The main point of this reading was to demonstrate how analyzing images is important and the three approaches: genre analysis, visual analysis, and rhetorical analysis. Analyzing the genre of a specific image is important because it lets someone know what to look for. It helps the reader know what conventions the image should have and how they deliver their messages. Understanding the type of image the reader is looking at will help them understand the author’s goals with where the image is presented, how it’s presented, and the purpose. Visual Analysis is important to the reader because it helps the reader focus on the features of the image itself. Visual Analysis looks at the arrangement, colors, contrast, size, shape, etc. of an image. Rhetorical Analysis is trying to understand what the image is trying to persuade the reader to think or do differently. The three rhetorical appeals (logos, pathos, and ethos) can be presented in these images to persuade the reader to think certain things as well. I found this reading pretty interesting because it reviewed some of the things we talked about in class Tuesday and because it’s weird to think that every image probably has an intended purpose. I would like to know what is the most common appeal used in images.
Blog 9. Primary Research
I found in my primary research that stress does affect the employees that work in retail. I did this by thinking of anything that has happened in the past and in the past couple weeks that stressed me and my co-workers out. For example, during the Holidays a lot of my co-workers and myself were stressed out. This would be because people were crabby and the store was very busy during the holiday season. A situation that happened that angered/stressed me out was that a customer in line called the store to see if more cashiers could come in because the line was too long. This was very stressful because it made me want to work faster to get the line down. I also would get stressed ringing up larger transactions with customers that would pay with a lot of smaller bills such as singles or 5’s. Counting and re-counting the money multiple times was time consuming and stressful given the time of the year. Stressful situations at work put my co-workers and myself in bad moods and it makes us just want to go home at times. Another situation that is very stressful that I don’t experience often because I’m on the register most of the time is when customers mess up tables/clothes that were just fixed up and looking perfect. It feels as though to my co-workers the work they’re doing fixing is for nothing at times. Another situation that stressed myself and my co-workers was a customer walked in the store about two minutes after we closed and we told them politely that we were closed. The customers got way out of hand and we ended up having to call security to get them out of the store. I feel as though I’m stepping on eggshells with certain customers because of what kind of mood they’re in when they come up to cash register. The customers mood will affect how smoothly the transaction goes and how stressed I will get. Overall, stress does affect employees that work in retail.
Blog 8. Annotated Bib. pt. 2
Maxham III, James G., Richard G. Netemeyer, and Donald R. Lichtenstein. “The Retail Value Chain: Linking Employee Perceptions To Employee Performance, Customer Evaluations, And Store Performance.” Marketing Science 27.2 (2008): 147-167. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 9 Mar. 2015.
The main purpose of this source is to show that there’s a relationship between retail job perceptions, customer service that the employees provide, and the satisfaction of the customer. The writer is intending to show that the employees attitudes will affect the customer satisfaction/evaluation of the employee. The evidence that the writer provides is testing the relationships between retail employee job perceptions, retail employee job performances, customer evaluations, customer spending and comparable store sales growth. The writer did this by testing this model by using three matched samples of 1,615 retail employees, 57,656 customers, and 306 stores of a single retail chain. Customer evaluations are affected by in-role performance, extra-role performance towards the customer, and extra-role performance towards the organization.
The genre of this piece is an academic article and I can tell because I had to find it through a research base specifically for scholarly articles containing information about certain discourse communities.The audience of this is anyone that is interested or involved in the retail markets and how certain factors affect the employee and or customer. This is useful for my project because it shows that there is a relationship between the attitudes of the employees and what the customer evaluations are. This demonstrates an effective argument because the stance and quality is relevant for the purpose I’m using it for.
“Where Customer Experience and Employee Engagement Converge | The ForeSee Blog.” ForeSee. N.p., 15 Jan. 2015. Web. 09 Mar. 2015. .
The main purpose of the article is to show that there’s a direct relationship between customer satisfaction and employee engagement. The writer wants to show that this relationship can affect how well the customers are treated by the customers and certain retail brands. The evidence that is provided is that there is a graph that shows popular retail stores such as Gap, Macy’s, and Costco and how much their employees engage affect the customer satisfaction. It shows the more the employees are engaged the more satisfied the customers will be. This genre of piece is a popular one, I can tell because of the layout of the website and just overall how the information is presented.
The audience is for managers or employees that work in retail because of the style and tone of the piece. This source is somewhat useful for my project because it provides data about Gap and I work at Old Navy which is a branch off of the Gap Inc. company. This can give me some insight on how we rank on the scale and reflect on situations I or other employees have come across with customers that can reflect how well we get our work done. The argument is not too effective because I can only view a certain amount of the source without having to pay for the exact studies. This just gives a brief background/summary of the study.
Beckley, Donald K. “Identifying Problems Of Human Relations In Retailing.” Journal Of Marketing 20.1 (1955): 51-53. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 9 Mar. 2015.
The purpose of this article is to show the many problems of the retail world that employees face that affect how they interact with customers. The writer is trying to show that employees handle situations that can be stressful that can affect their performance in the workplace. The evidence that the writer provides is that there are distinctive types of stresses in retailing such as: Need for many immediate decisions, easy identification by others of one’s mistakes, lack of clear operating policies, failure to take long-range view, failure to protect employee status, and the difficulty physical environments. The genre of this piece of writing is an academic article because of where I found it using the certain keywords of customer, retail, and attitudes. The overall format and content is one of an academic article as well.
The most effective audience would be anyone that is working in the retail world because they can relate to multiple of the points that the writer makes. I can tell because they provide details that I understand myself and I can clearly relate to. This is extremely useful for my project because it shows how the employees attitude can be affected in the workplace by the environment and the customers. This demonstrates an effective argument with that employees are affected by multiple stress factors because I agreed with a majority of what the writer said.
Blog 7 Annotated Bib. part 1
Gallagher, Richard S. The Customer Service Survival Kit: What to Say to Defuse Even the Worst Customer Situations. N.p.: American Management Association, 2013. Print.
The purpose of this source is to help employees working in customer service jobs defuse awkward situations with customers. The writer is trying to help employees get into a different state of mind while dealing with customers that are being difficult. The writer starts off the book by saying why these situations matter. He states three reasons why learning to deal with these situations are important: they’re teachable skills, learning to handle the worst situations will improve the service you deliver to the customer, and these skills have an overall change in yourself as a person. He then talks about how to use different phrases to keep the customer as calm as possible and how to overcome any kind of intimidation that the customer gives off. Each chapter provides a different situation and ways to handle difficult customer to improve yourself as a worker and to prevent customers from exploding.
The genre of this piece is a book/guide to help the readers improve themselves. You can tell this just by the title “Customer Service Survival Kit.” The phrase survival kit means that there’s information that can be helpful or necessary to the reader. The audience would be anyone that works in a customer service job. You can tell this because of the content of the book itself. The content explains different scenarios only people working in customer service jobs can be familiar with. The overall message is meant for people working in this job as well because he wants to make sure you improve yourself as a worker. This is useful for my project because these are ways workers can get past sticky situations with customers and will further prevent a negative mood/attitude that results when a customer is difficult. The effectiveness of the argument is demonstrated throughout the various examples and strategies that are presented.
Wägar, Karolina, and Lars-Johan Lindqvist. “The Role of the Customer Contact Person’s Age in Service Encounters.” The Journal of Services Marketing 24.7 (2010): 509-17. ProQuest. Web. 3 Mar. 2015.
The purpose of this source is to show whether the age of the worker effects how to the customer perceives them. The writer is intending to try to show a relationship by the age of customers and what age group those customers like being serviced by. This evidence was shown by different data tables and math calculations. In one of the writers points it states that older customers shopping in retail prefer older workers because they can provide more information. With younger people they preferred being waited on by younger workers.
The genre of this piece is a academic article and you can tell because of the way it’s written. It’s meant for a specific purpose/field of study. I found this using proquest research and with using very specific keywords. This can be useful for my project because I do identify and relate with this article. I often have older customers questioning me and they often put me in negative moods. The argument is effective because it shows that there is a correlation between the age of customers/workers and how they interact with each other.
Blog 6 Midterm Reflection
1.Who are you as a writer? What audiences do you writer for? What genres do you write in? What audiences and genres would you LIKE to write for and in? Why? Use “reflection-in-the-moment” (5 senses narrative of a time you were writing) to support your points.
Who I am as a writer and the audience I write for changes within each genre that I write in. For example, in our English class the audiences that I write for change for each paper, whether it’s a more scholarly audience or my classmates, my writing changes for each. I am a more personable and honest writer when I’m writing something that I can voice my opinion on. For example, when I’m on Facebook, Twitter, or I’m writing an essay where my opinion can be voiced I come off very honest and personable. When I’m writing in genres where my opinion can’t be voiced I would say I’m an informative and efficient writer by giving certain points and providing evidence that supports what I’m saying. I like to write in the genres of Twitter, Facebook, and essays assignments that interest me. Our genre analysis essay interested me a lot because I analyzed my writing via Twitter. This was interesting because it revealed a lot about myself and what I’m willing to let the world know about me. Overall, I like writing in the genre of Twitter the most because of the audience I’m writing for. I write for my followers and for anyone that pulls my profile up. When I write to this audience I’m very honest and personable with what I write. I just wrote a tweet 5-10 minutes ago and it was “I will be SO happy if I got a B or higher on my bio lecture exam, mentally exhausted now with the lab practical to study for, haha great.” I was in the UGL on the 2nd floor at an individual desk and I felt pretty mentally exhausted from studying so much for my biology Exam. I felt like tweeting what I did for my followers that are taking hard science classes that could relate. I already have gotten 1 favorite (like) on it. When I was writing it I was listening to music and just trying to relax from the biology exam I just got done taking. I like to be as personal and relatable in my writing as much as possible.
Reading Response 5 – Swales “The Concept of a Discourse Community”
The main idea Swales is trying to get across is that there are many factors/definitions that can affect what a discourse community is. He presents six defining characteristics about discourse communities. The first being that a discourse community has a broadly agreed set set of public common goals. For example, in government they are working towards a common goal that will affect the public. The second is that a discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members. For example, café owners in an area share similarities in social-based practices so they share intercommunication. The third is that a discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback. An example of this is that members of certain organizations have subscriptions to ads/magazines to keep them up to date or to motivate them to achieve goals in that certain organization. The fourth is a discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. This means that a community can be participating in one or more genres. The fifth is in addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis. This means that certain communities come up with their own terminology so communication is effective. The last definition is that a discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discourage expertise. This means that members of discourse communities are always changing whether it’s with a new member or a member leaving. Swales then goes into detail about a discourse community he is involved in and explains how these definitions are presented in his group. Other than those points, I didn’t see any other important points in the article. I felt as though the article dragged along and put random points together and explained it in a confusing way. I understood somewhat what Swales was trying to get across, but he should have presented it in a more simpler way. Reading this article was time-consuming and frustrating because I lost focus multiple times or had to re-read things multiple times to still be left confused.
Reading Response 4 What Were You Thinking?
This reading was all about reflection and how important it is to see if essays or anything you write is actually trying to say what you want it to. Sandra L. Giles first talks about the first time she had to reflect on her own writing and she didn’t understand why she had to do it. She soon realized that reflection is important because it helps you develop your purpose, relationship with the audience, problems with your writing process, revision goals, the language/style, etc. She then goes into detail on how she has used this reflection aspect of writing with her students. She calls it “My letter to the reader” and it is formatted as a cover letter that is at the beginning of each students essay to basically say what their essay is about, the purpose, and who they are trying to address. Several examples are provided, some illustrating that the reflection did not match with the essay and some that did. The reflection can also help the teacher with trying to see if your essay makes sense and fulfills its purpose. This reading was interesting to me because it makes me wonder if my papers I have written in the past could have been better if I had done this. The reading was lengthy, but overall was interesting because it showed me a new way to revise and reflect on my own writing.
Reading Response 3 Backpacks vs. Briefcases
Reading through Backpacks vs. Briefcases I figured the main point of the article is to explain why rhetorical analysis is so important and that it shouldn’t be overlooked. The article starts out explaining general observations that we often make of people the first time we see them and how that shapes how we view them. It then talks about how media is a place where analysis happens. All different types of rhetoric is used in media and all of different types of rhetorical messages. Understanding these messages shapes us in understanding society. With analyzing rhetoric the first step is to look at the context and there’s three parts in understanding context: exigence, audience, and constraints. Exigence is the circumstance that brings in a response, audience is who the message is meant for, and constraints is how the rhetoric is presented.Then the article talks about the argument with the usage of the 3 rhetorical appeals: logos, pathos, and ethos. This presents that the writer is credible, logical, and can appeal to the reader’s emotions. Rhetorical analysis allows people to make decisions on whether they believe in what the writer is saying or not. The whole passage illustrates all of the details above in several examples. I liked the connection it made in the beginning about observations you make about people right away when you first see them because that’s true. It took me longer than expected to read through this because it was very dry and somewhat repetitive. I thought the beginning was interesting and then it just got boring as it went along.
Reading Response 2 – Wayne Writer (pg. 48-50, 63-73)
Analyzing genres will reveal patterns to tell us about the people who use them and the scene in which it is used. The steps that are taken in genre analysis starts with collecting different samples of the genre. The next step is to find out who, what, where, why, and how the specific genre is used. The last step before determining what this genre reveals is to identify linguistic and rhetorical patterns. This is done by looking at the content and rhetorical appeals of the genre. Logos is when the writer tries to appeal to the readers rational mind. Pathos is when the writer tries to appeal to the readers emotions. Ethos is when the writer tries to appeal to the readers belief in the qualities of the writer. The Wayne Writer provides three samples of different complaint letters and then analyzes them. Reading over the samples I did find patterns with word choice, tone, format, structure, and the rhetorical appeals. In each letter the writer did not blame the reader for whatever inconvenience they were describing. Rather they addressed the problem to the company as a whole. They used logos to address the reader to see the problem and correct it for them. They used ethos to describe themselves as reasonable people. They also used pathos to describe the inconvenient problem to gain sympathy from the reader. The complaints are presented with objective terms and they professionally describe their problem without a major influence of anger or annoyance. Overall, the reading was dry and it took a lot of focus to get through it. It was informative and I highlighted important points as I read through the text. Reading this made me realize how important genre analysis is though because it reveals how we as people interact in different situations whether it is in conversation or on paper.
Reading Response 1 – Shitty First Drafts
The main idea of the reading Shitty First Drafts is that if a writer wants to write an amazing paper they have to zone out and write a shitty first draft. In the reading, she states that all good writers write them and that’s how they end up with terrific final drafts. When writing a first draft, that’s the time to write down anything that comes to mind even if it may sound weird. She describes that the first draft is the down draft to just write everything that you think of, the second draft is where you fix it up, and the third draft is the dental draft when you check over everything thoroughly. She also talks about the sense of panic and the voices that come into her head while she is trying to write her first draft. The key is to zone out each voice and eliminate them so you can completely focus. Reading through this I thought it was humorous in the way she described her writing process because it is so true. I often have a hard time trying to write first drafts and I end up just writing everything that comes to mind. Her overall tone was very straight to the point and casual, I felt as though my friend was telling this story. I laughed at the part when she jokingly said one of the writers she knows writes elegant first drafts, but they don’t like her very much. I read through this reading straight through once and then I re-read it and took notes on the parts that stood out to me. This reading was very fun to read and I actually enjoyed it! What I learned from this is that it’s okay to write a shitty first draft because every writer will for everything they write.
Today is your day 