Written task

This is an interview on a tv show between a journalist and a graphic designer about a new container for a product.
Fred: Journalist
Mike: graphic designer

This is a transcription from the interview in the tv show

• Fred: So! here we are! welcome to another episode of your favorite night news tv show,   Fredview. We have here today our very special guest Mike West, who is going to tell us something about his brand new work, this new container for the old chocolate cookies we all know and love. Tell us Mike, which is the advantage on changing the package of the same product?
• Mike: well thanks Fred, hello everybody. Ok, people get bored, interests change, they minds want a little more exploration. We can see this on little children, who always want to test new things and interact with the world. If children last year were interested in the world football cup you want to change your cookies to look like footballs, for example, in order to make them look more attractive. You make an study on what are children interested now, and we saw that the entries on zoos are blowing up. We think this may be caused by some tv cartoon about animals that is growing popular and children are asking their parents to take them to the zoo. Also, this year we will have the Olympics, so, I've created a package where we can see animals making pole vaulting, running, and making different sports.
• Fred: You said children wanted to test different things. Why would you put the same things they are surrounded by then? I mean, if children want different things, and they have the Olympics and like animals, I would have made a package that doesn't contain that, so they can test something new.
• Mike: Right, you can't control what children will like, I'm speaking about long term periods when referring to interest changes, a year maybe, in which children will be attracted to different things. Now they are attracted by that, so we adapt our mediums to let that attraction benefit us.
• Fred: What is exactly "that medium" you talk about?
• Mike: Medium is the instrument of communication that lets you inform and tell something to the public. <[English A: Language and Literature course companion book page 158]> You need to understand how mass communication work. Look, who sends the message? The communicator, and that message says something. That message needs to be inside a medium, a channel, a way in which the receiver audience can get to it to cause an effect. I this case, I am the communicator, the message it's that this product is fun and can make children feel comfortable buying and consuming this as it "likes" the same they do. The channel is the sight, the pictures. You will find no word in the container that says something about that the package likes the same you do, but children will understand that by the pictures. The receiver, the audience, is of course the children, and the effect you want to cause in them is to feel identified by the container, to understand the message.
• Fred: I know that in mass communication you always want to have feedback in order to upgrade your chances of having a better experience with your public. How do you recieve this feedback when creating a snak container?
• Mike: Well, yes, I totally agree with you, feedback is essential when producing advertisement and mass communication elements. We do have a webpage with a forum and a comment section, but as it's to be expected, no children is going to access to the webpage of a cookie to say they liked it. The most relevant feedback we have is just the fact that every time we change the physical look of a product, our sales increase in a 12-14%. This shows us that they really like it and we have here a positive response and that they feel comfortable with it.
• Fred: apart from just including characters they like, is there anything else you can do to make children feel more close with the product?
• Mike: There is were rhetorical strategies come in scene. You have to make the difference between products that want to inform from products that want to persuade. I need to have clear the fact that I want to persuade. I need to pay close attention to elements like register, genre and style a consumer likes. While they are many ways of convincing us through language acts like tone, color, sentence length, etc, is the ability to combine this things what is able to persuade the public at the end.
• Fred: I... well... I need to admit that I didn't understand your explanation. Can you give us an example?
• Mike: There are things you can combine and strategies you can use. The most common is the "give me three" technique. When saying three things, people get attracted. In the US, the declaration of liberty was "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". Julius Caesar used to say "Veni, Vedi, Vici". That's the reason why you see in our product an elephant saying "Take, eat, do!" This means: take a cookie, eat the cookie, and now you will have the ability to do all the things the animals are making in the picture. Though, none of this is being said by words. That is an example of a rhetorical strategy.
• Fred: any other examples?
• Mike: when you have fat free products, you want the container to be green and white, ad have leaves and different elements from nature. This way, people buying it will think it is a natural product, when usually, fat free things are even more "toxic" or contain more chemicals than normal products.
• Fred: Ok, thanks you Mike, I wish you luck with your product.
• Mike: Thanks you Fred, goodbye, have a good night.

RATIONALE:

The reason of making a transcription from a tv show is that the ideas flow much faster and it's easier to understand. Without having the necessity of making a description of the place (like in a story about the topic),  the words can be used more efficiently and more information is given and shown with the same amount of words.

I used characteristics that are typical from improvised dialogues. This can be seen in segments like "Fred: I... well... I need to admit that I didn't understand your explanation." Fred needs to think a moment about the answer for a moment. Something similar happens in the next segment "Mike: Right, you can't control what children will like" That "right" at the beginning it's a sign that shows a construction of an answer, a thinking process coming from the thinking of improvising.

Apart from all this, Mike it's a professional graphic designer, this would explain and give more seriousness about what he is saying (he knows of what he is talking about because he studied a couple of years at university, he IS the font of information.

Another aspect of the work, is that the register of the language that is being used is an informal, cult register. This is, again, caused by the improvisation used on a formal occasion. This is shown in sentences like "Now they are attracted by that, so we adapt our mediums to let that attraction benefit us." The use of the world "that" is lack of specific language, caused again by the improvisation and dialog creating in the moment. At the same time though, the same sentence uses the word "medium", showing the background knowledge of the Mike.

Ideas wor the written task

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Idea One: A politician wrote a speech. Then, a comentarist of a tv show interviews him about his speech	Text type: Dialog for a tv show - interview
	Topic: Biased mdia
	Audience: The person who wrote the speech
	Why this text type is appropriate to topic: The dinamic of an interview makes information flow in an easier way than a pre-writen piece of text and presents no problem t share opinions in a simple way.

Idea Two: Letter to the author of a newspaper arguing about  it’s discomformity with an article because of it’s biased infomation	Text type: Letter to the editor
	Topic: Biased media
	Audience: The editor of the newspaper
	Why this text type is appropriate to topic: The arguments will give the information necessary to sow understanding about the topic. The fact that a letter is prepared and every single wod is thought and redacted better than an improvised dialogue will give an easier understandin of the text.

Idea Three: An interview between a journalist and a graphic designer about the container of a new product	Text type: Interview - Dialogue
	Topic: elements used in a piece of advertisement
	Audience: people watching the news
	Why this text type is appropriate to topic: the high experience contained by the graphic designer will give complete and correct answers.

Analysis

The text we are looking at is a text taken from wheretostay.com. It is an overview of a touristic place. This is explicitly said in the text: "overview:" "why (to choose) Antigua and Barbuda". This shows us it is trying to convince the audience to go to this place, by giving information about the place.

Which is the audience that is trying to convince? The same as any other reference webpage: just any person who is looking for a place to go on vacation. This is shown in the links it shows, showing things to do and photos of the place. This elements are meant to give all the information possible about the place to convince this people.

This is, obviously, a non-fiction text, as it gives real information about a real place at a real time; this needs no longer explanation.

The piece shows good aspects of Antigua and highlights the bad things of Barbuda. This content is meant to make Antigua look better in contrast. "[Antigua] fascinating, must-see historical site called..." "[Barbuda] is wild, wooly and barely inhabited [...] (a little airstrip) consists of one tiny cement block structure". The reason for giving contrast is that after looking at a little thing, middle things look big.

The use of specific language is an example of the formality added to the text. We see this in phrases like "visitors of many stripes [...] choices are varied [...] undulating fields [...] winding roads...". The effect of this words in the text is that it makes it look more professional and serious. More than just a referential text, a real information article.

The lack of informal features is something to be expected, as any informal phrases could make possible consumers think that this article has poor seriousness and could be written by anybody.

The rethorical devices used also help to archieve this objective of giving seriousness to the text. Hyperboles like "nation's better known hotels, the largest and most developed tourist destination, etc" gives the author the idea of something huge and amazing; what the author is trying to get into the reader's mind.

The author uses separated information in each paragraph. We can see this just at seeing how do they start: "Islanders claim their home has... The long reach of the british empire... Barbuda, the smaller island... The most popular attraction.... Among but a handful of hotels....". Easy understanding is the effect that this causes. In fact, he points out ideas of interest and makes the article entertaining, avoiding at all costs being monotone and boring, keeping the eyes of the reader in the piece.

The author describes each place exposing all the good and positive things and hides negative ones. There isn's evidence in the text of insects that are there, criminality, political or economic present problems, prices.... Through language, the author creates the image of the perfect location for a vacation. After doing this, he shows the reality of the twin island, and after this he returns to the main island. This deviation is meant to take the mind of the author to another place showing a different reality. The bad things of a place where the reader isn't going, adding another good aspect to Antigua: it isn't barbuda.

In conclusion, the piece of text tries to add all the formal, artistic and contrasting effects to make the text more convincing. People reading this article are convinced that this is a formal, realistic and confident source of information to follow, but the lack of negative aspects and the absence of a "pros and cons" paragraph is really suspicious. Personally, I think this kind of text should be found in the webpage of a local hotel and wouldn't be weird as they need to bring people to themselves, but that its location is in an "objective" webpage that is informing about different places to go, is not correct at all.

Activity

1. What is Harold Laswell’s Chain of Communication’s Model?
2. What does the theorist Marshall McLuhan’s mean by stating that “the Medium is the Message”?
3. Refer to Jurgen Habermas’ “Public Sphere as a Platform for Advertising”
4. What is the connection between Self-Presentation & the Celebrity Image?

1. A graphic description of how does the media affects us and gets to do this
2. Using a cetain medium "like the newspaper v/s internet" you can archieve different things, and the author will use the one that fits it more.
3. People share their ideas. If the ideas of someone important are being shared seriously, people get convinced by this person. Also, industries owners can hear what people need, in order to create it and sell.
4. Ads create the idea that for example women need to be slim and beautifull in order to be succesfull

Image comment

This image its a reflexive image. All we know about the world we live in is brought to you by the televition, internet, or news. All of this is presented by big companies that control the information, and decide what to put on their articles and what to don't. This way, they can "control" what you know.