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.