October 2020

During her talk, she wanted to teach the audience how to read and talk. She started off by giving us steps on how to master these things stated above.For number one, she states “Don’t multitask.” She wants you to be present and in that moment. Don’t be thinking about other things. Don’t be half in it and half out of it. Don’t parifitate. If you want to state your opinion without any comments or argument, write a blog. You need to enter every conversation assuming you have something to learn from it. Set aside your personal opinion. True listening requires a setting aside of oneself. Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t . Use open-ended questions when communicating with people. Start your questions with who, what, when, where, why and how. If you put out a complicated question, you will get a simple answer. Try asking them more questions along with your first question. Go with the flow!

Ashali Knox
Mr. G
Writing 101
07 October 2020

Rhetorical Analysis

I chose to write my Rhetorical Analysis on the Netflix series “When They See Us.” The series was based on a true story and it is mainly about a group of young African American teenagers being wrongfully convicted of a crime they did not commit. On April 19, 1919, a female jogger, named Trisha Meili, was beaten, raped, and left for dead in Central Park, located in New York. Throughout the series, the director, Ava DuVernay, recompensed careful attention to the horrific power of language was used, especially how the prosecutors and journalists referred to the teen boys. The author establishes credibility by basing her series off of a true story.
To begin with, she uses different scenes that actually occurred in New York and included them in her series, but she changed some things up to make it truly her series. The author uses the black teens because she knew how this would really open the eyes of many Americans and she wanted them to actually understand how things were during this time frame. For instance, in the scene where the boys were being interrogated by investigators without their guardian around and how they wanted them to confess to something they didn’t commit just proves how bad they really wanted to solve the case no matter what and how they were going to do it. The author uses syntax by referring her characters and scenes off of true events. To me, if the author hadn’t written her series this way, it wouldn’t have as much impact and meaning as it does today.
Furthermore, the author uses ethos throughout the series or some of her interest based on how she wrote and scripted every episode. Since this is a very known and popular series on Netflix, many people learned and were impacted from this. She establishes a sense of credibility by conveying her respect and integrity to the ones that watched her series. She makes certain claims that many people during that time and today could really relate to. For this series and many others like this, she has the ability to construct an urgency for change and difference in the world of her audience.
The author really uses rhetorical devices to inform her audience about how the lives of many African American teenage boys were affected during that time. From her using specific characters to the scenes she included in her series, she is informing her audience on how wrongfully black teens are treated by the justice system, the people who are supposed to protect them.

Reading Journal

Copy + Paste this template into a different document (do not try to type directly on it). Then fill it out and post to your blog.

Title of Article + Proper MLA Citation for Works Cited page
Author(s). “Title of Article.” Title of Journal, Volume, Issue, Year, pages. Grant‐Davie, K. (1997). Rhetorical situations and their constituents. Rhetoric Review, 15(2), 264-279. doi:10.1080/07350199709359219

Summarize the article — include your reaction, thoughts, anything to help you remember its claims. 100 to 150 words

The article communicates about the history of the rhetorical situations occurring in the essay. The author informs the readers by applying rhetoric to the reading and listening situations as well as to reading and writing situations. The word rhetoric means to change and many writers use it to view the need of change in certain situations. Many humans are involved in numerous amounts of rhetors. the readers of this article know and understand when they are only trying to play the role of another. To me, this article was a little confusing at first, but once you read more and got more in depth then I started to understand where the writer was coming from.

Define new terms and concepts by quoting or paraphrasing the original author.

intractable- “Rather than envisioning argument as something productive and useful, we imagine intractable sides and use descriptors such as “bad,” “heated,” and “violent (Jones 156).” definition- hard to control or deal with.
fallacious- “When all angles are not explored or fallacious or incorrect reasoning is used… (Jones 160).” definition- based on a mistaken belief.

How does this reading connect to other articles from class and/or your own research? This reading connects with other readings i’ve read because they both have something to do with literature and I’m always learning new things when I read different things.

Based on the reading, craft one question to act as a springboard for class discussion.
What was the purpose of the author writing the story like she did?