Rhetorical Analysis Take 2

When I think of the death penalty, I always think about how "an eye for an eye" is a horrible way to provide justice. But I never think about the officers who must carry out the death penalty in the states it is still legal. How do they feel? Are they cold, insensitive, unfeeling people? Are they able to live joyous and normal lives with friends and families? Being a person who doesn't believe in the death penalty, I worry for these people who are required to kill others. In Everything's an Argument, I found a particularly interesting article by Michael Osofsky called "The Psychological Experience of Security Officers Who Work with Executions". Through factual evidence, Osofsky provides his readers with an idea of what the officers must suffer through but his argument is lacking information regarding exactly what psychological changes and emotions the officers feel. With this hole in the article, his argument is a robotic regurgitation of information instead of the emotional roller coaster the article's title alludes to. Osofsky only barely scratches the surface of how the officers feel in the last three paragraphs of his article. This being said, Osofsky wastes time detailing the existing feelings regarding the death penalty and all the interviews he conducted with the officers, and in doing so, provides a weak answer to the implicit question of the article's title.

Osofsky dedicates his first three paragraphs to the explanation of the controversy of the death penalty which immediately turns me, as the read, off because this is not what the title of the article promised me. As a citizen of a culture accustomed to expressing it's opinion loud and proud, I already know what a touchy subject it is. According to Osofsky, "...a growing minority is horrified by the idea of state-ordered killing, regardless of the heineous nature of the crimes committed" (Osofsky 204). I know this. Most people know this. In high school, I had an ASL project where I had to pick a controversial topic to debate about. I picked the death penalty because I knew I could confidently debate anyone who was for it. So what is the purpose of explaining the controversy to an audience that most likely is already aware? The audience wants to know the officers feelings when they have to carry out the law in such a terrible way. Tell us about the emotional journey they have to go on Osofsky!

To waste more time before getting to the emotional aspect of the officers job, Osofsky explains the interviews and tests in agonizingly specific details. Yes, it is important to know how Osofsky eventually comes to his conclusion about the psychological effect on the officers but is it so important to know every last detail about the tests/interviews? To make things even worse, in my opinion, Osofsky tells his audience some of the problems the officers have with the death penalty such as the process taking too long. Why, oh why, Osofsky, is this important? The interviews and tests should have been briefly outlined. The main focus should have been the outcome of all the data, the conclusions Osofsky makes.

Finally, near the end of his article, Osofsky gets to the emotional impact the death penalty has on the officers but he states his findings in a way that is devoid of the emotion I would expect. We assume that having to kill people regularly would make the officers cold-hearted people who cannot function normally in civilized society. Yet Osofsky finds that "correctional officers become more reflective and take their job more seriously" (Osofsky 208). This is a joyous finding! The audience can breathe easier knowing the controversial issue doesn't ruin the personal lives and psyche of the officers required to carry out the duty. As happy as the news is, Osofsky continues to robotically tell the audience this. In doing so, he strips the joy away. I realize this article is for a research journal at Stanford but in phrasing his findings the way he does, Osofsky is generalizing the academic crowd as one without feeling. Stanford students crave an emotional connection with their fellow human beings just as much as the next person. Leaving out his stand on the death penalty and just slapping all the facts in the article with no allusion to emotion causes Osofsky to fall greatly below the expectation the title of the article demands. My question remains: what exactly is the psychological experience of security officers who work with executions?

Picture credit:
http://blog.lawyerahead.ca/canada-legal-news/death-penalty/

Rhetorical Analysis

When I think of the death penalty, I always think about how "an eye for an eye" is a horrible way to provide justice. But I never think about the officers who must carry out the death penalty in the states it is still legal. How do they feel? Are they cold, insensitive, unfeeling people? Are they able to live joyous and normal lives with friends and families? Being a person who doesn't believe in the death penalty, I worry for these people who are required to kill others. In Everything's an Argument, I found a particularly interesting article by Michael Osofsky called "The Psychological Experience of Security Officers Who Work with Executions". Through factual evidence, Osofsky provides his readers with an idea of what the officers must suffer through but his argument is lacking information regarding exactly what psychological changes and emotions the officers feel. With this hole in the article, his argument feels like a robotic regurgitation of information instead of the emotional roller coaster the article's title alludes to.

We'll begin the rhetorical analysis of Osofsky's article by establishing exactly who he is, where he stands and what his potential biases are. In a brief paragraph written, I assume, by one of the authors of Everything's an Argument, we learn Osofsky wrote his article while he was a junior at Stanford working under Philip Zimbardo (to the right is a picture of him). Wow. The second I read this, I was immediately impressed and ready to eat up whatever Osofsky said. I spent all four of my high school years taking psychology classes and learning about how important Zimbardo is to the field of psychology. Zimbardo was a psychologist back in the times when there weren't many restrictions on the kinds of psychological experiments that could be conducted. Back in 1971, he conducted the infamous Stanford Prison Study that put voluntary Stanford students through grueling experiments regarding how people act when split into an "us-and-them" setting. To learn more about this experiment, click on this link (for I have no time to explain it any further seeing as the experiment is not the focus of this blog post): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Zimbardo#The_prison_study. Anyways, providing this tidbit of information would make just about anyone who's ever dabbled in psychology want to believe Osofsky fully an completely. Yet name dropping may not convince readers Osofsky is convincing in this article.

To convince the part of his audience that he has not by dropping Zimbardo's name, Osofsky crams facts and figures down our throats. This is the part of his article I believe is missing the point. The title is "The Psychological Experience of Security Officers Who Work with Executions". So why spend well over half the article detailing the what was done and used to gather information, and how Americans feel about the death penalty now. Perhaps Osofsky was trying to drill into our minds how complex the idea of the death penalty is and how this fact would cause even greater suffering for the people who must carry it out. If that is the reasoning behind detailing polls about whether or not people support the death penalty, then Osofsky should have pointed that out. Instead, he seems to just drop that paragraph in there for no reason. Who cares about how America feels? This article is supposed to be about how the officers feel about their job requirements!

If Osofsky were to be put to the ultimate test of being graded by Dr. W, he would certainly fail. He completely ignores the pathos of his argument even though it is the most important part of his article. After reading his article, I have no clear idea the kinds of psychological experiences the officers go through. In the last few paragraphs, Osofsky does begin to explain that, no, the officers do not become less humane as I worried they would. Osofsky finally gives us the information we've been looking for all along. I didn't want to know all the tests they took and how long the interviews were. I wanted to know what information was gathered that related to their emotional adventure while having to carry out the death penalty. In this Osofsky fails. His argument is factual when it should be emotional.

Picture credits:
Celestiniosity.com (the death penalty)

https://www.skeptic.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Session_ID=0139d1171214fc100ae4b5c2b52c4f02&Screen=PROD&Store_Code=SS&Product_Code=av175&Category_Code=CSCI (Philip Zimbardo)

List of Things I Believe

• Reincarnation
• True love being more powerful than anything
• Karma
• Mythological beings (ghosts, the Loch Ness Monster, vampires, etc)
• Time traveling
• Make love not war
• Equal rights for all people (gay marriage, etc)
• Live and let live
• Happily ever afters for everyone
• Soulmates

Nafisi in Lunsford

When I read this article, I was blown away. She has gone through political and social upheaval that I, as an American girl in this day and age, have never had to experience. I read her words and am overpowered by her message; of all things humans must do, empathizing with one and other is most important. Who could argue the opposite side of this argument without seeming heartless and cold? Nafisi, using her past experiences and strong opinions to establish her credibility, sweeps her readers through an emotional argument that could persuade even the most stubborn of readers.

Who is this Nafisi and why should we trust her opinion on the subject of empathy? She begins building our trust in by stating she is a teacher. Teachers are figures of authority that we all trust. They are the ones that nurture our minds and push us to become better people. Granted there are teachers we've hated, thought were idiots or pushed us too hard. But as a whole, teachers are people we know were hired to do the jobs they do. This being said, we believe that they are people we should implicitly trust. In stating she is a teacher and a writer, most likely half the audience is already ready to eat up and believe every word she says.

To further persuade her audience, Nafisi uses the tale of Huckleberry Finn to emotionally connect with them. Almost every person in America has had to read that classic novel for school. Whether we liked it or not, we had to evaluate and make connections with Huckleberry Finn. Using the story in Nafisi's writing pulls at some emotion inside every reader. She, like the rest of us, has understood or empathized with the hard decision Huck had to make regarding Jim , the slave. Now Nafisi has our attention.

Now that she has our attention, Nafisi takes her argument home by pulling on our heartstrings. By recalling a time in her life when politics was making her life incredibly difficult, she makes us feel bad for her. Most of our lives weren't as difficult as hers. None of us were expelled based purely on race or whether we are female or male. She, on the other hand, has had to deal with just that. Telling us her experiences pushes us to believe that, yes, she is right in thinking empathy is one of the most important things a person must have. Yet, as hard as her life was, she thrusts at us images from even tougher life experiences such as a woman being shot in a football stadium for being "improperly dressed". No one knows the terror that woman must have felt but we can try to empathize with the situation she was in. Nafisi's powerful images cause us, the audience, to feel strongly for the people who had to go through such terrible experiences. Her entire article is an argument of pathos, which I believe is the strongest forms of argument being a person ruled by her emotions.

Elements of Thought

I've never thought about all the ways reasoning and thinking can go wrong. While I was reading this part of The Nature and Functions of Critical & Creative Thinking, I was blown away by the truth of the words. The way people think is so complex. That's the reason why there are so many religions, ways of life, professions, and variations of any kind. Each individual person will pool their past experiences, current experiences, assumptions, implications, goals, inferences, conclusions, and everything to make every tiny decision throughout their life. I think about my own self: I made the decision to come here. In order to make that decision I had to use all those parts of reasoning. Through ASL class in high school, I gathered that the hearing world and the deaf world were incredibly separated. Poems, stories and lessons lead me to believe that many of the deaf were frustrated with the ignorance of the hearing people around them, be it friends, family or strangers. This conclusion could have been totally wrong. How am I supposed to know? I'm not deaf. Even if I was, every deaf person has their own personal experiences that help them draw conclusions about how they feel regarding the hearing world. The way I intrepreted all the things I began learning about the deaf, led me to believe I could change that. The passion I developed for the people, language and culture led me to decide I wanted to push the two worlds together. This is MY idea of how to change the frustration many deaf feel. Other people's opinions have been quite different from my. I've meet deaf people here that don't like me just because I'm hearing. I knew it would happen but it shakes me to my core sometimes. My inference is that my being here shows that not all hearing people are the same. Yet the end result isn't a general acceptance by the deaf. However, my point of view, goal, assumptions, and inferences are so closely knit that I don't ever let those kinds of experiences shake me to believe I should change my end goal. The way the past years have built my reasoning have kept me from easily giving up on anything. This has been my dream for years and it will stay that way for the rest of my life.

Reflection #1: Language as a Tool

Without language, there is nothing; no culture, systems of living, civilized lifestyles and there is no way to make sense of the world.

Inform: Not a day goes by that I don't use language to inform people. Lately I've been informing people so much more than I'm used to. Being inside the center of Deaf culture has my brain exploding with information. It's not a part of the hearing culture to tell everyone you meet your full name and where you're from. I think my phone is suffering the most what with all the new names and numbers stored in it. Through my signing, people learn more than just textbook type facts about me. Along with my name and where I grew up, the way I use language to give them information provides them with knowledge I wouldn't be able to put into words. My signing style teaches them a bit about my personality. Body language plays a large factor in how people perceive you also. How I greet them after we've met tells them even more. Each moment that goes by teaches someone something new about me. The sign name I was just recently given has to do with me being independent and in people's faces. I'm upfront and don't back down from a challenge. Through language, my best friend and roommate was able to learn that about me. Everyone around me teaches me in the exact same way. In my opinion, it's easy to figure out someone's personality through the way they speak. Their actions play an important role but language has actions beat. Language is whatever is inside the person's mind coming out for the world to interpret as it will. Through language we inform and learn from the world.

Convince: What better way to win an argument or persuade someone to follow your agenda than to tell them exactly why your way is better than theirs? How else is the person going to know the reasons they need to do as you do? When I try to think about convincing someone of something without using language, I feel like it's impossible. Maybe if you're trying to convince someone to go somewhere with you, you could drag them along wherever you're going. I'm not sure I would count that though. Look at me; I'm arguing with myself here, trying to convince myself that there might be a way to convince someone of something without language. The way you use language is the most important factor of convincing a person of something. If you're trying to convince a company to hire you and you come in like, "Yo yo yo 'sup home dog?" I highly doubt they'll seriously even consider hiring you. Changing the level of your language helps you connect with people properly. Speaking in the way I used as an example may convince someone to be your friend because they also speak like that. But using that kind of vocabulary everywhere will most likely convince people of something negative. Language provides a way to connect to the people around you, which convinces them of how to perceive you.

Explore: I'm not exactly sure how a person can use language to explore. The only way I can think of is if you want to explore a person's mind but that's the same thing as my inform paragraph (in my opinion). Let me think a little on this. Inside my mind I found a thought: someone can use language to explore by naming the things around their world. In my case, I would not be eager to run out into the woods for a camping trip if nothing in there had a name. Everything there would scare me because I would have no idea what it was. Without knowing what it is, you can't expect to know what it would do to you. Could it harm you? Can you eat it in case of an emergency? How will it interact with me? Out in the wilderness, things are given names to familiarize the person with that object. If we just walked around not knowing what things were called, the nameless objects would seem more foreboding. A large boulder without a name is a giant, hard object that hurts to hit. That thing could do anything to someone. With a name, rock, the object becomes familiar. Familiarizing everything causes people to want to learn more. The more you know, the more you want to know. Language helps break the barrier between the foreign object and the person.

Decide: Many people I know refer to other people when they're trying to solve a problem. Decisions to be made usually go through a web of friends before it finally gets back to you. Their words, their feedback, their ideas influence the way you choose to deal with the situation it corresponds with. For instance, an ex of mine decided to pop back into my life. He was a very important ex, one of the ones that you know really altered your personality permanently. The first thing I did was seek out my best friend and ask her what to do. Although I make my own decisions and take the blame if the decision makes things turn out badly for me, I still go to her first. Then I have other friends I can talk to. Even without asking another person what to do, my own mind battles with itself over what I should do when something is really puzzling. Language provides me with the tool I need to make sense of what the decision would mean for me. Randomly deciding what to do about everything before at least internally discussing it rarely ever happens with anyone.

Meditate/Pray: Personally, I don't do a lot of either one of those things. I'm not a church going citizen. I suppose that when I really need time to cool down, I blast my headphones. Without the music, I tend to start to feel lost or like I have ADHD. Their words sometimes make me feel like they're singing about exactly what I feel outside. Feeling like someone knew exactly how I felt us the most amazing feeling. The language the artists use to express how they feel a helps me relax so much Without language and music, I have no idea what I would turn to to relax.

Each paragraph was an argument of my thesis.

Introduction

Hello classmates and Dr. W!

Let me tell you a little about myself: I'm a hearing girl from Portland, Oregon. Am I apart of the interpreting program you ask? NO! I've had to explain myself so many times. I get why everyone assumes that first but come on. I want to teach ASL. Do I want to teach to the Deaf? NO! I want to teach ASL to HEARING high school kids. There are so many ignorant hearing people in the world. Even my hearing friends ask me the dumbest questions. Since I moved here I've been asked, "Is it totally silent there?", "You said the Deaf talk a lot...how do they talk?", and, my personal favorite, "Do the Deaf laugh?" That needs to change. Right now. And I'm working on that.

It's been hard going through the motions to reach my goal though. I'm pretty much on my own on this journey. My mom and I...let's just say we're more friends than mother and daughter. Trying to be mother and daughter makes problems for us. I'm too much like her: stubborn, tough, independent, hard working, etc. So we butt heads. She wants me to stay home instead of going out with my friends. I want to know why but all she tells me is, "Because I said so" or, "Because I'm your mother." Those are legitimate excuses in my book so I fight with her. That's beside the point. Our relationship being like that has caused me to grow up quickly. I am who I am because of her. She's still my superhero and my rock even when we don't get along. She's proud of me for getting into a Deaf university as a hearing person and that's all that matters.

Anyways, I'm sure you're wondering why me, a girl, would pick a weird boy name like Yossarian as my pseudonym. Have you ever read Catch-22? If not, I command you to go read it now. I love political satire and that book is the epitome of that. Already read it? Go read it again. I guarantee you this; no matter how many times you read it, you'll laugh and catch something you missed the first times. It's honestly the funniest book I've ever read.

That's all the guts I can think of to spill right now. Hope I didn't make too much of a mess =]