Saturday, October 3, 2015

Analyzing Rhetorical Strategies in Why open architecture competitions are good for Architects, a counter argument

In the following blog post I will analyze rhetorical strategies in the selected text I chose for our new project.
Schläsinger. "P culture yellow". 17 March 2010. Public Domain.


Appeals to Credibility or Character
In the Ethos section, I can recognize the use of visual arrangement, author's public image, acknowledgement of counterarguments and refutations to those arguments, and appeals to values or beliefs shared by the audience.

The author used these strategies to seem more credible and convey her argument in a more effective manner. Because she used these strategies, her argument was easy to follow and understand. Because the author is an architect, the use of these strategies just added to her credibility and her argument is easy to agree with.

Appeals to Emotion
In the Pathos section, I can recognize the use of repetition of key words, and images. The author repeats the use of "idea" and there are a lot of pictures used in the text.

Because images are used the author conveys a positive emotional response as architects enjoy looking at successful examples of architectural design. These positive emotions are effective for her audience however they aren't the most convincing for this particular audience. These emotional appeals don't affect the credibility of the author too much.

Appeals to Logic:
In the Logos section, I can recognize the use of arrangement of images/text, and additionally the author uses specific examples such as the Vietnam memorial in Washington, DC as support for her argument.

By using successful examples of architecture competitions, the author is establishing a legitimacy and credibility to back up her argument. Without examples, the readers might no have agreed with her argument. The author was very effective in applying logic by citing examples and using images to convey the success of competition.

Reflection:
Dylan's post differed from mine in that his text focused less on logos. He wrote a lot of information but we both seem to have a good understanding of the rhetorical situation in each of our texts. Kelly's blog post had the similar aspect that her text's author used the acknowledgement of counterarguments to help develop a better argument, and it was effective in both of our texts. We seem to all have a good understanding of the rhetorical strategies used in each of our texts.

3 comments:

  1. Our articles were very different. I found the rhetorical strategies you identified in yours very interesting. My article was void of almost any emotional strategies and definitely didn't include anything in the ways of imagery/layout. This probably has something to do with the fact that mine was a science article and yours was architecture. It is interesting how two different field conduct their arguments differently (which is exactly the point of the project).

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  2. I have to relate to Alyssa when it come to your article as my article was also rather barren in the emotional appeals department. Imagery was limited to a single photo of a researcher who happens to be wealthy and a couple of links to related article on wealth inequality. Otherwise it was solely logos and statistics. The difference is most likely due to the difference in the subject matter. Architecture is more of an art while science is centered around mathematical facts. The way our authors shaped their arguments couldn't have been more different.

    Good Job

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  3. Hi,
    I thought it was interesting to see how differently our visuals were used. My article contained a few diagram-type visual aids and they were used more to back up the scientific argument than to raise an emotional response. Actually, it was interesting to see an author use an emotional response to strengthen her argument. Because my text used scientific fact as evidence, the author tried to remain purely logical to make his argument more credible.

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