3/17/09

In last week’s class, we discussed the many types of strategies used by advertising execs to lure us in, to encourage us to associate their product with some other need or desire, or to laugh, and thus associate humor with their product name.

I enjoyed our discussion, and I can’t stop looking at advertisements, especially on the train, wondering what you guys would make of them.

Currently, I am particularly interested in a couple of ad campaigns. One is the series of Dentyne ads we see everywhere:
http://www.dentyne.com/

I think they’re interesting because they promote “face time.” They’re trying to associate their product with intimacy (which I suppose it is in a way, since when we’re intimate we want good breath) but also they’re trying to harken back to a “simpler” way of communicating with others that we have moved away from.

I’m also interested in the Aruba ads that are all over the train. They feature a series of people (or models) who work in different areas of Aruban industry. The strange thing about them to me is that they have a lot of text, and the syntax of some of it seems rather awkward to me. I am not sure if they’re trying to give each different character a different writing voice? The tagline is “Aruba: 90,000 friends you haven’t met yet.”
you can check out the website, but I wasn’t able to see the actual ads there. I have only seen them on the subways.

Below is the gist of the assignment due for Sat. (I also emailed it to you).

Assignment:
Choose an advertisement from a recently published magazine or newspaper, analyze it, and then write a paper discussing the subtle, coded, and/or disguised message(s) and the rhetorical strategies that the ad uses and forms to help sell its product.
Content of Essay:
To arrive at your main ideas and claims in your essay, consider some or all of the following questions (note: you don’t have to answer every single one of these in your essay):
• Who seems to be the target audience for the ad? Where did you get your ad? What do these details suggest about the ad’s possible meaning?
• What is the ad promising the target audience if it buys the product?
• Is the thing being advertised itself a sign, carrying certain connotations and/or meanings? If so, of what? What is the thing’s cultural significance?
• Are there other signs in the text that also carry important connotations and cultural meanings? If so, what are the signs, what do they mean, and how do they contribute to the larger meaning?
• Is the overall cultural context within which the ad takes place significant? How?
• In general, then, what subtle, coded, and/or disguised messages and promises does the ad make to the reader/view, and how does it do this?
• What are the strategies the advertiser’s use to convince us to buy their product?
*********************
Also, please remember we will be having individual conferences rather than a normal class this week.
I will email you a schedule; please email back the time you want to come.

L

3/7/09

So, we certainly had some interesting discussions during class on Saturday. I’m glad that most of you got so engaged and interactive. All the things we discussed left my mind racing a bit. But I love that!

So, just a couple of things I wanted to recap.

1) We discussed the various writing metaphors people are using subconsciously or consciously when they write. Two of the most important points I think arose were:
a. Every time you write a paper, it doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. Thinking that your writing has to be perfect can really stall your process.

b. There are higher level and lower level goals you need to keep in mind while writing. Lower level goals are things such as the syntax of the sentence you are writing, the word choice in that sentence, the punctuation you’re using. Higher level goals are things like how the paragraph you’re writing fits in with the whole paper’s thesis and main idea, how the organization is working, and how well you transition from one idea to another. Both higher and lower level tasks have to be performed. It’s important to think about which set of tasks is harder for you. You may just blurt out all your ideas and then work on punctuation and such. Or you may work sentence by sentence and build up to ideas. It’s just important to be aware.

2) In the second half of class, we had our big “Fashion Thief” discussion. Most of you handed in your summaries. Your next essay assignment (Due 3/14/09) is to choose one of the topics we discussed in class on Saturday and explore it more fully.

Some of these topics included:
–how celebrities create “need”
–the lack of role models in our society
–materialism
–humility in modern culture
–artistry and craftsmanship
– assessing the real value of a product
–what the American dream is
–hip hop culture
–poverty and desire for empowerment
–the ways in which prison will change someone
–the fashion industry and its various aspects
–NY and the ways we the city exhibits such vast income-levels among its citizens

There were many more ideas thrown around as well.

I’d like you to write a paper discussing one of these ideas. The intent of this paper is to
I. Present the idea or issue
II. Discuss the various aspects of the issue, and point out some examples of how this issue plays out in real life
III. Offer some of your thoughts about ways we can react to or improve the problems created by this issue, or discuss how the issue may seem problematic but is really not
IV. Conclude with your thoughts about what other issues are related to your issue

This is a general outline for your essay. Feel free to deviate especially within parts III and IV. Your paper may take a different direction.

Email me if you have any questions.
Laurie

3/2/09

So, during our last class, we discussed the benefits of creating or using metaphors to describe one’s self. The extension of this exercise, and the part that I think can be really helpful to your writing, is to use metaphors to describe one’s writing process and style. We’ll be talking a little more about this in class, but prior to then, I’d like you each to list out the parts of your writing process and try to think of a way to describe those activities using metaphor/similes.

For example, on a very basic level, the process of research is somewhat like digging. I’m not somewhat who is able to spend a long time “digging” without taking breaks to organize things (in a sort of conveyor belt fashion–putting things into chunks that follow a chronological structure). Or, some people sort of initially feel chaotic, as though their mind is a giant black hole full of undistinguishable and identifiable thoughts. I want you to list the parts of your writing process (and for some of you, it may be hard to delineate them into separate parts, but just try) and then try to think of what it is you are really doing in each of those parts.
I’d like you to list your comments on the weblog.

Below are the links to the 2 pieces of reading for Saturday. After reading each piece, you will write a 3-4 page summary of the “Fashion Thief” article. I want you to really try to examine the many different issues which the article addresses (implicitly and explicitly).The piece is fairly expository, and I don’t think the writer tries to make a particular argument. But I do want you to pull apart the issues he raises and share YOUR opinion on them.

Ok, any questions, let me know!
Laurie
summarizing

Copy and paste this URL into your browser:
http://nymag.com/fashion/09/spring/54331

reading for 2/28

Please read the attached file.

they-say

2/14

So in today’s class, we spent the first part of the session discussing the introduction-writing exercise. Each of you had a different exeperience with this… some of you felt that as you revised you slowly understood more of what you wanted to say, while others felt that your ideas were mainly formed in your head by talking and thinking, and that you didn’t need to revise and do multiple intros. Either way it’s fine. The introducton exercise is designed to get you to think more deeply about what your process is like. What kinds of information do you like to include in an introduction? What kinds of things catch a reader’s attention? How much of your thesis do you want to explain or clarify? These are all the kinds of things you can think about once you’ve written your paper and you go back and look at your introduction. It should really reflect, predict, and engage your reader in the paper to come.

Then we moved on to discussing the exemplication essay. We really fleshed out the two different essays we had read, and began to understand that writing an exemplification essay is sort of an upside down process. While you are usually given a topic and asked to define and think it through, I’m asking you to think about various vivid examples you have in your head, and see which ones can be threaded together to make up a main idea or main topic.

I think most of you understood this pretty well. By Wednesday, I’d like you to post on this blog sharing the examples you will use and the main idea they will illustrate. I know we discussed it in class, but I’d like to share an outline with us all by Wed. I think it will help you stay on task, and help your all learn from each other. The rough draft of the exemplification essay is due Sat. 2/21

All revisions of the autobiographical piece are due by Wed. 2/18.
Some of you were unable to sit down and talk with me after class, so I would like to sit down and meet with you before class this coming Saturday. It’s important to me that I be able to talk with you one-on-one, as it really helps the writing process. Please come in between 9:45 and 11 on Sat. if you still haven’t gotten feedback on your autobiography from me.
L