Ofure Neni
Media Enthusiast
Analysis 1
Jamie Oliver – Teach Every Child About Food.
Jamie Oliver is a British Chef from Essex England. He delivered an informative and persuasive speech on food education in America. Jamie was able to establish credibility in the first three minutes of his speech by stating who he is and what he has done for past seven years of his life as at 2010. He had a powerful introduction by stating statistics on how many Americans will be dead in twenty minutes due to diet and obesity diseases. He supported his claim with statistics on American cause of death chart. He used effective transition statements while giving his speech- he also used different forms of visual aids without distracting the audience. He explained how milk contained as much sugar as a regular soda and showed the audience using cubes of sugar- how much sugar a child is likely to consume in a day, a month, and eventually in five years from school only. Jamie’s visual aids were very thought provoking and I must say contributed and facilitated my understanding about food education and diabetics in the United States.
He clearly established pathos while telling and showing the audience short clips from projects he worked on over the years. This lets the audience know that the speaker knows exactly what he is speaking about. Jamie established ethos by showing the audience a picture of 16 years- old Brittany, who had just six years to live because of obesity. He went on to show the rest of her family who were also obese and had the same fate. He also showed a video of what a family stocked their fridge with per week and how it was going to kill them eventually. He established logos by showing representative statistics on the statistics of American expenditure and encouraging parents to teach their children to cook and eat healthy. This speech by Jamie Oliver was engaging and had a powerful conclusion that children should be taught how to cook and eat healthy meals.
Analysis 2
I watched a TedTalk by Mark Henick titled-Why we choose suicide.
The first statement kept me glued all through the speech. I can say he had a strong attention-getter. Henick has tried to kill himself more than once, later overcame this illness and decided to share his story.
This speech moved me to tears after watching it was so intense. He narrated his ordeals of being troubled as a young child, rather quiet and how he thought he was nothing and many nothing to anyone. He went ahead to to share similarities between suicidal people. He spoke about hope, and how that's what kept him going on for so long. He focused on his message, which was how to prevent/help people who are suicidal. In this speech Henick was able to emphasize ethos, pathos and logos for his speech. He was well informed about other people who had this mental illness, stating statistics based on research that he conducted about suicidal people therefore establishing credibility using pathos.
Although he found it difficult sometimes while speaking, his central idea was not missed. At a point he was crying but he didn't stop speaking and that made me respect him even more. He was quite monotone and slow paced but I think that was because it was difficult for him to share his ordeal. He also emphasized on the notion that people do not "commit suicide" like it was just a crime. He persuaded the audience to think deeply about suicide, depression as an illness that can and should be cured. Using logos, He explained that most times suicides could be prevented and he started steps on how to help suicidal people.
For the most part I liked this speech but I feel like it could have been done better. There were no visual aids used and there was no particular order of the speech delivery.
Journal Article Analysis 1
The Role of Testimony and Testimonial in Human Rights and Advocacy Research
I like how the author introduced this, it made me interested in the rest of the reading but it was hard for me to comprehend sometimes, but I still understood his main points. It states how narrative-based research is becoming an increasingly popular term in a variety of fields, hereby stating its importance and need to know more about narrative-based research.
Patel outlined everything he was going to say in the article and started on a light note, it was towards the middle that his choice of words became hard to follow. Patel tried to enforce the idea that testimony is very important in human rights advocacy but can be misrepresented by the interviewer or the victim. This article links as well to the argument in “Between History and Psychoanalysis”. It’s hard these days to rely solely on these testimonies because they’re not entirely factual. While they might be genuinely helpful they might also be changed to appeal to the emotions of the audience and then it looses it heuristic value. Although the author lost me at some places I believe his argument was valid. Patel’s conclusion was effective because it was brief and concise He developed on all of his main topics and summarized them adequately. Overall this article gave me a bittersweet view of understanding and knowing how to interpret testimonials.
Analysis 3
I watched a speech titled- How to spot a liar by Pamela Meyer. I enjoyed watching and listening to this speech because I feel like it’s an interesting topic. Meyer had a good attention-getter, which is probably what held the audience (myself included) in her speech. This speech is an informational speech because she sheds light on things about lies and liars an average mind would not think about. She delivered as speech in a chronological order. She said what exactly she was going to start with and also and what she would end with. She talks about how we sometimes allow ourselves to be lied to because that is what we want to hear. I agreed with that because she had strong back up examples. What I liked most about Meyer’s speech was interactive examples and interesting visual aids. Meyer made it her mission to teach us how to spot liars through chosen words, body language and attitudes. She had a lot of factual statistics to back up her arguments, which were mainly researches that seemed to be true, but I would say more with an American audience. Sometimes I did not exactly agree with her mechanisms but for the most part she had plausible examples. While this was a serious speech to a degree, she made sure the atmosphere was a free one, so her listeners could understand the message she was trying to convey. She developed her speech nicely and I think that’s what makes it an awesome presentation. She effectively used ethos, pathos and logos as she rounded up her speech. Meyer ended her speech with teaching and telling us how to embrace the truth. I really enjoyed this speech
Journal Article Analysis 2
The Golden Age of Political Cartoons
I like this article because the author was very concise and articulate with the information he provided. He gave me a general idea and history of political cartoons and their thriving days. The author’s organization was helpful in understanding the piece. He wrote this article in a chronological order. He started off with an introduction that gave me as a reader; insight to what the article was about (political cartoons) and this really helped further way into the article. After the introduction, the author uses clear headings to introduce various topics in the order that followed i.e pioneer artists and popular publications.
The author uses images to give a feel of what each work was like which I found very interesting. The images helped give meaning to his article because I for one have no prior knowledge of political cartoon so it was really effective. The more I read, the more illustrations I wanted to see.
Like I said earlier, the introduction gave kind of like an overview on what he was going to be writing about, but I did not think he was trying to establish anything in particular about the article. There is no obvious argument from this article and I didn’t think there should have been any. He was only trying to shed light on the pioneers of political cartoons, their history, inspirations and popular publications
It doesn't bother me that there was no conclusion on the article. I think it was still as effective. I enjoyed learning something that I never knew about before!
Political Cartoon Analysis 1
The Head Eats, the rest get milked.
The cartoon I selected is by Dr. Seuss from May 19, 1941. It is titled; The head eats, the rest get milked. It shows a smiling cow (embedded with a swastika) with a prolonged loin in 12 places, on these spaces had 11 countries written on them and the last loin just had the sign “?”. It shows a man dressed in uniform with several pails smiling and ready to milk these various loins of all that they had. It also had a barn in the background with “Consolidated World Diary- A Hitler Production”, written on it. I think the cartoon was quite straightforward and self-explanatory. It shows that the Nazis take advantage and then eliminate the poorer countries like- Poland, Romania, Greece, Austria, and Norway to list a few. As if that was not bad enough they also arranged to exterminate a large number of their citizens. They also robbed these countries of their resources and used them to their own benefits.
I enjoyed looking at a lot of Dr. Seuss’s cartoons but I couldn't really find anything tangible to stick it to WWII. Looking at his work I could tell that he was very passionate about these political cartoons.
Political Cartoon Analysis 2
Hitler's Europe
The cartoon I’m analyzing is called Hitler’s Europe, it was published in April, 1941 by Carmel Bob. This cartoon is very dark and looks evil. There is a vulture on a tree branch saying happy birthday to Hitler. It is a really cloudy atmosphere and the only person alive in this cartoon is Hitler. They are dead bodies everywhere, civilians and soldiers. Behind all these you can see smoke coming from a burning building which happens to be a church. Basically, the whole town is in chaos.
This cartoon symbolizes all the wreck and havoc Hitler has caused. The vulture is one of the ugliest creatures in existence and I feel like it was deliberately used to emphasize the ugliness of this situation. Its funny that the vulture is telling Hitler Happy Birthday while even the vulture is not smiling. I really wonder what must have been going through the mind of the artist while making this cartoon. Was he trying to analyze how badly things looked during this gruesome time? Was he trying to create awareness of how much death and sorrow had enveloped the lives of everyone involved in this? Or was he trying to reach out to the rest of the world to come through for the Jews? I guess it could be a little bit of everything. He effectively used pathos because this even set up weird emotions in me.
I found this cartoon excessively dark and I can help but wonder what Hitler would make of this cartoon; if he saw things from Bob’s perspective. If he realized that he had done so much harm to “his Europe”. I think the most significant thing was the Vulture. Vultures depict Ugliness, Bullying, Death, and Deaths Aftermath. I think it has very deep connotations to it.