Adultolescents

The predominant claim in the article "Bring up Adultolescents" by Peg Tyre, originally printed in the March 25, 2002 Newsweek is "parents across the country are trying to provide their twentysomethings with the tools they'll need to be self-sufficient-someday. In the process they havd created a whole new breed of child-the adultolescent" (134). The article explains that as these children go off to college, more and more of them are coming back home to live after graduation and living off their parents again. Many parents are trying to help their children become self-sufficient by paying for college and even graduate school in order to give their child that little extra push that they need so they can do things like pay for rent and cook for themselves. Tyre does explain at the end that "psychiatrists say it's tough to convince a parent that self-sufficiency is the one thing that they can't give their children," but these parents are willing to give up retirement money just to feel like their child is that much closer to having the life of their dreams (136). There might be more to this idea than Tyre explains. The parents have spent their entire adult lives trying to give their children opportunities that they did not have as children and this seems to have spread into the adult lives of their children, but the cost of living is more than it was when these kids were growing up and having a job that will pay the bills and at least some of the extravagant lifestyle that they grew up living means that they will need better paying jobs. In order to get these jobs, they need to go to school, something that was not necessary even one generation ago. Let's face it, minimum wage is less than minimum life these days. You can't even rent a small apartment for the paycheck that you can get from a minimum wage paying job, let alone buy food and other necessities. These parents have been protecting their children from poverty all their lives, why would they stop as their children reached adulthood?

Warrants; a case for shared ideas

Warrants describe what someone believes and generally assumes the reader will understand and hopefully agree with when reading a piece of rhetorical writing. They are not normally written in words, but are implied in the writing. It can be advantageous to the author to let the reader fill in these assumptions themselves because often the reader will agree with the writing more. The warrent is what makes or breaks the claim in a paper because if the value system is not shared, the claim may not even make sense to the reader. Warrants are formed by the way that people are raised and experiences that they may have had. "Shared warrants are crucial to the success of an argument because they are the most significant way to establish common ground between the reader and writer in an argument (Wood 103). If I were trying to write a paper that assumed people agreed with the decisions of the president because of his office and no other reason and my audience was a group of hostile president haters my warrant would fall short of the common ground that I am trying to establish. The more common ground that I establish, the more likely I will be able to convince the reader to agree with my point. Going back to the president, if my warrant was that the government was responsible for making sure that the president made good decisions and my audience was the government officers involved in the decision making process in the U.S. I might have better luck because they might have pride in their jobs and they may very well beileve just that. This just explains why you would want the audience to share some common ground with you when you write. The warrant, especially the unspoken warrant, gives that little extra power you just might need to convince your audience.

Visual argument

The most important part of visual argument included in our reading is, "when compared to written or even oral argument, [visual argument] is immediate and concrete, can appeal powerfully to the emotions, and can enhance an argumentative message by making it more convincing than words could alone" (Wood 211). When including visual images along with other rhetorical arguments, it can solidify the point that you are trying to make. The only problem with this method is that you need to pick the right visual or the intended message may be unclear or misconstrued to mean something else entirely. In that case, the point that you may have been trying to make may be misunderstood by the audience. Since the point of argument is to make the audience agree with the message you are trying to send, it would make sense for you to make sure your visuals match your intended message. A second point that caught my attention was "adding a few words to your visual argument [can] enhance or extend its meaning" (Wood 216).

From the online reading, I was taught that icons can be very important. In this case, an icon is something that symbolizes something else. McCloud asks his readers in a comic book-like setting, "would you have listened to me if I looked like this?" (207). He was referring to a drawing that makes him look more true to life; like a person talking to you rather than a comic character. He responds to his own question saying "I doubt it! You would have been far too aware of the messenger to recieve the message" (McCloud 208). He goes on to explain that as the simple character that he has drawn himself, people are more likely to listen to him because they identify themselves with him more. He could be anyone and simplifying makes him more like "a little voice inside your head" McCloud 208). He concludes, telling us "but if who I am matters less maybe what I say will matter more" (McCloud 208). From this I gather that simplicity sometimes means more because a greater number of people will be able to identify with the message more because it could have come out of their own mind. That is the most important thing that I was able to gather from this reading.