Sunday, September 11, 2011

Homework #2

The passage where former President Bill Clinton sent a letter of apology to Japanese Americans caught my attention and was very interesting. This letter was written in detail to compose a purpose for its audience. “Today, on behalf of your fellow Americans, I offer a sincere apology to you for the actions that unfairly denied Japanese Americans and their families fundamental liberties during World War II” (Clinton 8). This shows President Clinton’s first order of business very well by having it in the first paragraph to reveal its importance to the audience, Japanese Americans. Also, in paragraph two Clinton mentions, “Together, we can guarantee a future with liberty and justice for all” (Clinton 8). This in another way supports the purpose meant for literacy. It meant a great deal that after 50 years the United States admitted to their wrong doing.



Another passage from Everything’s a Text, that grabs my attention would be the advertisements from Coca-Cola. “Every factor of a literacy situation that we’ve been discussing- purpose, audience, persona, medium, genre- is influenced by social contexts” (Melzer 22). Each one of the Coca-Cola ads have different gender roles and target audiences. The first ad shown is displaying a “rich” woman dressed in fancy evening wear, posed, with a gentleman by her side. Women’s strict gender roles (Melzer 23) are revealed by another advertisement. This ad explains the 1950’s where women’s important role was to be a stay at home wife serving their working husbands after a long day of hard work. The advertisements in this chapter caught my eye because of how history and the present are completely different in women’s gender roles. It also made me realize how many social contexts are parts of all literacy.

1 comment:

  1. I agree with your comment on gender roles in the early Coca-Cola ads and how different the past is than the present.

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