Blog Post No. 1

Image provided by Google images.

This picture is a poster from the WWII era. With the popular image of Uncle Sam. During this era, a lot of posters would use very patriotic faces and images, such as Rosie the Riveter, Uncle Sam and images of Viet Kong portrayed as gorillas. Therefore those examples would be a perfect example of Pathos, due to the fact that images of the cartoonized enemy would cause a rise in the people's anger and would cause them to be more likely to act out and join in the war. Also, because some of the famous pictures such as Rosie the Riveter and Uncle Sam were garbed in red, white and blue as well as being portrayed as old or like they had maintained the same position in the army, they looked more credible. This leads to the example of Ethos, making more people less afraid to go and talk to an army recruiter. Finally this poster leads to the example of Logos just as all the posters of the WWII time frame did. Because during that time it was only logical for the men and women to go to war or become nurses. It was either sacrifice for your country or risk losing your homeland to a bunch of "Kraut sucking Nazis."

War is a stressful time in many a soldiers life. Especially when they hear the word 'Transfer'. Their thoughts immediately shift to the worst possible idea that could exist. Then one person hears a rumor, and immediately this simple misheard story spreads like a wildfire from one soldier in a platoon to the next. In a situation such as this, the audience would be anyone in that platoon or company that is at risk of being transferred. This would include commanding officers, privates, sergeants and lieutenants. This could even include the Higher Ranking officer that is issuing the transfers. The constraints of these transfers would be that they only include the Platoon or the Company that is immediately affected. Therefore only the group of soldiers that these orders were intended for would be affected.

After class, I firmly believe that rhetoric is the act of trying to persuade an audience in an effective and efficient manner with an intended goal in mind. This would be achieved through the act of language choice, diction, style ect. as well as other non verbal cues such as images. I believe that we study rhetoric in order to better understand written and non-written communication.