Relationship with Audience

I think that the relationship that Amanda Baggs is trying to establish with her reader is that of a type of equality. She wants to show that she is the same as everyone else. She does this through her comparison of her language to that of Standard English. I think that she is openly combative to her audience because she feels strongly about her topic. Her obvious passion for, and sometimes anger about, the fact that her language is not actually considered communication very obviously shows through in the duration of her video. She uses anger to promote the issue of equality between her audience and herself to show that autistic people can often communicate and show anger just like anyone else. I think that she makes a good point when she talks about the fact that she feels, touches, smells, and tastes things to communicate with them. Often, communication is focused on speaking, writing, and things of that nature. In this video Amanda makes her readers confront an issue that she feels is very pressing. In order to establish Amanda as an equal with the rest of her audience, she becomes combative. Now, my first reaction when someone is combative is to be defensive. I think that Amanda wants the audience to feel defensive so that they will automatically respond to what she is saying, instead of stopping to consider her “disability.” I also think that she is combative towards her audience because she is angry with the overall attitude that people have toward her “language.” I also think that she is trying to establish an overall feel of authority toward her audience. It seems to me that she comes across as kind of yelling at her audience, which I associate with a figure of authority. I could be completely off track with that one though.

Written Proposal for Author Project

The author that I chose to work with for this assignment is Stephen King. I was first drawn to his writing because I really like the subjects that he writes about. I want to work with him because he interests me and I like the stories he tells. Most of his books are very similar to one another, but he has many loyal readers who will read anything he writes simply because he wrote it. In this project I will try to research the way that Stephen King uses elements from both the sci-fi and horror genres, as well as how he established (and continues to maintain) his ethos with his audience. I will do this by re-reading (or reading for the first time) some of his works, in junction with reading academic articles that have been written about his various novels and interviews he has given about his own writing process.

Pepsi, Dove, and IKEA

On first glance the Pepsi website has a lot going on. There are many different colors, there’s a video that starts playing when you open it, and there’s all kinds of tweets from people about The X Factor. There are actually only three Pepsi logos/cans on the site, where there are twenty three tweets about the X Factor. This obviously says that Pepsi is a sponsor for the show. There’s a lot of colors that are very loud, and a lot for the eye to take in on this page. It seems to me that Pepsi is trying really hard to look exciting, and I think that this says that they are trying to stay current with the things their audience likes. When I visited the Dove website, it was much simpler. There was lots of white, which makes me think of cleanliness. This is an important strategic move for Dove because they mostly sell soaps, shampoos, and other personal hygiene products. The website is immediately broken down into different categories that a consumer can click on for different needs. To me, this website is much more user friendly and promotes the company’s physical product a lot better than the Pepsi site. The clean kind of style that the Dove website utilizes seems like it’s trying to get the customer to associate Dove with cleanliness. This makes sense because of the type of products that Dove sells. So, that leaves us with the IKEA site. IKEA utilizes the use of different colors to make things stand out, but not so to the point where it hurts the reader’s eyes like Pepsi’s site did. IKEA is also separated into different categories that are clickable to help a consumer navigate the site. It has a very relaxed kind of feel because of the cool colors I think.

Hemingway vs. Smittenkitchen

The styles of Hemingway and smittenkitchen are very different. Hemingway is very formal, where smittenkitchen has a much more conversational type of tone. Hemingway also writes in a very short and to the point way. There aren’t any unnecessary words in his story, where in the smittenkitchen blog post there were lots of opinions and back story that weren’t really essential to the recipe or what happened when she tried the recipe. The language used in Hemingway is very direct, where the language in smittenkitchen is much more flowery. It’s almost like Hemingway had a word restriction on the story he was writing, and smittenkitchen was allowed to ramble on as much as she wanted. Hemingway’s style almost makes me feel like there’s a sense of urgency with the story he’s telling, even though there really isn’t. Smittenkitchen seems like I’m having a conversation with a friend who found a really great recipe for me to try. The difference in effect from these two pieces is a large one. In Hemingway’s story you can tell that it’s a bit dated from the language used and also that one character at least speaks Spanish, if he doesn’t live in a Spanish speaking country. The effect of the blog is that the author is speaking with a friend, and one can tell from the language and grammar choices that it is a fairly recent piece of writing. Hemingway’s language also leaves the reader feeling an abruptness because of his use of short sentences and to the point details. To me, it seems that the smittenkitchen blog flows better. It also seems that the smittenkitchen blog is more natural. This could also be because Hemingway is trying to tell a specific story where smittenkitchen is just talking about a recipe she tried and why she chose to try it.