I. I don't have a question to answer because it was the first week of school and I had not thought of a question to answer.
II. This week in class we learned about the similarities in ambiguity and vagueness. We also learned about fuzzy logic and informal logic. I learned that ambiguity is a word, phrase, sentence or other communication if it can be interpretted in more than one way, while in my opinion vagueness is more along the lines of a personal opinion. Then informal logic is used to look at two different sides of an argument, while fuzzy logic has a more direct idea of "true" and "false."
Then we went into the discussion of loaded language and power words. I learned that loaded language was a lot of euphemisms (a way to make a word less offensive) and power words were meant to make a person's statement stronger. I enjoyed learning about these two terms because it helped me look out for them more in the newspaper and on the news. Especially when we did the homework to make your own radio commercial. It made me realize how hard it is to get people interested in a product without visualizations, and how people have to resort to power words in order to sell the product. Then when we did the euphemism homework it helped me realize again how many euphemisms are used in the daily news, and how oblivious I was to all of it before we did this topic.
In my personal opinion, everyone should learn about these media underlyings. I truthfully had no idea about power words and loaded language before we discussed this topic. I feel that many adults don't even understand how the media uses these terms against our way of thinking. Think of how it would be if a reporter blatantly wrote "And millions of women and children were brutually mauled and killed at point blank" instead of using euphemisms and saying "Unfortunetly millions were lost after a malicious attack," which sounds better to you? While the first may be more informative, the second is more widely taken by people.
The image above proves the point that there are more people contorting how the news is perceived than most people imagine. While most people sit down and just read a couple of articles on the computer, they don't even consider the author, or the author's views, at times.
These terms and topics also relate to how words can be powerful in other ways than just in the media. Maya Angelou was on the news a couple of years back discussing how vulgar language is also involved in the power of words. We did not discuss in class how the power of words can really be negative.
( I could not figure out how to embed the video to Blogger, but its called "Angelou On The Power of Words CBS News" on youtube.com)
The power words discussed in class were all ways to make a product positive, such as the words "guaranteed" or "amazing." No one even thought about how power words could be used as "horrendous" or "antagonizing." Next year, it may be a cool idea to bring in how power words can be used in a negative connotation.
III. In order to continue my studies on from this week, and into this coming week's lessons, I want to ask the question: How are euphemisms perceived in everyday life? Are younger children scientifically aware of euphemisms or are they brought up in society to accept them? Are all people capable of identifying euphemisms in everyday life?
Sources:
CBSNewsOnline. (2007). Angelou On The Power Of Words. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=On9Pq1LNLwM
Discover India @ Blogger.com. (2011). Changing Sides: Health-Men's Health. http://ashok-discoverindia.blogspot.com/2011/08/changing-sides-health-menshealth.html
