Sam's English Blog

Sam Abraham 12/6/18 The political cartoon that I chose to analyze features Trump holding a bazooka labeled "trade war" attempting to fire on China. The back blast, however hits a Trump voter taking off their head. This is meant to represent the tariffs and trade war that he started with China. The cartoon portrays the trade war as an ill-conceived plan that does nothing to China while simultaneously hurting his own voter base. The cartoon indirectly also portrays Trump as incompetent or unaware. He is confused and ends up firing the bazooka and hurting one of his voters directly while apparently doing very little to China. Indirectly, the cartoon portrays him as unable to act in a productive way to help the people who voted for him in the real world. When portraying this the author exaggerates Trumps features, especially his yellow blond hair. This is to create a strong image in the viewer's mind of Trump next to a headless Trump voter so that above all else the ta...

PURPOSE: To criticize Trump's approach to student loans DEVICES: Pathos: The article uses fear to back up its argument. Statements like “his stance on student loans could spell trouble for liberal arts majors” at the beginning of the article start the reader off with a negative or fearful feeling about the topic despite no evidence having been presented at that point in the article. This creates a lens through which the reader sees the article and influences their opinions. This combined with the headline “This is Trump's stance on student loans - and it could hurt poor students” makes it seem to the reader like someone or even themselves is in imminent danger and needs to oppose the idea being explored by the article. This happens before any evidence or description of the problem is presented that can either bring substance to this fear or prove that it is baseless forcing the reader to be against the idea from the start. Pronouns: This article focuses on Donald Trump...

Gender In Advertising  1. The advertisements have different images and are laid out slightly different from one another, the picture switches sides from the left on the boy's ad to the right on the girl's ad. The position and expression of the children in the ad change from a more active or dynamic expression for the boy to a calm expression for the girl. The text and advertising points are also different and appeal to how the child is expected to behave. 2. I personally never had an opinion about the GAP but this ad comparison shows the different expectations the company has for boys and girls. The company is trying to appeal to what it believes are the character traits of the 2 genders at this age regardless of their accuracy. 3. I think that the portrayal of boys and girls is very stereotypical for kids that age. Girls are expected to become social butterflies and be outgoing and friendly while boys are expected to be smart and active with lots of energy a...

I think that like most people, doing what I like makes me happiest. Working on projects or building something that interests me without the stress of deadlines or work I don't want to do. I think that a national happiness index would be an interesting thing to try.the results however I don't think should affect national policy because people's definitions of happiness can be very different. Some people's happiness could even be the exact opposite of happiness for others. This could lead to conflict in terms of actual policy but it still would be an interesting study to do. I think that because of this there is also no one way to measure happiness. Happiness is relative to what makes you unhappy. Some persons definition of perfection could still be below the definition of someone else's unhappiness. Kurt Vonnegut's article, I've Been Called A Luddite, talks about how he remembers  time before technology was involved in all that we do. He talks about the...

Today I was asked  in class to analyze advertising and compare two advertisements. I chose to do  print car advertisements. The first advertisement I chose to analyze was an ad for an affordable minivan. The ad is for an everyday car and follows a theme of comparison. The ad for the minivan is simple and has one image of the car on a background of white text. This keeps the focus on the image and does not clutter up or confuse the eyes. At the top of the add there is a large bold statement meant to compare the car to a much more expensive car. The advertisement is aimed at new car buyers. The car company in question is Daihatsu, a Japanese company famous for making small cars. The perspective of the advertisement seems to be that of someone who is interested in cars for their cool factor or how they are perceived in society. This is because of the ad’s statement, “Picks up five times more women than a Lamborghini”. This statement also show that the te target au...

Technology and Advertising  I interact with technology on a daily basis. I use my laptop to watch videos and catch up on recent events as-well as play games and do homework. I also spend time on my phone doing may of the same things while also catching up on social media. Once and a while I also watch TV or play on Xbox on a larger screen. My time spent on technology is spread across may devices for many different activities. Overall technology plays a big role in my live for both work/school and entertainment. Advertising is a large part of modern media consumption. One interesting thing I noticed about the advertisements we watched was the critical nature and even hypocrisy of the ads. One ad criticized the beauty industry and the standards it placed on women. The ad however was itself advertising beauty products for a large personal care and beauty company. This seemed hypocritical and was a very interesting example to look into more deeply. This surprised me but made more...