Thursday, April 3, 2014

Design Plan for Research Paper

For my paper I plan to focus on animal rights. . My introduction will focus on what exactly animal rights are and why they are important. My first main body paragraph will talk about animal testing and is experimenting on animals ethical, Does animal testing really save life’s or is it just used for products that are considered for just more of a personal use, things such as shampoo and perfume. Also what are some alternatives to animal rights? My second body paragraph will talk more about animal abuse and cruelty and is it a human’s obligation to protect animals. Are zoos ethical and do we have the right to take them anyway from their natural habitat to put them on display.  This paragraph might also focus on animal mills and kennels and what moral and ethical challenges are involved. The other side of the argument that I will bring up is that animal experimentation can save lives. In this paragraph I will show some alternatives to animal testing and bring up the ethical challenge with animal testing. My conclusion will do a quick overview and sum up my reasons for animal rights and bring up the moral challenges that come with animal rights.  These paragraphs might be switched around depending on what the strongest point is. My strategies for this paper is to make my audience feel sad for animals and make them feel like animals are equal to humans. I am trying to evoke emotion within my audience by informing them of the harsh treatments that goes on within these animal testing factories. I will arrange my essay so that my strongest point goes last and the rest of the paragraphs build up to it.  I will do this so that my essay ends on a strong note because that is what the audience will remember.

I hope to create the argument that taking away animal rights is wrong and unethical. Some people might disagree on how I see this because animal testing can be used to save lives but I believe that most people will agree with me and come to terms with the issue I create about animal rights. I do not know a lot about my argument and but I do know some about the harsh conditions that surround animal rights and cruelty. As of now I think that animals deserve rights but maybe I will change my mind after doing some research and see what cures have come from animal testing. To conduct my research I am going to look at both sides of the argument first and get a perspective on both sides.  I plan on using sites such as PETA, which are pro animal rights and have been fighting for years on trying to get animals more rights. But I also plan on using other websites such a protesting so that i can get both sides of the argument. I hope to learn exactly what animal rights are and about the ethical and moral challenges that are faced when it comes to animal rights. My current position is that animal’s should have more rights and that using animals for profit is wrong.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Photo Essay, Man's Bestfriend

Man's Best Friend

Make sure to download PDF file or the pictures will look off.

Design plan for Photo essay

 My audience is my teacher and my classmates because they will be the ones viewing my project from my computer screen. My context will be in class in two weeks were my classmates will take turns viewing my project. This project needs to have at least eight to ten pages with photos and narrative under each that explains the argument they are creating. I expect my project to be graded based on the way we arrange our photos to create and build the argument we are trying to prove and the words we choose to describe each photos and how this helps create the argument. This argument needs to be understandable by my classmates with no help from me. I am not exactingly sure on the argument I am going to do yet but I think the argument I am trying to get across is that, police dogs should also be given bulletproof vests. These dogs risk there life is just as much as a police offer does, so we do they not get protection as an officer does? I am not exactly sure how I am going to prove this argument but with my dad’s job, I am sure I will be able to find a way to get pictures of cops on the job. I am going to include pictures of polices dogs in action and how they put their life on the line every day I am also going to show pictures of them looking innocent and having fun to give people a sense of that they don’t want these dogs to be hurt and injured. I want my audience to understand my point of view on the argument.
My original design plan was to create an argument that cops are not the lazy donut eating and ticket writing people that society labels them as. But then after meeting some police dogs my whole design plan changed. I think I struggle on this essay a little because it was hard getting pictures of these dogs because the only time I could was when I was free on the weekends and went with my dad to work.   Overall I believe that I was able to get my point across by showing the dogs as being innocent and vulnerable. I tried to make the dogs seem just as important as their human counterparts.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

My Experience with the Photo Essay

While the photo essay is something different and gives us a break from writing long dull and boring papers. But I don't find myself as the creative type so finding photos to create and show an argument has been a hard time. I still do not have all my photos for the essay and need to go back to my dads work over the weekend so that I can take more photos. I'm still not exactly sure how I'm going to create my arguments with these photos yet and need some time to plan out what kinds of photos I'm going to take. I don't know what it is but I just prefer doing a regular essay over this, for me a regular essay is just so much more simple even thought it is more time consuming. For my photo essay I never had a clear topic on what I was going to do until a couple days before the rough draft was due and one of my dads friend with a police dog came over and I overheard him talking about raising money so that he could buy his dog a bulletproof vest, this made me think back to when I was at my dads work a couple of weeks ago and in the parking lot I saw the police training K-9 units to sniff out drugs in cars. Thinking of this kind of made me mad that the police dogs put their life on the line for society everyday and yet we can spend some money to make sure they are protected. Overall while I have a great idea on what I want to do with my photo-essay, the problem is finding photos to help create this argument, and since we can't use photos over the internet, it is up to me to go out and take pictures of these dogs. This is hard for me since the only time I can get these pictures is during the weekends when I go and visit my dad's work,

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Alex Giglio
Professor Wielgos
College Writing 2                                                 
            People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, PETA for short, is the biggest nonprofit animal rights organization in the world.  PETA created their website in a specific way to get their argument across. PETA strategically placed every visual and text on their website to help them get their point across about animal abuse to strengthen their argument. They combined both visuals and texts to present their argument, of animal rights, and help show the purpose and motivation behind their organization. All together PETA does a great job at showing their argument about animal rights by expressing the rhetorical strategies of Ethos, pathos, and logos through the way that they created and arranged their website.
PETA’s purpose of their website is to stop animal abuse and neglect from happening and to inform the public about animal rights. PETA wants to present their argument about animal abuse with the use of visuals and articles about recent animal abuse cases. Their intended audience for PETA is anyone who is an animal lover or anyone who owns an animal. It is aimed more towards older people between ages 20-40 because of the cruelty they show in the pictures and because those would be the people who are old enough to donate money.
PETA has established a well-known credibility, ethos, over the years. One of the first images you see when viewing their website is an image of three Olympians all wearing shirts that say PETA on them, followed by the heading “Olympic Athletes Medal in Compassion”. They used this imagine because Olympians and athletes our seen as role models and our looked up to around the world. PETA uses this picture on purpose so that the viewers and audience will see that even famous people such as Olympians are supporting their campaign against animal rights. This gives PETA credibility so that people see them as a reliable and credible organization. Also on the homepage is a headline that reads, “Meet the People behind PETA.” They have this headline visible on the homepage so that the audience can develop some type of connection with the organization and to show viewers that they are proud to be a part of this organization and aren’t afraid to show you who they are. PETA’s website is developed and setup in a way so that anyone who views there website understands that they are a powerful and reliable organization against animal rights. PETA used the rhetorical strategy of Ethos so that their audience understands that they are a credible organization.
Fig. 1. Before and after picture of a starved dog. Source: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, “Man who starved dog gets life”
Not only is the rhetorical strategy of Ethos used, but also PETA uses strategy of Pathos throughout the website to add emotion to their argument. PETA’s website is full of pictures of beautiful and cute animals that catch your attention followed by depressing headlines about abused and neglected animals. PETA does this on purpose so that the visual catches your eye and then you think to yourself, how can someone treat such a cute and helpless animal like that? They are trying to evoke emotions such as anger, sadness, and guiltiness in their audience so that you want to join their cause and stop animal violence. For example, the biggest picture on PETA’s website is one of a dog whose bright blue eyes are just staring at you making the dog seem helpless and innocent. The dog’s bright red tongue is hanging out of its mouth making the dog seem like it is full of joy and just wants to play and have fun. This picture is followed by the headline “Man who Starved Dog gets Life.” This makes the viewer want to click on the link so that they our able to read more about the story. Once you click on the link the first visual you see is a before and after picture of the dog being starved. The picture is quite disturbing as you see that same dog look like it’s close to death and you can see how skinny and sick the dog has become because of being neglected. The dogs blue eyes are no longer visible and instead you can see the pain in its eyes, and its fur had become faded and lost its color. The picture makes you feel sad for the dog and evokes hatred towards it owner. They made the picture side by side like this so that the audience can see what abuse and neglect can do to such an innocent animal and it makes you want to get up and do something to help animal abuse from happening so that nothing like this can happen to other animals. PETA also has some visuals of animals, on their homepage, that look unhappy with their life and you can tell our being neglect by their owners. One example of how they show this is a picture of a grizzly bear who is obviously in a zoo, who is looking at the ground and backed up into a corner, and by its body language, you can tell how depressed it is. The use of dark colors and the cement background that is all beat up sets a depressing and sad mood in the picture. They use the rhetorical strategy of pathos to make the audience feel angry towards zoos for keeping these animals captive and do not respect their animals. They use these pictures on purpose to get their argument across, and place them in middle of the screen so that the visual catches your eye. All together PETA combines both visual and text in their website to evoke emotion in their audience. They mostly focus on the picture were a cute animal catches the viewer’s eye and leads you to the headline which relates to animal violence. These two visuals combine to create shocking and heartbreaking stories that make the audience members what to help their cause, to stop animal abuse, and become a member of PETA themselves.
            In addition to the rhetorical strategies of ethos and pathos, PETA also uses the strategy of logos to create their argument against animal cruelty. PETA created their website so that the audience will see, through the visuals that they use, the effect that animal abuse has on the animal. PETA organized their website so that the first thing you see when you open their website is a picture of animals who are playing and are extremely happy. They do this so that the viewer feels a connection with the animal and so that they do not want any harm to come to this animal.  The articles that PETA writes are of quality and they have a lot of evidence to back up their claims. A weakness in their argument that I found is that they use the slippery slope fallacy. They make the reader believe that since one zoo is abusing their animals, then every zoo is abusing and neglecting their animals. They are trying to trick their audience into believe that most animals in the world are abused and or neglected. Overall, PETA has good logic behind their argument and have the evidence to back it up.
            PETA’s website uses the rhetorical strategies of pathos, to evoke anger and sadness, ethos, to prove their credibility, and logos, to create their argument against animal cruelty. PETA’s website predominantly focuses on the visuals to catch the viewer’s eye and then complemented by the text to help strengthen their argument. The visuals let the audience see what exactly animal abuse and neglect does an animal and gives the viewer a deeper understand of how bad animal abuse can actually be. The prupose behind PETA’s website is to stop animal abuse and neglect and to do this they had to convince the audience that animal abuse is a big problem in our society, and to prove their point they used articles and visuals to back up their side.

Works Cited

Mullins, Alisa. "Man Who Starved Pit Bull Gets Jail Time." PETA Man Who Starved Pit Bull Gets Jail Time Comments. N.p., 11 Feb. 2014. Web. 20 Feb. 2014. <>.

Works Cited