English

Instructions:

Read the excerpts and answer the following questions. Paste ONE of your answers to the Week 6 Discussion Board.

Excerpt 1

Statistics about the scope of sexual violence are always chilling, but even such accountings do little to capture the true breadth and scope of harassment and assault women face. In feminist discourse we talk about rape culture, but the people we most need to reach — the men who are the cause of the problem and the women who feel moved to excuse them — are often resistant to the idea that rape culture even exists.

Women are being hysterical, they say. Women are being humorless. Women are being oversensitive. Women should just dress or behave or feel differently. Skeptics are willing to perform all kinds of mental acrobatics to avoid facing the very stark realities of living in this world as a woman.

And then, a man like Harvey Weinstein, famous but utterly common, is revealed as a sexual predator. Or, more accurately, the open secret stops being a secret and makes the news. The details are grotesque and absurd (who among us will ever look at a bathrobe the same again?). More women are emboldened and share their own experiences with the predator du jour or another of his ilk. They share these experiences because all of us know that this moment demands our testimony: Here is the burden I have carried. Here is the burden all women have carried.

But we’re tired of carrying it. We’ve done enough. It’s time for men to step up.

Gay, R. (2017, October 19.) Dear Men: It’s You Too. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/opinion/metoo-sexual-harassment-men.html

1. What is Gay’s claim here? Paraphrase in your own words.

2. Does Gay support her claim using logos, pathos, or ethos?

3. Is Gay successful at supporting her claim with this appeal? Why or why not?

EVALUATING RHETORIC EXERCISE

Excerpt 2

Since the early 1950s, there has been an estimated 8.3 billion tons — and counting — of plastic produced on the planet, according to a 2017 study published in the Science Advances journal. The United Nations Environment Program reports that roughly 60% of that lump sum has made its way to landfills or the ocean. Each year, an estimated 8 million metric tons of plastic ends up in the ocean, according to the advocacy group Ocean Conservancy. Some calculations predict that there could be more plastic by weight in the ocean than fish by 2050.

The situation is so dire that the ocean is already home to five notable trash vortexes, more commonly known as garbage patches: the North Atlantic Gyre, the South Atlantic Gyre, the South Pacific Gyre, the Indian Ocean Gyre, and the North Pacific Gyre. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, located in the North Pacific Gyre between California and Hawaii, is the most notorious as it is the largest of the five, with an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of trash. For measure, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is three times the size of France and weighs as much as 43,000 cars. And according to experts, it is growing “exponentially.”

Baral, S. (2018, December 18.) You Can't Just "Clean Up" the Plastic in the Ocean. Here's Why. Teen Vogue. Retrieved from https://www.teenvogue.com/story/you-cant-just-clean-up-the-plastic-in-the-ocean

1. What is Baral’s claim here? Paraphrase in your own words.

2. Does Baral support her claim using logos, pathos, or ethos?

3. Is Baral successful at supporting her claim with this appeal? Why or why not?

EVALUATING RHETORIC EXERCISE

Excerpt 3

By now, millions of people have seen a photo of a 2-year-old girl screaming while a U.S. border agent pats down her mother. Taken last Tuesday, the image has become a symbol of the Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” border policies, which have caused hundreds of children to be removed from the parents who brought them here.

What you didn’t see was John Moore, crouched six feet away, who had to literally catch his breath after taking the picture because it pulled something out of him.

An award-winning photographer for Getty Images, Moore has documented wars, diseases and refugee crises around the world. This is the story of how he found a little girl and her mother beside the Rio Grande last week and took what could be one of the most high-impact photos of his career.

In some ways, the past 10 years had prepared Moore for the shot, but in most ways, nothing could.

He had been photographing the American migrant crisis for Getty Images since the end of the George W. Bush administration, ever since he returned from covering war zones overseas. He had ridden with destitute families through Central America on the roofs of anarchic freight trains and followed U.S. border patrols as they chased men through Texas scrubland.

Selk, Ai. (2018, June 18.) ‘I wanted to stop her crying’: The image of a migrant child that broke a photographer’s heart. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/06/18/i-wanted-to-stop-her-crying-the-image-of-a-migrant-child-that-broke-a-photographers-heart/

1. What is Selk’s claim here? Paraphrase in your own words.

2. Does Selk support his claim using logos, pathos, or ethos?

3. Is Selk successful at supporting his claim with this appeal? Why or why not?