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October, 2013

  1. some paradigm shift examples

    October 25, 2013 by Adam Haley

     

    Lastly, here’s one more example from RCL’s own Jessica O’Hara, who has posted a link to an essay she wrote for an edited volume on the philosophy of horror.  The essay is entitled “Making Their Presence Known:  TV’s Ghost-Hunter Phenomenon in a ‘Post-‘ World,” and you can find it on Google Books here.  She calls particular attention to the “Spectres of 9/11” section, near the end of the essay, as an example of paradigm shift argumentation.  Here’s Jessica talking about the development of the essay:

    When I developed this essay, at first, all I knew was that I wanted to write on ghost-hunter shows because I liked them and the Paranormal State people were local.  The section about 9/11 came out of my realization that the structure of ghost-hunter shows mimicked HGTV home-improvement shows. Once I made that connection, which amused me, I started to wonder why both genres of shows appeared this past decade. Then I connected their rise to the rhetoric of home improvement, which imagines the home as a “sanctuary.” Why does the home need to be a sanctuary? I thought about this question in relation to 9/11, the emergent dread of public spaces, and the decline in organized religion.


  2. objecting rhetorically

    October 7, 2013 by Adam Haley

    Here‘s a useful critique, by David Sirota in Salon, of Chipotle’s wildly successful “Scarecrow” ad.  A sample:

    In other words, his solution to the meat-producing factory farming system he hates is not just a meat-based system that slaughters animals in a more humane fashion — but a plant-based system that wholly avoids such slaughter. The contrast between the first and the second half of the ad is the story here. The first half is all about meat eating and animal killing, while the second half — the solution part — has nothing to do with meat eating and avoids blatant references to the act of killing animals.


  3. rhetorical objects

    October 7, 2013 by Adam Haley

     

     

     

     

     

    9-11 tsunami ad


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