrongly told them that war is glorious.
Explicit arguments are when there is, to quote the book: 'an ordered structure of thesis, reasons, and evidence.' (just a note- that last comma after reasons is bad grammar, I think). That means that explicit arguments are when people say what it is they're arguing about, why and from what viewpoint, the reasons that have caused them to think that way or will cause us to think that way and the evidence backing up those reasons. All of which should be presented clearly and precisely so it’s easy to understand what the argument is about. It's practically impossible to do that in a picture, but easier in a movie or a speech or a written thing. That's why most explicit arguments are speeches and essays.
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