the importance of evidence

I feel that evidence is everything in an argument.  If there is no evidence to support your claim, nobody will really acknowledge it is relevant or believe you.  It is interesting how much evidence is needed to sway an audience towards a certain argument has changed over the years.  Back in history, people would answer to and believe anything a higher power like a king, pope, or the majority of the population thought.  The higher powers would base their arguments on their personal opinions.   A king could sentence a person to death by saying they were a traitor as evidence and the public would accept this, even though the person was a respected member of society.  With no evidence shown to them that the person was a traitor, they would still show up to the gallows and cheer for their death.  Another thing that comes to mind is how Hitler in WWII persuaded his entire army to eliminate the entire Jewish population.  His evidence was that they were an inferior race and millions were killed because of this.  The entire army accepted this with little evidence and all on the basis of their leader believing it.  Today in modern society, it takes a lot more evidence to persuade an audience.  Everyone has to prove their stance with a certain amount of credible evidence for anyone to even listen to it.  Our judicial system is based on how much evidence it takes for a person to be guilty.  There is firsthand and secondhand evidence that help any argument prove to be more credible.  Observation, interviews, personal experience, experiments are a great way to provide evidence but since they are performed by an individual, the words or results can be skewed towards their opinion.  I think this is demonstrated in the advertising of products since every product shows results in graphs that make it seem the best.

Academic Prose

The excerpt entitled “Dancing With Professors: The Trouble With Academic Prose” proved to be a very interesting and controversial article to me.  As I read through it, I was a little confused at it.  I am not really sure I can agree that every university professor is a “shy, timid and fearful people”  who are trying to hide behind their writing.  In my experience in college at Arizona State University, I have definitely had some amazing teachers in all subjects who I have been completely able to understand any of the assigned readings.  Many of them have been interesting and supplemented what we were learning in class.  I never have really seen a huge problem with any assigned readings.  Although most of what I have been exposed to seems normal and understandable, periodicals is where everything goes wrong.  I can definitely see where the author of this article is coming from when it applies to the type of writing that goes into academic articles.  My only objection is that not all of these academic articles are necessarily professors which the author mostly relates to. 

My confusion starts whenever I am supposed to find multiple academic articles to support my research or claim in different projects.  The only times I have ran into this are in my Biology and Composition classes.  First of all, it is even hard for me to find articles that relate to my research or claim.  When I finally find ones that have something to do with my subject, I can barely even read what they are saying.  I especially notice this in science academic articles.  They are filled with confusing language, and random statistic terms that barley make sense to me.  Sometimes I think these articles are only meant for scientists directing their work at other scientists who have learned to understand this language through years of reading and practicing this type of writing.  Since I am a Biology Pre-Med major, I know I am going to have to become very familiar with these and that sort of scares me.  I wonder if I will reduce myself to writing in the dull sort of way academic articles are written. 

Subtle Ways To Sway the Audience

While reading the article “Hidden Layers” it became even more prevalent to me how much persuasion is used in almost every aspect of life.  Almost every form of communication we have includes hidden layers of persuasion in our arguments.  The simplest of things like a conversation, all the way to an important debate, and even advertisements can use these hidden layers in order to persuade the general population into believing what the author/ orator/arguer wants.  These hidden layers can be found in almost anything.  Where I can see these things happening the most is in politics, advertisements, schools and debates.  Assumptions can be made by the general public based on what the arguer says or shows.  These assumptions shape how the target audience will react to the argument and deem it either plausible or not acceptable.  Every arguer tries these subtle ways to push the target audiences thinking in a certain direction.  One way is to use underlying values.  This is the way in which we use language and wording of things to bring the argument towards the good values like love, kindness, friendship instead of focusing on the negative.  These capitalize on how strong our values are.  Like I said before, theses are not blunt and have people arguing for a specific value.  They are very subtle and try to make you relate to the wisdom, which is what everyone wants to obtain.  Another sneaky way arguers try to persuade is by using the objectivity in disguise.  This tries to make any information, whether it be facts or a personal account, seem unbiased.  To me, the first thing that comes to mind is the news or newspaper.  Even though the purpose of the news is to relay the facts to the public, taking a closer look at the actual facts it is stating can sway the target audiences opinions or notions in a certain direction.  By the way the news reports on an event, it can entirely sway your thoughts away from the real story behind it.  I have heard that there are some news stations are solely democratic and republican.  It makes me wonder if all of my thoughts about the government have been radically skewed just because of how they word their reports.  Since it is so simple to word their arguments a different way to get their point across, I feel like all of my opinions are what someone else wants me to think.  Now that I am learning more about this, it is coming to my attention that I actually have to break down everything the news is telling me and figure out if the facts are skewed or not.

Arguments Using Pathos and Ethos

Over the past week, the readings have stressed the importance of using pathos and ethos to support an argument.  These are very basic forms of persuasion or getting a point across that are frequently used in everyday speaking, writing, advertisements and any other forms of communication between people.  I know this because every English or Composition class that I have been in since middle school has made a huge effort to pound these into my head.  It is obvious that these types of persuasion are very important and are essential to winning an argument, whether it be in a classroom, with your parents, with a friend, in an academic paper, in an election, in a debate or any other type of instance where you want to be heard.  Mastery of using these tactics will lead to strong arguments and people listening to your ideas.
Pathos refers to appealing to emotions to influence others what to believe or think.  People have emotions and make decisions that rely solely on them.  I feel it is the most powerful form of persuasion.  There are so many emotions that can be played on like happiness, sadness, insecurity, fear, hate, hope, empathy, etc.  The best examples I can think of are the Humane Society commercials that show homeless, beaten and neglected animals.  It is clear that they are trying to appeal to the emotion of sadness and sympathy and a person may be more inclined to donate or adopt.  Orators can use pathos by using humor or personal experiences to appeal to the audience.  Although pathos is a very powerful form of persuasion, it needs to be used with caution or else the audience may be offended.
Ethos refers to bringing sufficient and appropriate credibility, authority, and motives to a subject that is being argued.  The use of ethos determines whether a reader or listener will pay attention to what you are saying.  An arguer needs to establish character, show their credibility, and come clean about their motives in order for anyone to listen to them.  The best example I can think of for ethos is Presidents trying to win a campaign and demonstrating ethos through their speeches to the American people.  They pick stances on issues to build character and show motives as well as gain credibility from all their years in the government.

Arguments

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Arguments are everywhere. No matter how you live your life, you are going to face an argument at some point.  It is clear that it is only in human nature for people to argue.  I would be surprised to hear a person say they have never been in an argument.  Looking back in history, arguments have shaped how the world has become today.  Arguments are at the roots of war, inequality, divorce, racism, politics, and many other things.  This country was practically founded on arguments.  The Founding Fathers spent weeks in conventions arguing over how their new country should work.  The political parties today still debate over the same subjects.  It is clear arguments will never die.  Simply put by the article called “Inventing Arguments,” an argument is the act of asserting, supporting and defending a claim.  There are more subtle forms of an argument, aside from the examples I stated above which can create turmoil, hatred, and divisions among people.  These are more simple and common among the general public.  These types of arguments are mainly to get someone’s point across or to sound more credible to others.  Usually, a person will make a claim and can defend that claim with rhetoric, facts, and opinions from their own perspective.  It is so common, I feel like we do not even realize we are arguing all the time.  It can be as simple as debating with a friend on where to go to eat for lunch.  It is interesting to me that there are even jobs based on arguments like lawyers, politicians, businessmen, critics and many others that I cannot think of.  Teachers encourage children from a young age to debate in the classroom.  I can think of numerous classes I have taken in which weeks were devoted to debating.  I even had debates in Spanish classes.  In high school, there is an entire club devoted to debating.  They would practice for hours on how to make a statement and support it with any method they knew.  I feel that arguments are important and without them life would be boring.

Here are a couple ideas for visual arguments that I could possibly use for Writing Project One.

MY VERY FIRST BLOG: ABOUT ME

Hey everyone! My name is Danielle Barnard and I am from Phoenix, Arizona. I grew up here my entire life and I love it. I am a freshman attending my second semester at ASU. I currently live in the dorms called San Pablo. My major is Biological Sciences Pre Med. I hope to become a doctor someday but I would be happy with anything in the medical field where I can be doing good for others. My dream is to be an ER doctor. My family lives here in Phoenix as well.  My parents are at home in Ahwahtukee while my two older brothers recently bought a house in Tempe.  I love doing things with my family like traveling and riding dirtbikes and quads. We regularly travel to Rocky Point, Durango and to our cabin in northern Arizona. I currently have a boyfriend who I spend almost every second of every day with. I'm crazy in love with him. We have a lot of similar intrests so I think thats why we get along so well and can stand eachother. I am also very close with his family. That's pretty much me in a nutshell.