This semester has been like a massive restorative when it has come to my skills as a writer and a linguistic speaker. I was able to re-analyze how one’s language and one’s perception of said language can affect the reputation and image of a person. A prime example is how “Broken English” can severely diminish a person’s argument according to societal norms and result in a lack of accommodations. I was also able to recognize key rhetorical strategies being used in certain pieces of text and make use of it in my own writing.

Language, throughout history, has been the foundation of communicating with one another, with us having a standardized form of language. Having a different version of a language that doesn’t conform to societal norms has often led to people being oppressed. As I stated in my phase 2 essay, “Tan was supporting her claim that even though her mother could speak English, she wasn’t very respected for it since it was “incomplete” to most people including professionals and it took Tan to step in, even to gain a bit of respect for even serious situations.” (Phase 2, paragraph 1). Because of Amy Tan’s (author of Mother’s Tongue) mothers’ dialect and “Broken English” medical professionals didn’t take her seriously and essentially oppressed her by not allowing her a CAT scan because of how she spoke until her daughter came and spoke in standardized English. This shows the effects of linguistic standards and how they can suppress the feelings and thoughts of certain language users.

A key to being able to write a well-versed essay is having a strategy beforehand. In this class, I learned how to use rhetorical precis to identify rhetoric being used to understand a piece of text better and also set up my essays better. I used the article of Sarah Shaffi in the form of a rhetorical precis to better understand her purpose in writing certain lines of text and also being able to structure my argument supported by her article. “Shaffi’s purpose is to showcase the negativity behind Ai art in order to convince society and readers to stop relying on it. She establishes a professional tone for her audience and presents personal evidence conducted to build evidence for her readers” (Rhetorical Precis 2 sources, paragraph 1). I was able to adeptly understand the tone and purpose of Shaffi’s article and identify the different rhetoric that was used in it to structure it into a rhetorical precis. “Ai art also lacks any sense of ingenuity and comes off as bland and distasteful to the field of art itself. Sarah Shaffi in her article, “‘It’s the opposite of art’: why illustrators are furious about AI”, addresses the topic of Ai Art and argues that it blurs creative and ethical boundaries.” (Ai Art Essay paragraph 4). I was able to use the rhetorical precis to understand the author’s purpose and combine it with my own argument to better support my claim.

Procuring ways to better support a claim is a perfect way to back up any essay that is being worked on, such as finding research sources or proper use of citations. I was proficient in finding research articles, and for the most part, I was able to support the claims of my essays with multiple sources. The only difficulty I had was finding useful peer-reviewed sources that had information of value that was also reputable, it might also have partially been due to the fact that my topic of Ai art was a relatively new subject. When it comes to using citations, I believe I did an adequate job of listing and using them in the right location. “As seen below, initially a person would be surprised and amazed at the quality of the artwork, but if you look closely, you can see the distortions in the image and how every Ai image is lacking a certain quality. “AI image generation has the potential to do away with smaller jobs that up-and-coming artists often rely on to build up portfolios. Syed says that for things such as fan-art, self-published books, logos and family portraits, people may turn to AI.” (Shaffi, paragraph 14).” In the original text, I provided an image that supports my claim of what Ai art lacks and gave a citation with the evidence backing that up with the location of where to find it.

I can admit there were some learning objectives that I didn’t really make much headway in. An example would be the better use of rhetoric instead of trying to use multiple examples of it. I believe I tried including many different types to show a more diverse use of rhetoric instead of focusing on the key ones, like leaning more into ethos rather than something like logos. I also think I need to better synthesize an essay, since I’ve genuinely never done something like that before. One thing I had no clue about was using digital and print technologies to address an audience, I definitely need to work on that.