Introducing Another One

Good Morning, Afternoon, Evening, or if you are my kind of person, Good Middle of the Night,

 Courtesy of an exasperated mother, several irate English professors, a host of annoyed friends, and one very tired librarian, I present to you a young lady who has composed poems on expensive furniture, picked educated brains so clean you could eat off them, edited peers' papers until they bled red ink, and usurped enough of the local library's electricity to make a sniveling environmentalist gasp in horror.

My name is Janene Gerlach. I frolicked a far way from home when I decided to attend the Pennsylvania State University in 2010, and a year later, my gray hairs are already sprouting. I partially blame late night study sessions in the dark corners of this campus, but I predominately blame the challenging and comprehensive courses available for student immersion. LA101H is such a class. About 18 college kids somehow stumbled into 113 Thomas Building on January 11, and after that day, the cleaning ladies gawked at the cleanliness of the room; our jaws hitting the floor at the sight of the syllabus doubled as mops. Our melodramatic reaction was unwarranted; we had nothing to fear. Each assignment, though time consuming, was not only within the realm of our abilities, but also served to launch us into another realm; one of expansion. Growth does not occur without the intake of external material, and LA101H required that we look outside ourselves and digest what was necessary.

In a nutshell, my experience with LA101H left me absolutely convinced about several rhetorical tactics. You must arm yourself with knowledge, trim your words with precision, and understand your audience if you wish to successfully wield rhetoric. If I am to speak extraneously without knowing my topic or my audience, I achieve nothing. Similarly, kairos, a specific moment in time when rhetoric would be most beneficial to solving a problem, became my special friend these past months. I grasped this concept by the hand and now he follows me everywhere. He acts as a pointer dog, and sometimes I take him up on his suggestions, but often I bite my tongue. Personal discretion and intuition balance kairos so that I do not speak every time a situation warrants it. When I do speak, my words are more powerful because I have not squandered them on lesser problems.

I have traveled many miles in the past year; some were spent wandereding in circles, but others branched out and away from where I started. I must say, the view has certainly improved. Thank you, and please enjoy the delightful distraction of browsing through my e-portfolio.

-Janene

Palin' in Comparision

I am out of ideas. Rhetoric in my life? Yes, it is everywhere, but I wanted to branch away from my typical strategy which is to analyze a situation that happens to cross my path by chance. I wanted to reach outside the box and snag something that I wouldn’t have encountered otherwise…so I typed into google, “Sarah Palin’s speech” just to see what came up.

              

                I’m not a picky person. The first result was the brunette ex-model’s RNC Convention Speech in 2008 during her campaign for the vice-presidency. I read the speech, and now I will point out a few of her tactics concerning ethos, pathos, etc. and impart my opinion on their effectiveness.

                 

                She points out John Mccain’s status as a war veteran right of the start, gaining pathos with the audience due our sentimental feelings about service members and sacrifice. She continues to build on this, aligning herself to him and building up her pathos with the audience by her proximity to John Mccain. She follows up on this move by mentioning her family and how her son Track is going to be deployed to Afghanistan. She uses the military and her affiliation with it without any artifice, and I think this is a useful tool, because she doesn’t address whether the military is good or bad. She just uses it as a spring board to try to connect those of us who are also affected by the U.S. military.

The section where she describes her “responsibilities” as the governor of Alaska to promote her ethos begins with a reference to something previously said about her in a negative way. “Community organizer” is not a term one would normally apply to a governor of a state. Because Alaska is so sparesly populated, one of the arguments against Palin was that the responsibilities she did hold were not comparable to say the responsibilities of the governor of New York. She says that she guesses she is “community organizer” and then rebuttals the implied slight by saying “except that you have actual responsibilities.” This is a completely ineffective way to argue that point. Everyone’s already said that the reason we think of her as a “community organizer” is because she doesn’t have the same responsibilities in magnitude as a regular governor. They aren’t saying she doesn’t have “fake” responsibilities.

Feel free to check it out. I wish her manner of speaking weren’t as informal, but I suppose that makes her easier to understand, which is sometimes a good thing.

Click Here...Do it. Seriously, do it.  

Nothing! gets attention

Another Cracker Barrel billboard flies past. My forehead rests against the cool of the window in the passenger seat, and I glance to my left to look at my mother out of the corner of my eye. She is in her own personal cruise control, jamming out to Elton John’s Greatest Hits. “Rocket man up here burning out his fuse alone…”


I enjoy these drives up and back from State College, I really do. I look back to the blur of the road, letting my eyes glaze over in surreal contentment, relaxing into the laziness that sets in once you’ve settled down and realized that nothing needs to get done in the four hours you are in this car. In fact, there might even be a lonely pillow somewhere in the back…


A blaring white rectangular billboard with large black letters appears on the horizon. My eyes alight to it instantly; the contrast with the green and brown of the Pennsylvania landscape is sharp indeed. Squinting at first, I am able to decipher the large letters and a little later the small black ones underneath as we hurtle toward the sign.

Nothing!

It’s what gets done when you don’t advertise.

I have about a second to imprint this billboard in my memory. I think the company it is promoting is, shockingly, an advertising company…ahhhh…clever. I admire their style! The sign is devoid of color, so it attracts the eyes away from the surroundings. The stark, blank white gives off the impression of emptiness and a lack of purpose, while the large black letters utilize that emptiness and fill it with a message: nothing. We think of nothing as a negative thing, something we want to avoid. There is “nothing on this board"...that is their message. They are saying that because you have not advertised using this empty billboard, you will get nowhere because “nothing gets done when you don’t advertise”…so advertise.

The Airbrush Art of Deception

You’ve probably seen them; those provocative commercials that feature a 5’8’’, 120 lb female proponent. The catchy pop music stutters in the background as she poses here and there, turns this way and that, sometimes smiling seductively, other times laughing at apparently nothing. More often than not, her perfectly straight, silky hair is being buffeted away from her face by an unseen studio fan, complementing the flawless airbrush texture of her face.

This is a depiction of the ideal woman. She is abnormally slender everywhere except her surgically or computer graphically enhanced chest and hips. Her skin is bereft of any deformity, no matter how slight, whether it is a miniscule pimple or a well placed mole. Her makeup is so masterfully crafted by specialists that she appears to be wearing none, when in reality this woman’s features are impossible to achieve naturally. Yet, despite these blaring contradictions, we are powerless to challenge her as she promotes Suave, Mabeline, Dove, or Slimfast, whatever the product. She stands on a pedestal composed of the backs of those who created her image, a project that has been years in the making.

In the colorful ‘70s, the ideal woman was just as slender, but her proportions were more believable. There was less emphasis placed upon her flawless features, and the creativity of her hairstyle was more important than any silky, perfectly straight quality. Her cheeks were plump and red, and her eyes were full of mischief and life.

Why and how, then, has this image changed?

Marketability. As our tastes as consumers have moved from the pleasant to the seductive, so has the ideal woman been warped to suit the promotional needs of companies struggling in competition with each other. She has been elongated, slimmed down, and plumped up in particular places. Her teeth are whiter, eyes are brighter, and her entire face is less human than ever before. She is a goddess that none on earth can emulate, unless of course we purchase Mabeline’s Fit Me Foundation, Gillette Venus razor, or Garnier Fructis Style curl scrunch. Then, of course, we will all be able to fling our voluptuous hair back from our unblemished faces as the fan buffest the sleek locks away, confident and perfect in our supremacy.  

Check out these beauty ads from the 60s-90s. Compare them to your typical beauty ads today.

Ruff, Ruff Cut

I watched the shaggy tufts of dirty blond hair rise up from the desk and walk towards the podium. The bedraggled student was about to deliver his presentation for our freshmen seminar class, and the image he presented could not have better epitomized an oxymoron. The unwashed mop of hair, the scruffy, unshaven cheeks, and the bloodshot bespectacled eyes crashed with unstoppable velocity into the  poorly cut tan suit donned for the occasion. His black, leather dress shoes peaked out from under his pants legs apologetically, as if aware of how out of place the whole outfit was. His blue tie swung only inches from his 7 day beard. His fidgety manner with the class and even with himself made the picture even more uncomfortable, and I sat in my seat, pondering why he would bother wearing a suit to a 1 credit class to deliver a 10 minute speech to which the rest of us had worn sweat pants...

Chapter 11 in our RCL book, concerning ethical proof, struck me as a possible explanation for the kid's strange urge to fancy himself up for an occasion that meant so little to everyone else. "Whatever the speaker's true ethical commitments, what is important, again, is our perception of the speaker." Ahhhh.

The kid got out of bed that morning, thought about his day, remembered he had a presentation to deliver, and then conceived the impression he wanted us to take away from his physical appearance: one of professionalism and scholarly aptitude. Unfortunately, he seemed to have forgotten, ignored, or been generally unaware of other necessary steps to achieving that impression (i.e., shaving, brushing hair, getting a good night's sleep...) Nevertheless, the suit and tie unmistakably conveyed the idea that this young gentleman put a generous amount of thought into how he wished to appear to the audience, and how he wished to for them to filter his message through the positive perception his appearance created. Even though he failed to take into account that the contrasts in his image were so great they negated that positive perception, he undeniably took the first step in building up his ethos as a public speaker. Well done, shaggy.

Shore No More

Most of the class in LA101H will remember the U.S. Government video we sat through on Tuesday. I didn’t have high expectations for the clip, but I was a little surprised by the quality of the video…engaging, humorous, creative…all important components of a successful rhetorical device. The audience was amused, and although I’m sure most of us know who the president of the United States is, perhaps it was educational as well. I mean, did everyone know that the Chief Justice was John Roberts?

            So we’re giggling at the silly college students who are laughing at themselves too, and then suddenly something happens that I really didn’t anticipate.

“Jersey Shore…”

I sincerely wish these students hadn’t even gone there. By utilizing one of the most pervasive influences in America right now, this project only recognizes the Shore’s power over us. By acknowledging the fact that every Penn State student can unite under this banner of mental retardation, they’ve cheapened what I think could have been a great quality video. I think the rhetoric in the presentation was strong enough when supported by only the examples of what the students did or did not know about the U.S. government.

We can’t escape from the Jersey Shore! Somehow, this useless, pathetic, degrading piece of filth has ensnared everyone’s attention to the point where we use them as examples in our class projects. Shoot me now!

Anyway, my point is: rhetoricians sometimes stoop low enough and reference whatever trend is popular at the time to gain ethos with the audience. I don’t condemn this tactic in every situation, but personally I feel as though this group of students could have gone without mentioning Jersey Shore.

And to divert your attention from the fact that in this post, I have committed the same atrocities I am judging, newsflash: I just took a shower and I have water stuck in my eyes. See, now you’re thinking about having water stuck in your eyes. Persuasive, am I not?

Strategy Shows

The most subtle things so often slip by unnoticed, scuttling underneath our eyes, passing too quickly for us to spot them. People move in blurs, rushing from one activity to the next in a constant stream of color...consequently, staying inconspicuous is not hard a job for these little, lurking things.


Today, I sat in a patched leather chair, staring across an oak desk at the 30 year Army Reserve secretary who was processing my military ID. I swung my legs back and forth in the silence as he typed and photocopied various items, and my eyes traveled this way and that sporadically around the room. Bored, I started reading the posters that decorate the tan walls. After visually sorting through the massive amounts of Army paraphernalia, I eventually studied a picture of a familiar looking stadium framed in blue and white with lights shining in all directions. I quirked a small smile to myself as I recognized Beaver Stadium. Looking closer, I read the silver text sharpied on the blue poster: PSU vs. USC...the Rose Bowl. Slightly awed, my eyes bounced down to the small numbers just barely peeping out from behind the team names: PSU- 24. USC- 32...


At first I thought it must have been a sharpie typo. Why would anyone so proudly display such an epic poster that depicts Beaver Stadium in all its glory, if only to contrast it with the dismal failure of the team it represents? Puzzled, I lifted my eyes to the large, ostentatious words tacked to the top of the poster. "The greatest SHOW in College Football."


 ...show. This is why we have this poster taped to our tan walls in our mediocre offices while we spend hours on hours of tedious time performing mediocre jobs. Penn State, the formally number one party school in America, puts on the greatest SHOW in college football. Who cares if we win or lose? You should come to OUR school. We put on the best faces, the best music, the best entertainment, and the best reputation of a good time. We do all this better than any of our rivals. Propaganda? Rhetoric? Want to convince people that PSU is the best? Just subtly change the definition of quality. So what if we don't crash into the enzone with victory at our heels? So what if we don't rule the Big 10?


 Penn State: the greatest SHOW in college football.

I never would have noticed those small, silver letters if I hadn't been sitting in that chair, watching the clock tick time away.