Blog Post 10 - Final Statement

Argument is a key point in our society. It serves as a test of relationships, it allows people to see different viewpoints, as well as a way to explain yourself. It has been interesting to learn the strategies to help one change another's mind. Mind's must be changed through fact and logic. They need to have cold hard facts that sway others. Not only do facts and data help sway but personal stories that have experienced the point you are trying to convey. Or the use of puppies, a cute sad puppy always helps! Each type of argument has its own place. You have to know your audience in order to know each to their ability. Some people appeal to emotion, others need cold hard facts. If you don't first appeal to your audience, your argument will automatically fail.

Words are powerful, but a picture's worth a thousand words. We cannot forget how effective a visual aid can be. We saw just this with our visual aid debate. We saw how many emotions were brought about from the images shown. They made us cry, mad, angry, upset and so many more. This type of debate brings about peoples emotion and empowers them to take a stand and voice their opinion. Not only, many people are very visual and truly understand something when its put into a picture or via visual graphs. However, with the use of photoshop, the use of images has gone too far at times. They misconstrue the truth to get their point across. We saw these with many debates that we saw these year. We saw the manipulation of the male and female body in ads to appeal to sex and how sex sells in the industry. Pictures are powerful because they are a visual representation of the facts and make people see just what you are trying to convey. They are powerful but can go too far.

Social media is littered with arguments over major real world issues as well as these pointless facts. However, due to Facebook and texting peoples word are misconstrued because we are unable to see the inflexion behind it. Inflexion means a lot when trying to convey a simple point. We have all been victims of this. Think of the last time on Facebook you tried to convey a point and someone got hung up on a single word that you said and took it way out of context. People begin attacking the person rather than analyzing their argument. Friendships are often lost over this simple miscommunications. Facebook and texting has really diminished the art of argument and debate due to people getting hung up on the little things and being unable to hear the inflexion behind what everyone is saying.

Argumentation and debate is a struggle for me. It is has been a difficult art to master, which I am far from. For me, I have found I am very un-opinionated so it makes it very difficult to wager and argument but this class has helped push me forward to learn various tactics to help further my skills in debate. I have often struggled in my refutations but have learned to anticipate what my opposition is going t bring up and prepare for that. Not only that, luckily for me, my un-opinionated nature has allowed me to see both sides without getting to attached to one side or the other and get too caught up in the argument.

Ill leave with this quote:

No matter where we began, what matters is the growth and learning along the way.