LANGUAGE AND MEDIA DISCOURSE FINAL EXAM SPRING 2003
Directions: This examination requires essay answers to two questions. Part I will count for 50% of the exam grade; Part II will count for 50%. Since this exam is to be done outside of class and handed in during the examination period, you will have time to prepare a typed, double-spaced final draft to hand in to my office, Anspach 243, during the final examination period Monday, April 28, 7:00-9:00 p.m. It will also be possible to submit the exam as an email attachment by that date (although I expect to return papers and journals during the exam time).
Part I: The Rhetoric of the Internet
Go to the website for Urban Desires <desires.com/index_flash.html> and surf the site. Be patient. Try things out. Test your resourcefulness. Read some of the articles and reviews. Play some of the games and activities. In other words fool around with this website long enough to become immersed in it and to garner a sense of how it operates and why.
In a brief essay, drawing upon examples in the "text" of the website itself, explain what it is attempting to accomplish, describe how it goes about accomplishing it, and evaluate its success as rhetoric. What rhetorical features of the site, including ethos, pathos, and logos, influence the way the site communicates? Indicate what aspects of the site contribute to your sense of its ethos, your sense of its appeal to the interests of its audience, its appeal to rational presentation of evidence. How do you think this site is typical or atypical of the rhetoric of the internet?
(As an estimate of minimal time spent on this answer, I would guess that you would want to tour the site thoroughly for 30 minutes or so, noting its salient features, and spend at least another 45-60 minutes writing your essay.)
Part II. Language and Media Discourse
Having reviewed and researched a range of media (advertisements, commercials, news programs, documentaries, music videos, popular music, dramatic films, animation, and internet sites) and examined the rhetorics of popular media, you may have developed some perspective on the significance of media in the conduct of private and public life. In recent years some people have expressed a need for the inclusion of media literacy among the "literacies" fostered by elementary and secondary education. Given your experience in this course, as well as your experience as a "consumer" of popular media, what would being "media literate" mean to you? In what ways do you think the average citizen/consumer needs to be media literate? How would media literacy empower citizens? Hamper them? Support your argument concerning the need for and strategies for attaining media literacy with examples from the materials we've covered in this course this semester.