“Texting while driving”-- Attractive and Effective

English 200

3/5/2010

     
    As we all know, vehicles are essential to American’s daily life, which follows with the driving safety problem. “Texting while driving”, which has caused and has been blamed for numerous deadly traffic accidents in the past few years, is obviously not a wise idea for drivers. Unfortunately people are not aware of the severity of this problem and many of them still do it, especially young drivers, the group for whom texting is part of normal, everyday communications, making texting while driving more likely. Aiming at this serious and nationwide issue, the political cartoon called “texting while driving”, whose author was Mike Luckovich, a former “Pulitzer Prize” award-winner for Editorial Cartooning, was published at Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2009. 

     This black and white cartoon is combined with two equal-sized pictures. On the left side, a man with glasses is sitting in a car holding a cell phone, and the texts “Im txtng while drvng,” within a dialog box at the top that shows what he is doing at the moment. There is another car right in front of him, suggesting there will be a car crash which was not noticed by the driver. From his appearance, we can say he is mid-aged, it showed this visual argument is not only targeting teenagers, but also at some careless adults, which expanded the audience rank. So the primary audience can be identified as relatively young-aged vehicle drivers, which is a smart choice to remind people who see it that—“it’s not just a matter of teens, it could have been you”. On the right side, there stands a tall and skinny man with a hidden face, shrouded in a long hooded cloak wielding a scythe. From this appearance, we can identify him as Grim Reaper, the man who brings death. He is also texting, but simply sent an acronym message “Lol” (meaning laughing out loudly). Reading from left to right, we can easily get the meaning of this cartoon --a man is texting while driving, and he got the message back from Death. It showed the claim and the reason of the visual argument at the same time with humor—do not text while driving, or you will be killed. 

     I think this is a very attractive and effective visual argument. It is superior in Pathos by its dramatic humor and Logos by its suggestive and obvious understandability. It did a great job on catching attentions by showing the connection between “texting while driving ” and death wittily, and sent the strong message “ don’t text while driving” to the primary audience—relatively young drivers. Later in this paper, I will stress on analyzing this cartoon’s simple understandability, profound contrast and humorousness on image, which are also the main successes of this visual argument.

     First of all, the author Mike’s use of type, and layout made his visual argument straightforward and outstanding. Political cartoons are usually mini-narratives and sometimes without textual explanation, which makes understandability very important. To a cartoon with only a few texts like this, audience must read the caption to get a first quick look -- in this cartoon they are apparently SMS (short message service) “Im txting While drving” and “Lol”-- they are in sans serif fonts within two big, quadrate dialog boxes, which are quite well-marked. Then we know it is a texting scene without even reading the whole picture. In the meantime, the layout which consists of two same-sized pictures informs us that the two figures are equals in this situation. Additionally, the order and content of the texts obviously tell us the left man sent SMS first and the right one responded. 

     Secondly and most importantly, Mike’s use of images and color made his visual argument funny, vivid and profound. Let’s clear the logic and train of thought in this cartoon. According to the timeline, “texting while driving” on the left part was the beginning and the cause; meanwhile the color was mainly in white, which associates with light and life in western culture. However, Grim Reaper who signifies death, on the right part, was the response and also the consequence to the left part; in addition, the main color black also associates with darkness and death. If Mike created a multi-colored cartoon, the effect would be much more attenuated.

    In addition, we can see, both the man and Grip Reaper are smiling, and the meaning and differences between their smiles indeed increased the irony and humor—they have nothing to do with their friendship. The former facial smile showed the man’s ignorance, the latter literal smile showed Grip Reaper’s vicious nature and his sneer at his human “friend”. 

    Furthermore, there’s a deeper thought which cannot be seen from the picture immediately, but helped to make the humor come to a climax. Meaning that, the man must know who the recipient is so that he could send SMS, which also means he knew he was sending a text message to the evil Grim Reaper, but he still did it—wasn’t he stupid? This actually coincides with the irony in reality, most drivers know how dangerous and improper it is to text at the wheel, but some of them still do it. 

     In brief, the suggestive images, especially the image of Grim Reaper, portrayed the issue of this visual argument dramatically and humorously. It gave the reader a grin of understanding and a shock of insight; it helped us as both good Logos and Pathos to get the essence of this cartoon, and it’s the key point of its success. Below is a small chart of the analysis of the image and color.

	Cause	Consequence
Image	A man is smiling and texting SMS “Im txtng While drvng” while driving Another car was in front	Grim Reaper respond with “Lol” (laugh out loud)
Color	Mainly white	Mainly black
Literal meanings	The man knew what he was doing and he still did it smilingly An accident was about to happen	Grim Reaper didn’t show his face but literally smiled Death came fast, quiet, and cruelly
Underlying → funny irony	The man must text to someone he knows, which means he knew the recipient is Grim Reaper, which made him an idiot	Grim Reaper’s not stupid, he is not texting and driving '‘Lol” made the humor of the cartoon come to a climax

Conclusion	Texting while driving → death
Claim	Don’t text while driving, because it kills

    Finally, I have to mention that, this visual argument used good Karios appeal at present. In the past weeks, the U.S. Federal government formally bans truckers and bus drivers from texting while driving, and so far 19 states have outlawed texting while driving, and 6 prohibit using hand-held cell phone while behind the wheel. The effect of this political cartoon can be more influential and instructive than it was before.

     In conclusion, “Texting while driving” is a great example of visual argument. It did a very good job on getting attention from people who see it, and sends strong message to the primary audience—relatively young-aged vehicle drivers, letting them laugh and reflect to make the right choice. First, it perfectly reveals the potential danger of death by “texting-while-driving” in the use of well-marked type and layout, suggestive images, vivid contrast, and humoristic atmosphere, which made it superior in Pathos. Besides, the obvious understandability of the issue from the image showed the author’s good use of Logos. In addition, it also has a creditable resource—Atlanta Journal-Constitution and an authoritative author—a former “Pulitzer Prize” award-winner, which is a good use of Ethos. What’s more, this visual argument has a good Karios at present in consideration of the texting while driving ban in the states lately. These excellent features together, made it is an attractive and effective visual argument. 

From instructor: A

This is a very well written paper.While there are a couple of places where you expect the reader to do the work of making the connection between the example and the rhetorical elements, you still show a clear understanding of t he material. 

Normally I would advise against charts, however yout chart is effective.

You analyzed this iamge at a deeper level than most would, making the irony easy to understand to the audience.

 

“High education record is not everything!” ——High Education & Success

Informative and Surprising Essay

English 100

 05/05/09

Before I came to the United States, a lot of my friends had already been abroad, and many of them are preparing to do it now. I asked a few of them why they wanted to study abroad—one thought Gaokao(Chinese SAT) was too hard, she didn’t think she could get into the best university even if she tried her best; another one said his current college was too average, he felt himself a loser if he stayed. And they asked me, “and you?” I smiled and replied to them by something conventionally vague and much more the same. Though it’s not the answer I want, it’s true that we all agree on the unspoken theory—high education record is the top priority in life! But why is that?

There’s an old saying in China, “To be a scholar is to be the top of society”. Apparently, high education record, as a symbol of success in Chinese culture, means a decent and high-paid job which leads to a perfect mate and a comfortable life, which is everything we are going after. Professor Xin remarked in his essay that in Chinese traditional thought, it was supposed to be the start of “a bright future” when someone gets a foot in the door of a prestigious academic institution and is dignified with a Master or Doctor’s degree; especially to some poor farmer’s kids, this kind of achievement even glorified their family name --the parents must entertain lavishly for celebration like a big feast, only feel more honored (Xin).

However, in the money-oriented society, not judging the value of “success=money”, the convinced belief that “high educational qualification=good job=high pay=success” doesn’t necessarily apply anymore. This doesn’t happen by chance. In theory which is already proved in statistic, the more education people receive, the more relative income they will get (Xin); everybody knows that. But we don’t know the differences between incomes among these people are not as big as we expect. What’s more, this theory is just “an overall trend”, which doesn’t adapt to everyone; also, a so-called “high income” is measured in individuals’ life (Xin). In practice, people also start to be aware of the new equation—high academic qualification=high unemployment or underemployment. 

The DGBAS (Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics) of Taiwan showed, “from January to November in 2008, the average unemployment rate of young people between 15 to 29 years old has reached 8.25%”, and the rate of people who “have university education or above” is 9.33% (Zhong). How could this phenomenon happen? The basic cause is—“Oversupply of labor market” (Zheng), in other words, there’re too many well-educated people to get limited jobs. Imagine one day, everybody gets a university diploma, most people are graduates, what do you think will happen?—The society will apparently be out of order, no one wants to do the cheap labor work because they think they deserve better. It will only result in waste and worthlessness of the education qualification. This imagination is growing nowadays; high education is losing its upper hand.

China mainland is more or less the same employment environment as Taiwan. The hype of “A Beijing University[1] graduate selling candied haws stick”[2] event in 2006 may have passed, but similar news keeps popping up, and the complaints from students and parents won’t stop (Xin).At the same time people start to think about a concerned question—Is prestigious university out of date?

It has become a common and terrible belief that if you want to go to college, you have to go to the elite college. As I remember in my high school in China, every year during the graduation season we can see a lot of posters and banners hung between buildings and walls say “Cheer for X’s admission to Beijing University ”or “Congratulations on X’s being the top in Gaokao in our Province”. What we hear are all praises about how many students have gotten into the best colleges, and the teachers always ask us to learn from those very few top students. Besides, students from different schools often compete which school has more students enrolled in prestigious university even if it has nothing to do with them. It seems like, in people’s subconscious, only going to those elite universities means being useful and getting “a golden passport to success” (Easterbrook). In Alan Krueger and Stacy Berg’s research in 1999, they found that students who were able to get into an Ivy but chose a “less sexy” one, had “the same income twenty years later as graduates of the elite colleges” (Easterbrook).Apparently, success is not so relevant to a school’s brand or fame, it’s up to you, your ability and talent. And it’s not the top college make the students capable; they’re already elites even they don’t go to the elite schools.

During Loren Pope’s writing of Who’s Who[3] in 1990, he found out the fact that “the glamour schools were losing their status as the gatekeepers of accomplishment”. And today, as the “non-elite school” have greatly improved their quality of academic input, more and more employers don’t value applicants’ above their famous school background, “some may even avoid candidates from the top school, on the theory that such aspirants have unrealistic expectations of quick promotion”(Easter). The people who have that “expectation” are over-reachers, they think themselves above the business and aren’t easily satisfied with what they have; this often happens in China, that’s why even elite students from top colleges ending up with “underemployment”. Chinese’s “elite college complex” is not realistic, and it could be even harmful for students--they could repeat year and year in school with extreme pressures and hard work just to make their “top school dream” come true, and after that, there’s even no guarantee for them to get a good job!

Not only the “elite college complex”, but also advanced degrees gave Chinese students a mistaken idea that it’s never hard for graduate students to get a well-paid job. In old days, a Master or Doctor’s Degree means knowledge and respect. However, there’s an ironic phenomenon called “high degree discrimination” in employment today. To employers, high degree means “high cost” (pay), “high age”— aiming at women Doctors, who have possibilities of giving birth to a child, and “zero experience”—aiming at students who attach more on theory but lack of practical skills (EOL). Now a lot of graduates have descended to an inferior position, choosing the job they thought too cheap that a Bachelor or even a college student can do; the advanced theory they have learned were completely left behind. It’s just how the society works despite the cruelty.

From theory to practical situations, and from “elite university effects” to “advanced degree discrimination”, indications showed one fact that a high education record doesn’t necessarily bring money and success. In addition to money, what about the well-educates’ inner life, does the high academic qualification bring them a successful emotional life?

Here are two news titles--“More and More highly educated people use drugs in Beijing” (Beijing Daily Online). “Highly educated women become obsessive-compulsive disorder of the ‘susceptible’” (Oriental Today). We don’t even need to talk about serious drug problems or psychiatric disorders; we just need to see some pop words in the media to know how the true life of well-educated people and how they are considered and biased in this society. For example, “The Left” or “3S” (single, seventies, stuck) is used to describe those elder unmarried girls who were born during 1970s and highly educated. A lot of them from elementary school to graduate school, basically never had a deep relationship with anyone of the opposite sex. That long-term isolation makes them have a “love phobia” (Bl.gov.cn)—being afraid of falling love or not knowing how to love. With “3 high” (another pop word, indicates high education, high position, and high pay) but with no love or confidence, are they successful? I don’t think so.

The headmaster of Qinghua University [4] gave his graduates five advices on their life road:

“Direction is more important than efforts,

Ability is more important than knowledge,

Healthy is more important than achievement,

Life is more important than qualification,

EQ is more important than IQ” (Gu).

I think these golden sayings are the most important meanings of this research paper.

At last, on the whole, my conclusions are--Education record is a study experience, and high education record is just a reflection of one’s academic attainments. It’s nothing but a proof of the past. There’s nothing wrong about going after high education record, but it shouldn’t be everything we’re going after-- If you do, it’s not only success you lose, but also yourself.     

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[1] the top university in China

[2] “candy fruit on sticks”, a very cheap traditional snack on street in Northern China

[3] “a direction of American distinction”

[4] one of the best university in China

Works Cited

Easterbrook, Gregg. "Who Needs Harvard?" College Admissions 2004 October 2004 Atlantic Oct. 2004. The Atlantic. 3 May 2009 .

"Graduate students facing employment problem--'high degree discrimination'" Graduate studies news. 4 Nov. 2008. Eol.cn(China Education Online). 03 May 2009 .

Gu, Binglin. "The headmaster of Qinghua University gave advises to his graduates." Education Campus. 5 Sept. 2005. Aweb.com.cn(China Agriculture Web). 03 May 2009 .

"Highly educated people have 'love phobia'" Psychology science. 11 Sept. 2008. Bl.gov.cn. 03 May 2009 .

"Highly educated women become obsessive-compulsive disorder of the 'susceptible'" Obsession. Ed. Huaiqi Wang. 4 Aug. 2005. Linzi Counselling. 03 May 2009 .

Xin, Lijian. "High Academic Record? High Income." Lijian Xin's blog. 16 May 2006. Usors.cn. 03 May 2009 .

Zhang, Weina. "More and more highly educated people use drugs in Beijing." Legal news 29 Oct. 2004. Hbfz.gov.cn. 3 May 2009 .

Zheng, Juanfeng. "High level of education = high unemployment?" Work 26 Aug. 2008. The Liberty Times, Taiwan. 3 May 2009 .

Zhong, Lihua. "Dim future of pay/ highly educated youth unemployment rate 9.33%." Life 21 Jan. 2009. The Liberty Times, Taiwan. 3 May 2009 .

Cliques in My Schooldays

English 100

Educational Narrative

Feb. 1^st, 2009

       If not because of this paper, I may never think about the question “do I ever have a clique before?” which occurs to me—“what is a clique?” Clique is a word from old French. Wikipedia defines it as “an exclusive group of people who share interests, views, purposes, patterns of behavior, or ethnicity”. If we translate it into Chinese, it could be “Xiao Tuan Ti(小团体)” which means small group , but lacking of group cohesion in a sense; or “Bang Pai(帮派)” which means small faction, but it sounds too serious to get the factional fighting involved. Then Professors Fengbin Wang and Wenpin Tsai, two Chinese scholars—call cliques “Xiao Ji Ti(小集体)” in their book[1] , which means small collectives. As you may have noticed, there is “small” in all of these three translations, which implies a kind of negative meaning “exclusive” in Chinese; at least when the adults hear it they may frown slightly and judge it by the first impression. From this point, I suddenly understand why most of us Chinese students don’t realize that we were in cliques but call them all friends or buddies instead. Under the influence of the CCP(Chinese Communist Party) culture, what we have always been advocating, is collectivism; as it said “Unity is strength”, that’s also what we learned from books and in school. We started to cultivate our team spirit since we went to kindergarten, we must act collectively and stick together through thick and thin, and we would be blamed for engaging in “some cliques”.
 
      However, who doesn’t have a clique anyway? As humans, we do have our very own social circles; it changes as time goes by, from kids to teenager to adults, especially when we were students. And those circles were exactly cliques in some ways. Looking back to my interpersonal experience in schooldays, cliques did play an important role through my lifetime. 

      I lived in a small city in the east of China which was relatively conservative compared to big cities. I had always been to key (top) schools in my city, where they offered better teaching quality, study environment, and more hardworking and excellent students. In my memory, there were not too many different types of cliques in my school; in contrast to western countries, I can say the amount was very little. As I mentioned, this is about culture, about some stereotyped thoughts-- Chinese are used to following the mass, so being cool or unique is not always good. Chinese have the traditional virtues of “working hard and living plain”, so students spending time on clothes is meaningless. Chinese students are just kids in ivory tower, so they should just devote themselves to studying, blah, blah, blah... For example, my school had the rules of wearing school uniforms everyday or as much as possible, if a girl didn’t follow that rule, but dress up very pretty instead even wearing make-up, she would probably have a tough school life—being judged by other classmates esp. girls, lecturing by the teachers, and changing back to the uniform eventually—who would be so brave to do that? Apparently, cliques on clothes were out of the question in my school. So what do Chinese students care about and make us a clique? It really depends. In my experience, from primary school to middle school to high school, my cliques changed a lot, from several to less, explicit to tacit, along with the development and changes in this great country. 

     If there’s really such a clique culture existing in China, I believe it pops up mostly in the primary school. Because kids are frank and straightforward, they won’t hide their feeling whatever good or bad ones, and they don’t use tricks. That’s why it’s easy for them to hook up or split up. I had quite a few cliques back to that time. The main two groups were “playmates” and “leaders”.

     It is quite easy to get what the two cliques are. The “playmates” group was primarily my playmates. As a kid, I was fond of playing with my girlfriends. I was very good at rubber band skipping, rope skipping and shuttlecock kicking, kind of queen among the girls on these. And these entertainments were also extremely popular among girls; we were obsessed with them, and also enjoyed them so much. We would play together as long as we had a chance, during the class break, or in the PE, or after school, maybe at weekends. Most of these group members were just classmates, but a couple of them are more than that. We lived near each other, so we spent more time together--walking to school and back home, hanging out at weekends, many visits to each other’s apartment on holidays, and we became very good friends. We almost did everything together except studying.

     The “leader” group was much simpler ; the members were just my work partners. I was the class monitress and Chinese course representative throughout the six years in primary school and there were quite a few subordinates below me, which made us a class leader system. We might have different assignments, but we often get together to discuss all kinds of class affairs. We might not know each other very well, but we understood each other for taking the same responsibility as leaders. During the 5^th grade, I became one leader of the Young Pioneers group committees in the school, which means I had another “leaders” group then. I also had meetings with them to deal with some school events. 

      It was an honor to be a leader, but at that time, I was just a kid too, not all of the classmates would obey an equal peer. I worked a lot and still offended many classmates because of this position, which made me sick of being subordinate and having powers. Then things went quite different in the coming years--middle school. I always kept myself a low key dealing with everything. During this early period of adolescence, I once had one or two close friends; we almost told each other everything. However teenager girls were just insecure and fickle, we thought we knew and believed each other, but it was not true. The friendship was gone very soon. So precisely speaking, I was not in any cliques during the middle school. I had classmates to talk to, but no intimate friend. With increasing pressures on study, I was automatically keeping distance from the others, focusing on study. If “lonely nerd” can be a clique on one’s own, I think I belonged to that minority. This situation lasted for a while; I maintained an unconcerned attitude to surroundings. It was not until the second year in senior high school that I started to have a clique again. After coming back from one exchanging-year in Switzerland, I felt myself more mature after experiencing a lot in another country, especially on relationships. Maybe we didn’t have to have a close friend in a short term. Maybe we just need to know more interesting people making us feel better in the life stream. That’s what I thought, then the clique came up; I call it “bus fellows”.

       Apparently, high school was far more different from primary school. In my school, you could barely see or feel cliques. Everyone was so independent even we still went to the same classroom and meet the same class everyday. People were kind of cold and incommunicative. We didn’t really care about anything else except for studies, since studying took up most of our time. We might always have someone around, but that person could just be a companion; we might know everyone in our class, but it’s possible we had never spoken to some of them. In circumstance like this, “bus fellows” and “basketball boy” became two typical cliques. And I was in the former one.

      “Bus fellows”, were always my classmates or schoolmates. We took the same bus to school and back home, we were chatting all the time, about everything, the homework or test, a movie or a star, news or gossips, and so on. We didn’t have to have similar interests or personalities, we didn’t even have to care about the topics we were talking; we just need to have free talks, to get rid of the study stress, to get to know other people’s mental world, to promote ourselves. It was also a chance to find a bosom friend by accident among these familiar faces, which could be quite a nicety of life …

        So now, looking back to that question again--“what is a clique?” I get some different answers .Throughout my schooldays, I think, not only did cliques work as small social circles, but also they tell the choices we made as we become mature, choices to what kind of people we want to be and what kind of life we want to have. There are no regrets but learning from the past and looking to the future. Second, cliques are more part of culture, they see from generation to generation growing up. Time flies, culture changes. People are becoming more and more open-minded, even non-mainstream could become popular and that’s what is happening, isn’t it? So cliques, as an important part of teenager or popular culture, what will happen to them in the future? Will they still exist at that time? I just hope they will not confuse us, because we will be already very old and out of time then.

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[1] Fengbin Wang is the translator of the book Social Networks and organization written by Martin Kilduff (U.S.) and Wenpin Tsai(China)