Blog #10

For my assemblage project, if I understand it correctly, then I would like my topic to be on the legalization of gay marriage. Other ideas I was also thinking about writing about include: retaking the drivers test at a certain age again (example, 65 year olds), legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes, or persuading people not to drink and drive.

For now I decided to focus on the legalization of gay marriage. I believe that the fact that the government even has the right to stop people from being legally binded to the people they love is barbaric. Nothing makes less sense to me than the thought that marrying the person you love can actually be entirely against the “rules” and impossible. There are more than 30 states that accept and love love in all cases, but there are still those few states living in the past, unable to accept the differences in the world.

I believe my audience would be voters across the United States, and the government, or anyone who has any influence in the legalization of same-sex marriage. I would target anyone that has any significance to the process of legalizing things.

I think the most effective way to prove my point would be through some sort of video or commercial where you could see how unfortunate this law is to the people it affects, and how deeply it affects them and their lives. If I had more time to complete this project I think the best way to get people to open their eyes to this topic would be to interview all the people it really impacts.

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For my assemblage assignment, I plan to do it on the topic of gun control. Gun control is a hot topic right now, especially in politics and it is also an issue that I feel very strongly about. My plan is to argue against the idea of gun control because I do not agree with it.


My audience will be young voters across Florida. I will try to convince them to think the way that I think. It seems as though a lot of people my age now a days are becoming more and more liberal and I think that mostly they form opinions from what they hear at home. My plan is to construct a political poster like the ones you see on the side of the road with candidates on it. It will be brief and understandable, and full of facts that hopefully will sway my audience into the way that I think. There are not many constraints when it comes to this because anybody will be able to see it on the side of the road. It doesn’t have to be just for the people my age, it can be for anyone in the state of Florida. It wont be in your face so that it is a turn off. I will simply state my point and state facts that maybe some people havent even thought about. The overall goal of this is to educate potential voters on the magnitude of gun restrictions and why I think it is a violation of our constitutional rights, Therefore against the law.

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I am not sure if I am understanding the project correctly, but for my final project I am thinking about doing the argument of raising the drinking age. There have been numerous studies about the negative effects alcohol has not only physically, but mentally as well. In the blink of an eye alcohol can destroy your life. One day you're in college having a good time and two years later you can be a drop out alcoholic who's life is going down the drain. This is a huge issue in today's world. Some people are protesting to lower the drinking age, however, that would be detrimental to our generation. For my visual I plan on making a martini glass out of poster board. On the top of the glass I am panning on showing pictures of people in college drinking and having a great time. The further down the mating glass I am going to show pictures of how someones life can easily go down the drain. For example, dropping out of college, losing your job, getting evicted etc. At the bottom of the glass will be "rock bottom." At that part I will show pictures of someone life completely ruined. Throughout the whole glass I'm going to show all the negative effect alcohol has. I am not sure if this is supposed to be tied into our other project, but if it is this could represent the crazy partying in "The Great Gatsby" even though there was prohibition. And we all know how Gatsby's life ended up.

Blog Post 10

Since I missed class the day the rhetorical assemblage assignment was discussed, I did not get the chance to hear types of examples of what texts we can use for the rhetorical assemblage. However, from reading the assignment sheet I saw the argument of marijuana legalization. While I know this was already a given example and not exactly original, I do feel like this is a topic I would most definitely be interested in researching and writing about. It is an argument that I support myself, so I feel as though I could not only do exceptionally well on the assemblage, but also something I could learn a lot from.

I’m not one hundred percent sure if this next idea is relevant to the focus of this assignment, but another idea that came to mind was the money and distribution of money collected from tolls. This is something that sparked my attention a few years ago, but I never researched much into it. While I understand that toll dollars are spent to build our roads, my argument is that time and time again I have seen roads being rebuilt and redone, for no reason. What I mean is, just because a road is old, if there are not any excessive potholes, missing paint, or need for reconstruction, why is our money constantly being spent on “improving” these roads that were perfectly fine to begin with?  My audience for this topic would be local governments, or those specifically in charge of the regulation of toll roads and collections. 

Blog Post 10

For my final project my idea is to do it on hazing in fraternity life on college campuses. I would have my audience be IFC (Interfraternity council) at college campuses or the overall national council for fraternities. I think there needs to be better rules for hazing in fraternities. I am an advocate for greek life, however, I think some fraternity houses take it too far. If sororities can have fun, sisterhood, and not haze each other, why can’t fraternities? Boys will be boys, yes but there needs to be a way for houses to not haze each other and remain standing. The punishment right now is that if there is hazing the house will be put on suspension and investigated. Then if needed the house will be removed from the campus. Florida State and other universities are losing fraternities left and right. I would like to appeal to IFC so that steps are taken to stop hazing without having to take the houses off campus.

Blog 10

For my assemblage project i'm going to focus on the addition of e-sports in college varsity sports, and or the ability of obtaining scholar ships for them. e-sports is another way of saying competitive video games, but there are a few in general that should be added to college sports or be worthy of a scholarship. The tournament style video games, such as Star Craft, Dota 2, League of Legends, Counter Strike, Battlfield 4, and any other popular tournament style game that relies on teamwork and individual skill. Dota 2 is an extremely popular 5v5 tournament style game that requires skill, team work, and hours upon hours of practice. This past summer Dota 2 held the largest video game tournament ever with a prize pool of $10.8 million, with the winning team taking home over 5 million. There is a documentary, Free to Play, that talks about the lives of a few professional players ranging from all over the world, and really brings light to how much time and work they put into their gaming. It may seem as a joke to some people, but there are a decent amount of millionaires that made their money from gaming. Also, this gives the kids that were not born with an athletic body or any particular athletic talents to go to college to do something they love.

Blog 10 kyle Diehl

The first thing that came to mind in this project for me was to create some sort of informational video that would serve as kind of a public service announcement that would inform and hopefully persuade people to see the libertarian point of view. This encompasses liberty, true freedom, and very limited government. In terms of exigence, what has prompted this issue and concern for me in the constant and never ending enlargement of government in the past 50 years? Our current society has no idea what true freedom is because we have not had true freedom in this country for quite some time. True freedom isn’t just being allowed to do what you want, it’s doing what you want, how you want and when you want without some organization (the government) micromanaging your actions. I think the best modes to use for this would be text, videos, statistics, and quotes. My audience would be everybody in this country not already in alignment with the libertarian party. I would not show this clip to members of the libertarian party because they already coincide with the ideas. I would not attack any particular view point because that may discourage some but just unbiasedly present the audience with facts, and the concept of true freedom. 

Blog 10

 

My mother was almost killed when she was 18 years old. She was hit by a drunk driver and ended up in a coma for a week. Her face was completely torn apart from the glass that shattered in her car, she suffers bipolar depression and memory loss now. During the past summer, two of my friends smashed into a pole and died from drinking and driving and not wearing their seatbelts. I see so many of my friends getting into their cars to drive after having a few drinks without thinking twice about the consequences. There is nothing that scares me more than to think something bad could happen to them in the short amount distance they drive, so I was thinking about convincing people not to drink and drive and include something about wearing seat beats. My audience would be teenagers/ college students because they are at the highest risk to be impulsive and drink and drive. I think the most effective way to target my audience would be to create a short video, like a commercial. I would make it either really sad, such as a friend dying, or I would make it intense, such as showing the car smashing into something. These techniques would help evoke some type of reaction from my audience.

I then started thinking that I might not have much to write about to persuade, so I might do something about domestic violence and telling women to stand up and speak out against abuse. I would target young women and create a commercial comparing child abuse to women abuse. My topic could also be about child abuse. I would target elementary school kids and make a little video that I would show them.

blog post 10

For the final project, the rhetorical assemblage, I wanted to focus on an issue that is salient to people that are in my age group. I choose the decriminalization of marijuana for this project because people should not be put in jail for a substance that is legalized in 24 states. In Florida the penalty of possession is if you have less than 20 grams, one can get one year in jail and a $1,000 fine. The criminalization started in the early 20^th century when the Bureau of narcotics was founded. The head of this organization spread rumors that marijuana caused people to go insane and commit murder. These rumors lead to the outlaw of marijuana and hemp. During the jazz age marijuana became more popular and during WW2 farmers were encouraged to grow hemp for the war effort.  In the 1960s, the war against marijuana continued to go on. In this decade, many people used scare tactics to urge people not to use marijuana. But, kids in this generation ignored the scare tactics and saw the actual facts. So marijuana use was popular in the 1960s. The harsh sentences for possession of marijuana is one of the main causes of the explosion in the prison population Back in the 1970s Marijuana was perceived as a very dangerous drug and harsher sentencing was brought to law. Because the perception, the prison population grew exponentially.The point I will try to convey in this project is that marijuana should be decriminalized since it is legal both medically and recreationally.

blog 10

For my final project I want to target middle school and high school students, preferably African American males. My argument I want to present is for middle/high schools to enact a big brother/big sister organization in there school. There are way too many negative influences out today that relays a negative effect to us young teens. I am an advocate for being a mentor. In high school by my senior year the assistant principle asked if I wanted to be a part of a new program that they were staring for young African American men. I fit the role to be a mentor because I was a varsity football player with a 3.85 g.p.a and a positive attitude for his peers.  The program was called MTL which stood for (Mentoring Tomorrows Leaders). Within this program I was assigned a freshman or sophomore student who had trouble with their grades. There I help mentor him on the importance of education and how far you can go with a bright future. The audience I want to preach to are the parents of students who have suffering grades or non-productive students of the school. I believe the parents would not mind if the school took an initiate to carry out something that would better our future generation. The constraint is dealing with the superintendent of the county to see if this program can be enforced in the schools. Who knows whose live we can impact if we just make a start somewhere that somewhere can be our own backyard.

Blog Post 10

For the final assemblage project I have been brainstorming ideas. I thought about many exigences that may strongly invite utterance. Controversial issues are talked about everyday and can serve as a rhetoric because they can persuade a specific audience, or mediators of change.

My first exigence that I was considering is gun control. The restriction, or limitation of guns has been a long debate. Citizens, lawmakers and gun lobbyists have been disputing over the issue of gun control for more than a century. An audience for this rhetoric can be American citizens. A few constrains could be opposing attitudes toward gun control, for example republicans. Also, American citizens that can not vote is a constrain that influences the rhetoric because the it limits it to target only specific Americans are allowed to vote on the topic of gun control. A good medium is a formal speech that addresses the audience on the topic of gun control.

Another exigence to consider is gay rights, specifically the right of same-sex marriage. This is another controversial issue that has been going on for a long time as well. The debate on whether to extend the right of marriage to homosexuals is a rhetorical situation. The audience I would target is American citizens, although very broad. Some constrains for this rhetoric would be religion, or beliefs, American people who are not mediators of change, and people with opposing attitudes toward the issue.

Lastly, I considered the issue of abortion. The right of abortion serves as a rhetoric as well. An audience for this would be American women between a certain ages, probably ages 18 – 32. Some constrains are traditions, religion, attitude, and women who are not mediators of change. A good medium for this is probably a speech to the audience regarding this topic. Modes include speech, microphone, formal clothing, et cetera.

Blog Post 10 - Vitor M.

            Something that I’ve always wanted to research and maybe present an idea towards is immigration in the United States. At around 2 years old, my parents decided that Brazil wasn’t the place for them any longer and made the official decision to start a new life in the United States. Although they have successfully established a wealthy life here, it took them countless hours of frustrations in areas that could be quickly taken care of if done differently. Many of these areas involve permanent residency, legal citizenship, and all of the things that fall in between those areas.

            The ultimate problem that I would like to solve is immigration as a whole. Yes, I’m aware that it isn’t a perfect system and many people who don’t deserve it have bypassed the system. It really bothers me that hardworking people like my parents had to endure such hardships while going through the process of being granted permanent residency. As for myself, I was automatically given it because of the law that states I didn’t “choose” to immigrate to the US.

            My audience would mainly be focused on lawmakers and people within Congress/Government. It’s pretty obvious that if I want a laws to change, I’d present my ideas to the people in charge of those specific laws, right?

            Being that this topic is so touchy, especially within the Democratic/Republican debate, I’d be faced with a couple constraints; especially the manner that I speak in. I wouldn’t want to present my argument in such a pro-immigration way, but more of a way that pushes towards a more efficient way of solving the immigration issues we all know of today.

An idea I have for our final project is against smoking cigarettes and the harm it does to people and their bodies

Blog Post #10

For my final project, the assemblage I will be focusing on the issue of the treatment of public school teachers in Florida, and it’s effects on the future. The problem at hand is that teachers are not being treated or paid how they deserved to be. As a daughter of a public school teacher, I have seen first hand the amount of effort, patience, experience, and intelligence that goes into being a teacher. I have also seen the lack of respect, and mistreatment towards my mother in her profession. Nowadays, teaching is looked down on as a career. Due to the lack of pay teachers receive, people who are experts in their fields of study are now deciding that becoming a teacher isn’t a good idea, and they are taking their expertise elsewhere. With this in mind, more and more people who are not experts in their fields are becoming teachers since it is an “easier” route (when in fact it may be one of the most challenging careers). The government is also attempting to unfairly judge and determine their salaries on factors that are sometimes out of their control. I believe in order to correct these issues, teachers’ salaries need to increase drastically, and people need to begin giving teachers more respect in society. My audience I’m addressing is the government, and public school teachers across the country. I plan on addressing my issue in a professional and formal tone. The constraints would be the government officials who decide and determine teachers’ salaries.