http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kathleen-parker-the-conscience-of-a-pope/2013/12/06/f39f9d66-5ea7-11e3-95c2-13623eb2b0e1_story.html
Pope Francis has been hated by many people for the reforms
that he has made. I personally enjoy what he has done in the way of religion,
but many are afraid of change. This article highlights the opinions of those
who disagree with his decisions, and uses them to defend the writer’s opinion.
Kathleen Parker doesn’t use
many devices to get her point across. The most notable would be syntax; however
diction is also somewhat clear in this article.
The paragraphs of this article
are woven around pictures of the pope, shown in a positive light. Normally,
pictures will reflect the overall opinion of the article, but the opinion of
Kathleen only begins to show through in the end of the article. Up until then,
it’s mainly quotes from people that disagree with her. The pictures are used to
show how ridiculous the opinions of others are. The picture of the pope washing
the feet of many people is paired up with Rush Limbaugh’s calling him a
“Marxist.” This shows the absurdity of the quote without even bringing it up
again, you see the picture, and the quote and think “no way.” And move on.
Another syntax-y thing that I
noticed was the length of the quotes. Normally, to have a good argument, you
have to have a quote that doesn’t agree with you, that is longer than two or
three words. Her use of quotes is ridiculous. The opinions that disagree with
her are barely noticeable, but the quotes from the pope are paragraphs. This
obviously shows some bias towards the pope because we can actually understand
what he’s trying to say, rather than just shoving a “pure Marxism” in for a
whole argument. Personally, I think that this shows the weakness of her
argument.
Finally, the diction that
Parker chooses is an indicator (not a big one, let me tell you that.) on her
opinion. Words like “commie” are thrown around here and there. Instead of using
the word communist, the more playful version (if there is a playful way of
calling someone a communist.) is used to show how ridiculous these people are
for calling someone something so harsh.
Overall, I agreed with this
article, but I think that the argument is so weak, that I have a hard time
reading it. The use of DIDLES is really weak, and I don’t think that it was
very well written. Sorry Kathleen Parker. Keep trying.
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this analysis. I found it interesting that instead of talking about the impressive devices used, you took a different take and talked about the how weak these devices were used. I did notice though that you only talked about syntax and diction. Since we are asked to talk about at least three it would probably be best to at least mention another one. You did a nice job of writing a brief essay while still getting important points across, which can be really hard to do. I also had to laugh a couple times during this...you are pretty witty:) Ex: "Keep trying." The only other thing I would say is just to maybe add a couple direct quotes from the article to back up your claims. I sometimes forget to do this as well though! Nice job!
Rachel, this is a well written analysis and you did a good job of providing examples of how the author, Kathleen Parker used syntax and diction to further portray her point. Maybe when describing how the length of quotes stuck out to you, provide some specific examples so it is more visible and easier to understand exactly what you mean. Also, I think overall you were clearly able to see the main view of Parker, however at the beginning and end you mention that Parker doesn't have a strong usage of DIDLS, and so due to that I would recommend picking maybe another article that still covers this topic, because it is very interesting but the fact that this particular one lacks the usage of DIDLS probably made it trickier to write this post. Overall though, nice work! I can tell you are very interested in this topic, as was I when reading this!
ReplyDeleteRachel,
ReplyDeleteI would have to disagree with you in saying that this is a poorly-written article that uses few effects from DIDLS. I do agree with you, though, that syntax plays a big part in the effectiveness of this article, though in my opinion the way the sentences are structured and their length plays a bigger role than the accompanying picture. The fact that she compartmentalizes each little idea into its own paragraph creates a certain kind of flow for the whole picture, one that, coupled with the inclusion of both pro- and anti- Papal quotes, leaves the author's opinion ambiguous until the end. I do not think that there is an imbalance of each type of quote; I found each side of the issue to be pretty equally represented. Her diction is clear and precise, and while I agree that by the end we see that her opinions are couched with the Pope, the diction does not overly praise him until the very end. I don't think that any weakness the article has lies within the author's use of diction. You say that a weakness is the use of the word "commie" instead of "Communist", and I do agree with your point that the former does have a lighter feeling to it than the latter, this article is an opinion piece, and the usage of a word like "commie" helps further her point. As a whole, I thought that this article was a tightly-written opinion piece, not anything to shout about, but not poorly written. But, you are entitled to your own thoughts about this article, and I'm only trying to present my side of things.