WP1

In chapter 3 of our class book, "Everything's an Argument", we learned about arguments based on character, pertaining to ethical appeals; ethos.  Arguments with strong ethical appeal is important because it creates a sense of trust and credibility with the speaker or writer of the argument.  In order to accept the argument we need to respect the writer's authority, integrity and motives. If a writer has a academic or professional title attached to their name, we are more likely to respect their claims. Humor also establishes credibility because it puts the listeners in a state of ease and helps them identify with the speaker.  Reasonable supportive claims also help with establishing credibility.

I finally found a visual argument for my WP1 project.  It is shown above.  Basically the concept of the visual argument is that when you are involved with drugs your social life and extra curricular activities disappear because you value drugs more than anything else.  I really like this visual argument because it is so true and the way they made the ad is so creative and appeals to teenagers because Facebook is so popular these days.  This visual argument establishes the ethos character because it involves humor and shows facts that involving yourself with drugs is not healthy by the picture of the guy's face and the "blank" facebook page.  It gets the "say no to drugs" message out to society in a more appealing way.

Visual Arguments

This week we were to read about inventing arguments.  Arguments have a lot more to them than you would think. By definition, an argument is the act of asserting, supporting and defending a claim.  There are different kinds and styles and each of them can be looked at further in depth.  All arguments have two parts though, a claim and support.  The claim is like a thesis statement of your intended thought and the support is the evidence that proves it is true. An example would be that I think ASU has great weather year-round if you like warm weather.  That would be my claim.  My support would be the actual weather reports of Tempe, Arizona for each day of the year, proving it is a good location for people that like warm weather.  I could also add more supporting claims like evidence of surveys that show people also think ASU has great warm weather year-round.

I have thought a lot about my WP1 potential topics and still have not come up with one I want to follow through with.  The examples in class helped a lot by showing different ideas and I'm excited to come up with one on my own soon. I found this Apple visual argument that I thougth was interesting though.

January 23

I've been thinking a lot about my ideas for my WP1 writing assignment and to be honest nothing in particular has come to my knowledge yet.  I was excited to hear this project is kind of like an advertisement for a product because advertising interests me but I haven't come across any ideas that sound like a good fit yet.  I was thinking about a no smoking ad but that sounded too original so I am going to give it some more thought before I decide on a topic. 

Introduction

My name is Meredith Kristin Barnes and I am currently a sophomore at ASU.  I transferred from Indiana University this spring and am from Carmel, Indiana.  I was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and raised in Kingsport, Tennessee.  I moved to Carmel, Indiana when I was eight years old.  I am majoring in Biological Sciences and minoring in Business to hopefully attend Optometry school and become an Optometrist.  If that does not work out I plan to work for a pharmaceutical company and market or sell their products.  I live at Vista Del Sol on campus.