Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Image + Thesis Image


The wallpaper image from the video game, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has many visual rhetorical elements including the emotional depiction of the central soldier figure, two other soldiers, an M-1 Abrams tank, a Humvee, and 4 helicopters; the military theme for a first-person shooter video game; and realism for the actual gameplay in Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

English 103 Section 20 Post 2




The image I've selected is a WWII US Army Airborne recruitment poster. This poster depicts a group of soldiers parachuting into battle and engaging an enemy. It has appeals to all four groups, ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos. It appeals to ethos because it says, “They’ve got guts” which establishes the credibility of the poster. By saying that phrase, it says that these men have guts, and if you have guts, you will join the Army Airborne as well. It appeals to pathos because of the dramatic pose and depiction of the soldiers in the poster. World War II was a war in which support in the home front was a crucial advantage the United States had over Germany. So to arouse emotional support for the war, the US Government set out to create posters like this and the famed “Rosie the Riveter”.  It appeals to logos in the same way it appeals to ethos. The “They’ve got guts” caption is an appeal to male machismo and male logic to have guts as well. It appeals to Kairos because it helped more men enlist in the airborne units of the United States Army, a timely occurrence. The airborne units experienced large casualties in almost every major campaign in the European Theater of WWII. These campaigns, including D-Day, Operation Market Garden, The Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of the Kaufering concentration camp, and the final occupation of Germany post-surrender, which included Hitler’s mountain lair, the Eagle’s Nest. All of these campaigns led the airborne units to suffer large casualties, and a poster like this is a great example of kairos because it came at a timely matter to recruit men for airborne units when they needed them most. Airborne units also had considerably more risks than regular army, as it obviously entailed parachuting out of an airplane into battle and the hours of training it took to become a parachutist. In conclusion, this poster was timely to say the least. All in all, this poster has great visual and rhetorical appeal.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

First Post- English 103 Section 20


I see all kinds of images every day. The internet is a great source of images thanks to Google and all of its power. Also on the internet, the social media site Facebook has become a hub for various types of images. To quote the movie that so vividly (and claimed fictitiously) portrayed the creation of Facebook, The Social Network, Facebook and it’s image tagging ability allows people not only to “remember a party or great time, but to relive it online on Facebook.” So now, people can pretty much document every part of their lives online via image sharing media such as Facebook’s tagging.



Aside from the internet, every day we see different images. Newspapers, magazines, advertisements, everywhere are locations for various images. Some are persuasive, such as fast food restaurants with their highly desirable (yet never prepared that way) images of their food (hint McDonald’s). Another way images are persuasive are their tendency to have provocative subjects or ideas embedded in them. Why does Hooter’s succeed so well in advertising? They use provocative images of their famous waitresses.






Also images that have accompanying words can also be extremely persuasive. Consider a comic strip. If the strip has captions, certain words may have emphasis. Either they seem out of place for a character (widely used by Bill Watterson in his Calvin and Hobbes when Calvin speaks much more maturely than a young boy should) or some even are in ALL CAPS or Bolded. These words help emphasize a certain idea in both the text and the image. 



In conclusion, images are present everywhere and almost all are trying to convey a rather persuasive messages using various forms.

Picture credits- 1: thesocialnetwork-movie.com 2:hooters.com 3: Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes