I WANT YOU

Visual rhetoric is communication through visual images whether they are videos or a single photo or image. Visual rhetoric has been around dating back to cavemen times, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and native and tribal symbols. We use visual rhetoric everyday, when we FaceTime or video chat with our friends and family, when we are on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, (which most of us are on constantly throughout the day… in our classes), and when we watch the news or read the news paper.

The newspaper always has political cartoons, sometimes funny with witty meanings behind them.

The image I have chosen for my visual rhetoric is a very well known and popular image that has been in newspapers countless times, school textbooks and recruitment posters.  

What does the image shown above bring to mind? Even if one had never seen this image before, there are many key factors that give away the meaning of this poster. The fact that the main colors are red, white and blue, would make one associate it with The United States of America. Uncle Sam (abbreviated U.S.) is the United States government and its people and this poster was used for the recruiting of young men during World War I and II. 

The Internet World

While books and journals are reliable scholarly sources, I am going to concentrate more on the Internet since we have become so dependent on it. In today’s world we are literally a push of a button away from any information we may need at any given time… for the most part. Smartphones are becoming more popular and more people are becoming new owners of smartphones with every passing minute.

I am an avid Google user and Google just about everything (no joke! My family makes fun of me for this). However, how much of what we read on the Internet is actually reliable information, because A LOT of what is now on the Internet is very questionable? Using Google you can locate scholarly reliable articles if you query “Google Scholar” and then query whatever it is you’re searching for under that.

In high school I learned very quickly that Wikipedia was not a very reliable source at all, from first hand experience. My friends went back and edited something that they were reading to complete gibberish, and never again did I use Wikipedia as a source for anything school related. And just like there is Wikipedia, there is “Yahoo Answers” and “Ask Jeeves” where the average person answers a question to the best of their abilities, or sometimes, very sarcastically. One just has to know the difference between what can be trusted and what cannot.

Bride To Be

So, I spent this weekend at South Padre Island at my cousin’s bachelorette party/weekend and I could not help but think how each bachelorette party is different. Some are more conservative than others and some are way on the wild side. However there is one universal rule: what happens at the bachelorette party stays at the bachelorette party. Not that anything bad happens boys do not worry! But its just girl business!

I, personally, would be shouting it to the world and making it known that it was my day/weekend. I feel like it is a perfect excuse to get pampered and make you the center of attention. I mean, it is basically your last several weeks of being a bachelorette before you are all wifey’d up!

I feel so honored to have been asked to be a bridesmaid in my cousins wedding. I have enjoyed every step of her journey into a new chapter of her life; from dress fittings, to showers, to the bachelorette party and the soon to come weeding. I think it is a beautiful experience, and being the youngest granddaughter I just keep taking side notes of cute ideas that maybe one day I could use for myself.

I am extremely happy for my cousin and her fiancé and wish both of them the best and mat God bless them with a lifetime of happiness!