My group discussed controversial topics about gender inequality which will fuel our satire presentation. We are going to have a heated argument on the controversial topic of gender inequality. One controversial topic was the case of women breastfeeding in public. An idea that I proposed was doing an inversion skit where a pregnant guy walks in as a guest of a talk show and the host, possibly a parody of Ellen, would question the guy on how his life has been. The guy would discuss his difficulty in caring for a live fetus and the show would portray the women (whoever is playing Ellen) as being laid back and relaxed. Therefore this exposes the difficulty of women and we can have a baby breastfeed off of a guy to ridicule guys for being the jerks when really it's not funny if it were them. We have an idea for the video but we may or may not change depending on how it goes. As of now we are currently just writing the script and seeing where it takes us.

The article, "Words Don't Mean What They Mean", attacks the use of euphemism and indirect language. Often many people use indirect speech as a method of showing respect or to avoid the harsh effect using direct words. Steven Pinker's purpose of this article was to show the audience how language can be altered to camouflage the harsh of a speaker's words. A specific choice of sentence structure can allow the recipient to misinterpret the intent of the speaker. An example was given in paragraph 1, "You know what I wish... Wouldn't that be a relief?". The sentence appears to be in the form of an interrogative sentence but her attitude towards the subject says otherwise. The speaker manipulated her sentence structure to lighten the situation. The speaker was masking the fact that the situation is quite bothersome, in attempt to avoid the consequence of appearing unpleasant. Euphemism works in the favor of the speaker to avoid a rude display of manner. Words and sentence structure can influence our perception of one another and so choice of words can be really important. Our tone gives an impression on people. Euphemism and indirect language serves to leave a positive impression of the speaker on others. Language can be very expressive and people are exposed to this powerful tool everyday. Whether the speaker is cautious with their words depends on them but one misuse of a word can work against a person.

Unfortunate as it is, English language may have been deteriorating over time. George Orwell's piece explains his argument about the English language going through a decline. I deeply believe that Orwell's use of excerpts extracted from passages did an effective job at showing the audience how language has been deteriorating. Not only did he have a strong argument,  Orwell backed up his argument with multiple examples which displays that this issue with English language is existent. As stated by Orwell, " Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision." Orwell's critiques have a point in the sense that writers have been adding fluff to their words and writing but it only masks the main idea, bringing forth confusion to the readers. Simple and straight-forward words are being replaced in modern writing with long, sophisticated word which only brings vagueness and complications. At the end of the day, these words still mean the same but only one requires more work to decipher which really shouldn't be the purpose of a writing piece for the audience. As Orwell stated, "Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble." This quote really struck out to me because I heavily support Orwell's standpoint on this. It's like a game of "monkey see, monkey do". A common example that I like to refer back to is internet slang. Internet slang has been very common on social media platforms and it has been embedded to the lives of many people, young or old. That just goes to show that it can spread like a plague. Speaking from prior experience, I am an user of a social media platform called Facebook and I am familiar with using internet slang as well. Not being proud of this but I would become accustomed to using improper language that it might have accidentally slipped in my school work as well. A few times I have had teachers return back papers that I have written and I would see corrections on words such as "gonna" or "cuz". Using these words so often it wasn't even noticeable enough for me to realize that I wrote in an informal manner. Language can deteriorate even if a few group of people are involved because language is spread by imitation. Orwell is very similar to an author, William Zinsser, and his book, On Writing Well. Both these writers share the same view point on the use of cluttering words. Clutter words can cause a reader to drift from the main purpose of a writing piece and it might simply displease a reader from engaging in a certain writing piece. Proudly saying this, reading may most likely be my weakest skill because common writers enjoy using higher level of words which only confuses me as a reader. Overall, Orwell did an efficient job of making his argument straight-forward and concise with precision unlike most of the writers he has placed complaints on.

David Sacks, along with Peter Thiel, wrote an interesting piece, "The Case Against Affirmative Action". Convincingly enough, this article was enough to persuade me to believe against affirmative action. Incorporated as the main point was that affirmative brought about heated tension between race groups and the whole scenario contradicts itself. Sacks and Thiel addressed this issue with the use of irony. As stated, "The basic problem is that a racist past cannot be undone through more racism." That lingering statement could not have been said any better. How is a problem ever going to be solved if the solution is the problem? Sacks and Thiel provided second-hand evidence when stating, "This same push also has led Stanford to create racially segregated dormitories, racially segregated freshman orientation programs, racially segregated graduation ceremonies and curricular requirements in race theory and gender studies." It ought to be clear to see that affirmative action isn't effective if there are more separation between races. The goal of diversity was to assimilate all ethnic groups into one community but it only lead to the denial of certain people's rights for an opportunity based on race. Sacks and Thiel effectively established their claim by showing the results of their discoveries.

As a teenager transitioning into high school, it scares myself to think that my admission process may include race as a factor. Watching the film about affirmative action brought about a good point by this girl who might or might not have been a victim of affirmative action. Minorities accepted into colleges risk the chance of only getting in due to race instead of academic capabilities only discourages a person. Personally thinking about this before, I would want to get into my goal college in the sense that I worked hard enough and that my hard work has paid off. People would want to feel that they have earned that place but learning that it was deliberately given to you with race involved invokes a sense of luck that the person has a certain background. Admission processes should be equalized and it should not be designed so that those who worked hard are denied an opportunity as a means of diversity. An issue that should be targeted and may even the sole cause of the lack of diversity is the social class difference. Resources are not distributed evenly and that has become an issue that prevents a person's true capabilities. Nevertheless, everyone deserves an opportunity and affirmative action is not the best way to implement diversity.

Deborah Tannen's essay, "There Is No Unmarked Woman", attacks a very controversial topic involving gender. Tannen argues that women, unlike men, are always labeled with markers, such as their appearances and their choices. Tannen does an effective job of supporting her claim by providing a personal account in her experience as a woman. She proceeds the essay by describing the different appearances of each women, including things like make-up, hairstyles and clothing. As stated in paragraph 3, "The second woman was older, full of dignity and composure. Her hair was cut in a fashionable style.that left her with only one eye, thanks to a side part that let a curtain of hair fall across half her face." The author continues with more descriptions of other women and their choices of appearance. Tannen believes that women are defined by these choices whereas men are all simplest possible, thus men "unmarked". Although, Tannen supports her valid point with personal experience, I believe she isn't accounting for the entire side of men. As part of the male gender side, I'd say that men are just as easily judged by markers as well. Normally, if a guy is packed with muscle or does strength-training, people would get the impression that the person is more masculine. Now considering the other side of the story, which includes me, the skinny and scrawny kids are less praised. Personally, I found her claim of value about women being "marked" to be a partially positive aspect. Women, in general, tend to have a wider variation of clothing or hairstyles than men have. Alternatively, this displays uniqueness in the female gender. People should strive for their own identity instead of being perceived as every other person. Speaking from experience, I went shopping with girls before and I could not believe the amount of selections women could choose from. Reason behind it in my point of view is that every girl's taste is different, creating the whole concept of individuality. Overall, Tannen makes a valid argument but leaves a lot of opportunities to refute it.

The article, "Pillow Angel Ethics", was a very interesting piece. The speaker of this article proposed two sides to a controversial topic in the least biased way possible. Ashley, a severely disabled child, has been given the opportunity to stop growing at the age of 6, which means breast development and height, and the removal of her uterus. Is this really an opportunity for Ashley though? The author did an effective job of addressing the controversial topic, "What kind of doctors would agree to intentionally shorten and sterilize a disabled six-year-old girl to make it easier for her parents to take care of her", by providing second-hand evidence of Ashley's case. The speaker focused on one piece of second-hand evidence primarily and expanded on it by giving the opinions of Ashley's parents and doctors. As stated in the article, "Dr. Daniel Gunther and Dr. Douglas Diekema, who first revealed the details of "The Ashley Case" in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, think that many of their critics don't understand the nature of this case." The parent's view behind this was a slippery slope as well which weakened the parent's position on this topic. The parents claimed that these operations on Ashley will guarantee that she will be happy but there's no real possible way to tell. This scenario is much similar to the case of euthanasia, whether it should be allowed or not. People claim that this act is considered criminal homicide while some argue that it should be excused. Patients going through pain and suffering sometimes request to put an end to it all and whose to say that they don't have the right to. Regardless, there has been claims of values proposed saying its ethical or unethical, much like Ashley's case, and claims of policy, where people propose to to legalize euthanasia. Sadly to say, my deceased mother gone through somewhere along those lines. I used to have weekly visits to my mother, who was patient with terminal cancer, in the hospital. The pain she is put through just for minimal survival was horrible and it just brought the idea in my head whether it would be better for her if all of this was put to an end. To this day, controversial topics like Ashley's case and my mothers' catches my attention but overall the speaker proposed a lot of elements of an argument making the piece fairly effective.

The pamphlet activity was intended to create an informational piece about one of the types of logical fallacies. Through this activity, it was a very effective method for understanding one of the logical fallacies, slippery slopes in my case. The formula portion basically showed me the format of how a slippery slope looks like. Knowing where slippery slopes are present also helped me to further understand the use of slippery slope and how it can be used to one's advantage. Knowing what a slippery slope sounds like plays a huge role on being able to spot slippery slopes in advertisements or on any platforms in general. I was able to research and learn more about topic and this activity was quite enjoyable too. Overall, pamphlets are a good way for the person creating it to get more familiar with a topic and for the readers to learn  more about the topic. Regardless of the topic, it serves to inform the readers. For example, resorts for vacationing tend to have pamphlets to either display its beauty or activities one can do there. Normally, people wouldn't just choose a place, they would grab a pamphlet and see which whether the resort is convincing enough. One thing to note when looking at pamphlets is the speaker's use of logos or pathos. If the topic of a pamphlet was to answer a question or in general, inform the readers, then it would be reasonable to use logos to make the pamphlet effective. If the topic of a pamphlet was about persuading the audience for a cause, such as stopping bullying, then a more reasonable approach would be to use pathos to get the audience's support for the cause. Pamphlets generally all contains information and argues a topic.