We then focused on the advantages and disadvantages of using logos, which, you decided, had the greatest potential reward but also the greatest potential risk for the user. Your thoughts are represented in the picture below:
In order to use logos effectively, you first need to be able to understand how to create a "home field advantage" for your point of view -- to create conditions for your argument that will at least give your ideas a neutral playing field, and, at best, will give you a slight advantage. You can do this by defining your terms.
To explore what this means, we started by looking at a list of phrases: good restaurant, good music, good book, good song, good video/computer game, good class. You chose a phrase about which you feel qualified to have an opinion, and quickly brainstormed a list of qualities that a good _______ would have.
Next, you worked with other people who had the same phrase, and compared/discussed/refined your lists of qualities. Finally, we asked you to choose the most IMPORTANT quality in your list -- the one that would be most significant in determining your opinion of a _________.
We then introduced the concept of a relative term -- a word, or phrase, that takes its meaning from the context in which it's used, or the perception/judgment of the user, or the audience. We illustrated by looking at terms like "tall," "short," "left," "right," and so forth.
At this point, we chose one relative term -- "good restaurant" -- and began to look at qualities that would inform our judgment about it. We came up with a few before the end of class, and we introduced the term criteria to describe the list of qualities that you had been generating.
Both these concepts -- criteria and relative terms will come up frequently in the next few weeks.
Homework assigned: read chapters 6 & 7 of Animal Farm by Tuesday, and continue with your five nights/30 minutes worth of reading assignment.
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